Self-Propelled
4:56 p.m. - 2005-09-04


I am spending the three-day weekend cooking stuff. I made the next year's pickle relish, which isn't easy when some critter ate all the cucumbers, but I just used pattypan and gooseneck squashes. I made two batches of pesto and froze it, and some macaroni salad. I am about to make a wacky cake, but decided to write this first, since I am great at procrastinating.

He and I went shopping yesterday and bought him a new lawn mower. It is amazing how you get used to having something, and you hassle with it and hassle with it, when it suddenly occurs to you that you do not need to suffer with a 20-plus-year-old lawn mower. Science has marched on. We got him a new Toro with guaranteed start and self propulsion. He says you don't push it, it pulls you along while all you have to do is to guide it. So he is happy, and while he was buying this big ticket item, I slipped in a few BBQ accessories I wanted, furthering my quest to be an asador. After we got home, he went out front with his new toy to assemble it and mow the lawns. He came back in to get me, looking glum, and asked me to check the bag attachment, since it wouldn't fit and he suspected that it had a design flaw. I went out there and asked, "Is this the top side of the bag?" "Hmmm," he says, flipping the bag over and finding that once it is right-side up, it fits on the mower nicely. "You were right," I say, pondering the mysteries of the male mind, "there is a design flaw, but it is not on the mower."

He went into the office today while I went to church. It was another contemporary service, and the songs were more tuneless than ever. Only about a month until the split services, when things will be better, I hope. I was watching TV the other day, and a commercial came on for some Christian music DVDs. The songs they listed were all those that we are sooooo tired of at church, so I can't imagine anyone buying them. I like the old hymns better with tunes you can actually remember and repeat. Ear-pounding rhythm isn't everything.

I got some videos from the library, and so far am striking out. I watched Iris, which is the story of some amoral intellectual English woman who marries this nice guy and is constantly unfaithful with multiple men, gets Alzheimers and dies, and we are supposed to view the relationship between her and her husband as 'an enduring love story'. Poor schlump. Then I started to watch 'Affliction', but wisely gave up on it. It was a total downer, and ends with Nick Nolte killing his father and other people and isn't it all terrible because his father beat him etc etc. So that is one to be avoided at all cost. But I do have Apollo 13, which I am going to watch tonight, and that is always good.

Tonight I am going to break out the George Forman grill, which I haven't used in awhile, and we are going to have burgers and corn on the cob, plus the aforementioned macaroni salad.