Were it not for the title of this entry, you would have no idea what I’m doing in this picture- and even the pun probably doesn’t make it abundantly clear. In our household, we call this “scooping poop” and we do it every time we’re about to mow the lawn – and especially when someone else is about to mow our lawn. (One of my voice students, Ben, is working off his lessons by mowing our lawn. . . which is why I have been especially cheerful for the last two weeks.) Anyway, normal people walk around the yard with some sort of implement with which they pick up said matter and deposit it into a bucket or bag for later disposal.
Not me. I figured out some time ago that I could pick up the “stuff” with our tool – in our case, something that looks a little like giant salad tongs – and fling it into our ravine as though I was doing the hammer throw. (If I had to do it like the shot put, I would probably wouldn’t. Picture it. Ewww!) It is the most amazing time saver since Minute Rice- and I am successful about 98% of the time. That means that maybe 2% of the time my throw is off-kilter and I end up scattering the “load” (so to speak) all over the lawn rather than sending it soaring into the ravine. And sometimes I just come up a little bit short, in which case I have to retrieve it and then try again. (I hope I never get so muscular and so technically adept that I start over-shooting the ravine, because then I’ll be sending unwanted projectiles into the backyards of the innocent folks on Lakeview Avenue. I can’t imagine that would be well-received.)
I’m glad my wife lets me perform this manly duty my way because this actually makes it sort of fun – even the initial “gathering” phase of the operation, which starts to feel a little like an Easter Egg hunt, minus the pretty pastel colors.
I just figured out what this also looks like. . . it’s almost like one-half of those shooting contests that made Annie Oakley so famous, except that no one is around with shotgun in hand to shoot these projectiles out of the air. (And I would be scared to put a shotgun in my wife’s hands while I’m doing this. She might be tempted to aim for something else.)
This will have to count as the ‘power tools blog entry’ I promised you a couple of days ago. Hope you enjoyed it.
pictured: I had to do some fast talking to get my wife to take a photo of me doing this – I guess she’s so relieved that she doesn’t have to do it that she is willing to do just about anything to keep me content.