Green Shoes

I just finished mowing the lawn. I believe that this is the first time that I have mowed the lawn since Jr. High school. I grew up on a busy street and the day after mowing the lawn I would get several "Hey, I saw you outside mowing your grass last night" comments at school. It was then that I started to negotiate chore duties: "Please Mom/Dad don't make me do it, I will do anything except mow the lawn." From then on I became the bathroom lady. Cleaning toilets was fine by me--I could talk on the phone at the same time so it was a win-win for all.

Last week I caught myself criticizing the way my husband had mowed the lawn. Now, I learned very early on in our marriage to be careful of such criticisms. When our oldest son was a baby I would leave the bathroom when my husband was bathing him because I realized that if I corrected his method or criticized the way he was doing it then he probably wouldn't be interested in bathing our kids anymore. Well, today I actually cringed when I heard myself say, "You need to mow the lawn and I really would like you to do it my way." Nice one 'T'--very effective people skills. So, I got on an old pair of sneakers, picked up the edger for the first time in the my life and edged and mowed the lawn. It looks decent. I decapitated a couple of tulips in the process (sorry my darlings) but it looks OK although not quite the way I was envisioning (no perfect lines, the edging is very rough and lots of grass ended up in the bark). Maybe now I'll be more forgiving the next time Rob gives it a go...assuming he's still willing.