|
When you can’t last any longer than fifteen minutes doing yard work (especially when you yard is as scandalously overgrown as mine is), then you’d better get out there and do something every day. Or nearly every day, anyway. Because if you miss a day or two or three, soon fifteen minutes a day becomes fifteen minutes a week, and then you might as well spend that fifteen minutes watching infomercials or playing solitaire, for all the good you’re doing.
So, having shirked my responsibility last night in favor of a softball game, I was highly motivated to put in my time today. It never got really hot today, so I had that going for me, but I wasn’t sure I could escape the Boss’s clutches in time. At four this afternoon, he popped up on the radar with some new insurance forms he wanted to overnight to our agent.
First I had to find out what he was talking about, since I’d never seen or heard about these forms. Then I had to do some fast and furious typing. Luckily, I didn’t have to do the overnighting. Since they required his signature, he had to take the form off the fax and put the package together himself. Here’s another advantage of the hundred miles between us. While he was off to UPS or FedEx or whatever, I was outside with my weed trimmer.
To be honest, I don’t think I did myself (or my yard) much good in tonight’s fifteen action-packed minutes. I made a judgment call, but my judgment was a little off. I spent way too much time trying to hack the cattails away from the wisteria, when all I was doing was wasting string and time and all the feeling in my right arm (and my left arm).
Some weeds have to be pulled up the old-fashioned way, by hand. I know this, but now that I have the equipment I resist it. I want to use my tools, not my hands, but it’s counterproductive when all I’m doing is whacking the tops off things that are growing higher than the fence. It might look better from the other side of the fence, but I’m still going to have to strap on the gloves and do the real work. |
