February 19 – “It works”

Well, that brand new lawn mower of ours officially works.  That’s how I spent my day on Friday while Chris did the grandkids babysitting gig up in LaMarque.  It took me quite to even get started, though.  I first had to run over to WalMart (of course) and buy one of their cheap weedeaters.  Ours died about the same time as the old lawn mower did.  We almost got one at Eleven O’clock Sears (My new name for them) when we bought the mower, but all of theirs had a double string thing going on.  Way too much trouble to reload when it runs out.  The WalMart one was a single-stringer.  And while at WalMart I grabbed some fresh gas.  Gotta start out right. 

Once I got home I had to enter yard prep phase.  That’s the bad thing about the first real yard work of the season.  You have to get all the fallen sticks and seeds and the like out of the way.  And in this case I had one other job to do before I could start.  We have a small shed in the backyard.  It is supposed to be home for things like lawn mowers.  No way this mower was going to fit in there until I cleared a path for it.  That meant dragging everything out and doing a serious purge.  There was even an old dead mower from way back still folded up in there.  That was an easy one to get rid of.  All I had to do was roll it to the street.  It was gone by the end of the day. 

There was one problem I didn’t discover until the task of mowing and edging was complete.  When I rolled the new mower back in and went to loosen the bolts to fold the handle over so it would fit into the shed space, I found that I had to completely remove the bolts and replace them after I made the fold.  Now that’s going to be a pain when I have to do this weekly.  Oh well.  In the end it all fit and the yard looked nice when Chris got home.  And all that remained was the recovery period … for me …

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 says, “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.  We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.  According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.  For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.  Therefore encourage each other with these words.”

Father, thank you for beautiful days and pretty yards and happy wives.  Amen.