So today Suzanne and I decided to relax. It’s been a long week full of scans and doctors and ups and downs, and we both just needed to chill. So we slept in, I made pancakes and we ate them in bed, and then I just had to get up and do something. I’m about 2 weeks behind on cutting the grass because of all the appointments and such, so I decided that I’d go cut the grass and piddle about trying to get my Beetle to idle properly.
So after managing to flood the Beetle to the point it wouldn’t start, I decided it was a good time to go cut the grass. So I pull out the mower and fire it up.
There’s lawn up next to the house, and lawn at the end by the street, but the stuff in the middle is scrub.
Well, a while back I decided I was tired of looking at it, and cut it all to lawn-length, which really improved the look of our yard, and actually gave us some useable front yard space.
Why is this important? Because before I went downstairs to cut the grass and tinker with the Bug, I said to Suzanne “I think I’m just gonna cut the part at the front and up near the house. I’m not gonna fool with the middle, it’s just a pain in the ass. ”
So flash forward again. I’ve started cutting the grass. I start up in the front, and am just doing the grass portion, and then it starts pissing me off that I’m not planning on doing the middle scrub section. So I start doing that, too, and the more I do of it, the more pissed off I get at myself for deciding not to do it in the first place. First I’m telling myself that I’m acting like a patient, then that I’m acting like a victim, and that I’m a fully-functional human being, I ought to be taking responsibility for myself and my surroundings. The more I mow the more pissed I get. I work up a serious sweat on the outside, and a major lather on the inside. Somehow it’s gotten into my head that the act of cutting my grass is one of complete defiance against the cancer, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna do it half-assed.
Writing about it several hours later makes it seem funny to me, but at the time it was the most serious moment of my day.