The Rube Goldberg Device That Is My Life

So today I decided to mow my lawn. I won't go into exactly how momentous that is, but my neighbors gathered around my yard and applauded. Some wept tears of joy.

I decided to go all the way with this. I started by getting out my weed-whacker and whacking weeds, as well as whacking those hard-to-reach places. After about twenty minutes of heartfelt weed-whacking, I realize that, while I continue to whack, the whacker had wussed. That is, it had run out of that plastic stuff they use to make nyl-gut ukulele strings. It was whackless.

I looked to see whether I had any more line and found that I did not. So, I figured I could get more tomorrow so why not just start mowing the main law?

I got out my new electric mulcher mower and had mowed a few rows when, from out of nowhere, my sprinklers started up. I was disoriented for a second, as far as I knew, it had started raining or something-except the rain was falling up. Fortunately, I let go of the trigger so I was not electrocuted (these electric mowers are well-designed in that regard) and unplugged quickly.

I don't remember doing it, but I must have knocked off the device that controls sprinklers-that electric doo-hickey that is wired to the timer-because a fine geyser was spraying up from just that area. I think the last gardener I had must have broken it and mickey-moused it back together. Since I usually turn my sprinklers on manually, I wouldn't have noticed that.

With Odyssean calm, I bent down to study the geyser, forced to stand directly in the line of fire of one sprinkler. I found the parts that fit, but it took about twenty minutes to screw them back in, what that I was screwing them into the geyser.

My lawn got pretty wet, so I couldn't finish the job, leaving the grass half short and half long-the short grass kind of zig-zagging around the tall grass.

If anyone asks, I'll just tell them it's the world's smallest crop-circle.