Monday Attitude Adjustment Story #150

Home front Status
Okay. I give up. From now on I will always entitle next week’s MAAS…TBD. That way I never have to stay on script because everything always changes around here on an hourly basis. Our Daughter Julie, along with her significant other Frank, has moved to Wisconsin to become a Cheese Head. I guess that’s better than being known as an Airhead but not quite sure about that. The Grandson that lives with us, Stephen, just announced he wants to attend an online school next year. Great, he now goes to Firestone Middle school (which is right across the street from our house), but for high school he want to attend Firestone High which is, as luck may have it, right across the street from us. Don’t ask me his reasoning because I do not believe there is any. He is basically an A/B student who does his homework…unlike his grandfather; his reasoning powers are definitely a gift from his grandmother.

I must be feeling better because I am doing a lot more now. I even went outside to help Sylvia, who had been trying to start the lawn mower for about an hour. She came in and said that neither she nor Stephen could get it running and she was going to have to wait until Ryan got home. So I gallantly hobbled outside and began acquainting myself with this foreign, to me, piece of mechanical equipment. I found and primed the choke and started yanking on the cord…to no avail. I decided that maybe I’d have to put my cane down so to better position myself for pulling the string. The ^%%$@#! thing would not even turn over and just as I was about to suggest we get a new spark plug, Sylvia advised me, after 10 minutes of unsuccessful yanking, that I had to hold down the bar (which I had thought was just a brace) running below the top of the handle bar to start the mower. So I held it, pulled once and the machine burst into live, purring like a lion…well make that a large cat…uh…as Maxwell Smart would say, “Would you believe a three week old kitten?” After explaining to my adoring, grateful wife she could have been mowing 10 minutes sooner if she had only told me about this nifty little trick BEFORE I started yanking my arm off. I didn’t think it was too much to ask for since I had never even seen this piece of equipment before, but it’s not important now. I’ll know what to do the next time; I’ll just tell her to wait until Ryan comes home.

I will have to make this a short MAAS because I was not able to spend as much time getting the old imaginative juices flowing this week, so I could not remember all the funny things, that I intuitively know occurred. Therefore this MAAS is at an end. In the future I will endeavor to try harder even if I have to make some of this true stuff up.

Next week's 07-26-2010 (#151) title: TBD