It's a small planet we live on. (I'm assuming you live on the same one I do.) The part of it I can see when I gaze out my sliding glass door looks a bit bigger tonight. For the past week I've been obsessed with the high grass. It seemed to be going all Children of the Corn on me, closing in and ready to march through the door and take over the living room.

This thing been gnawing at me all week. Grating on me. Eating away at my insides. And there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it. Once it's been cut, I can keep it under control by pulling up weeds and tall grasses by hand. But first, it has to at a manageable level.

My yard guy is unavailable. The lawnmower that came with the house has never worked. I thought of trying to find someone else to do the mowing, or even going out and buying some equipment to try to use myself. But I like my yard guy, and I feel kind of an obligation to him (for a reason that probably makes sense to no one but me (including him)).

And I know what would happen if I bought a mower or a tractor. It would stop working and sit in the garage forever, much the way my nonfunctioning fish tank has served as nothing more than a night light since I got it.

Tonight after the sun went down and before it got dark, I went a little mad. I wheeled the lifeless lawnmower out of the garage for the first time ever. I wasn't even thinking about trying to see if I could make the motor run. I just rolled the machine back and forth over the yard, flattening the highest grass as I went along.

It's not much of a long term solution, but it looks better, at least for the moment. I can look out and see across part of the yard to the far fence. That's a major improvement over the way it's been. If the landlord shows up at 7:30 tomorrow morning, maybe he'll see what I've done and not try to wake me up. (On the other hand, if my yard guy does finally show up, he might wish I'd left things alone.)

I had to do something. I didn't know what else to do. If I had a machete, I would have used it. If I had a steamroller, I would have rolled that over the yard instead. I've been working off an on with clippers and hoes and shovels, but that wasn't making much of a dent. This isn't going to help much either, but I feel better about things tonight, and I think that's important.

Maybe next I should take a pair of dull scissors and rub them on my head. I got up this morning fully determined to get a haircut, but then I got busy and ran out of time and lost my enthusiasm for the project. Besides, it was an embarrassingly bad hair day (of which I've had many lately). I won't get it cut during the weekend, so Monday is my next chance. I'll probably find a reason not to do it then, either.