THE KING OF ALL IRONIES

For those of you who are new to this site, welcome aboard! Oh ... and we moved into this house in September of 2002.

At the time, I was as frustrated as a hooker with a broken leg because we were fighting a deadline of having to be out of an apartment that we were staying in between homes. We had to be out of the apartment on something like September 30th, and our house was finally finished on the 22nd or something like that.

I'm not good with exact dates because I'm not a fucking historian, jerkoff. For those of you anal bastards who want to go back and check the dates, be my guest. I've got better things to do with my time.

One of the things that was hastily thrown together in order for us to move in on time was the grass seed in the backyard.

Rather than till the land and plant the grass seed and take care of each little blade of grass until it germinated, the builders just tossed handfuls of grass seed on top of the dirt and said "There ya go! Grass!!"

Therefore, we've lived with about 75% weeds and 25% grass in a large portion of our backyard.

I had been wanting to correct this situation for the last few months now that I'm Joe Lawn Man and yesterday I finally did so.

I borrowed a tiller from my brother-in-law. Granted, I'm a bit hesitant to borrow lawn equipment from people based upon my own personal experiences lending out lawn equipment.

To wit:

* I lent my no-good, loser brother-in-law my mower ten years ago and it came back with a broken handle tied together with a fucking sock. Yes, a sock that was used for fucking. I've told you ... my brother-in-law is weird.

* I lent my minister neighbor my new mower about six weeks ago and it came back with the handle snapped in half. He apologized profusely, we wrapped three inches of duct tape around the handle and the minister has sworn he'd get me a new handle. So far ... no new handle and his house is up for sale. I guess he feels so bad about breaking the mower that he's moving. Smart move, Padre.

* With the handle duct taped, I lent the mower to my newest neighbor who hadn't had time to buy a new lawn mower since moving in to his house. He returned the mower with a three inch chunk of metal MISSING out of the handle. He wrapped several inches of duct tape where the metal should have been but I've got to wonder how the hell you rip a three inch chunk of metal out of a lawn mower handle. It's like removing your elbow and duct-taping your forearm to your bicep and expecting nobody to notice.

He didn't even mention it when he sneakily put the mower back in my garage. I'm not holding it against him because it probably wouldn't have broken had it not been the minister who's keeping a low profile until he can sell his house and move to another neighborhood where he can break someone else's mower with glee and then repeat the process.

So I now have the Frankenstein of lawn mowers, all duct taped together.

This wouldn't have been a problem had it taken place before two months ago. I had no interest in yard work then.

Now, yard work is my passion.

(Yes, I'm officially old now)

Even with these horrifying experiences, I borrowed my brother-in-law's tiller because I'm more responsible than the people I just mentioned.

I don't break other people's property.

I'm responsible.

And I've got a pretty good idea on how to operate this stuff.

Anyway, I get the tiller and I've never tilled anything in my life.

As it turns out, as soon as you start the tiller, it jumps out of your hands and goes flying across the yard.

No matter how tightly you hold it, you have this huge monstrosity fighting to get away from you and scurry around the area on its own like a hyperactive four year old.

It took me close to two hours to do this one little stinkin' patch of yard.

When I was finished, it looked like hell. It still does as you can tell.

The sun had drained me of what energy I had possessed in the first place.

My body was sore from wrestling with this tiller.

I picked up as much grass as I could, but as you can see by the photo, I sure as hell didn't get it all.

I then spread the grass seed, but I don't think I had enough to be honest.

I raked the new grass into the dirt and by now I was about to collapse.

I put the sprinkler in the middle of the dirt.

And I was finished.

I started putting all my tools back in the garage.

I put the lawn mower back in.

I managed to get this big assed tiller back in.

All the shovels, rakes, garbage cans, etc. all back in the garage.

As the heat index approached 100 degrees, I stood motionless because I couldn't move.

Which ... is a good definition of "motionless".

I managed to slowly walk back through the garage and into the house.

I hit the garage door button to close the garage door.

The garage door began to close.

Now ... here's the thing.

There's these sensors on the floor of the garage that will not allow the garage door to close if something is hanging out of the garage.

Apparently, they were exhausted too yesterday and were taking a siesta.

Because with my back turned, I heard a horrible screeching noise.

I managed to slowly turn around to see the garage door coming down on the handle of my brother-in-law's tiller.

Before I could do anything ... SNAP.

The garage door had snapped the handle on the tiller, ripping metal from metal.

Once the garage door figured out it had just performed the king of all ironies, it stopped and started crawling back up to its space in the ceiling.

Bottom line ... after all the shit I've thrown around about how everyone fucks up my lawn equipment ... I fucked up my brother-in-law's lawn equipment.

"Hello? International House of Jackasses? I'd like a table for one, please."