Lawn king

Not one of our three gas-powered grass-cutting devices would work yesterday. I had mowed over the pull cord on the push mower last year. I bought a new cord to fix it in the fall, but it wasn't until yesterday that I took everything apart to repair it. It actually went just fine and started up pretty easily.

My lawn tractor had a flat tire. I'm not sure what that means about John Deere. It seems like it could have held its air all winter like the other three tires did. I pumped it up with a bike pump and rolled it out of the garage. It wouldn't start, and I promptly ran the battery dead trying. Luckily, it has a 12V system, so I jumped it from my car. It started right up after that.

After I mowed the lawn, I took out the string trimmer. It wouldn't start for anything. I tried every reasonable thing. It would start if I kept the choke closed, but then it would flood. If I opened the choke, it would run great for about 5 seconds and then get too lean and die again. I don't know how many times I pulled on the pull cord. I finally found that I could get it to run if I just barely nudged the choke open. It was enough to trim under the swing set at at the end of the drive where things get steep. I hope it was just bad gas and that new gas will bring it back to life.

The sum of it all is that I am stiff all over, and my right hand is bruised from pulling the pull cords so many times. But the lawn looks nice.

My allergies are killing me now. Ahhh, the smell of spring. I think Ellie's got allergies too. In fact, I think she must be allergic to her blankets. I thought she had bronchitis, but when I mentioned it at day care, they said she doesn't cough much. Just at home, and especially when I put her to bed. Laying down to read her a story is about enough to kill me.

I notice there's a lot of cat hair on her bed, so maybe it's time to wash her blanket again. I think our new cat is particularly allergenic. Lucky us. At least she prefers Ellie's bed to mine. She can at least torment someone who actually likes her.

Linda is doing well. She's tired today. She did loads and loads of laundry yesterday, and today was folding day. Laundry is the one house chore she does a lot of; that and picking up in the big room. She did tell me that she read outside for a while. Some of her papers blew into the yard. Linda told me that she retrieved them (using the walker I presume) but she said it was pretty hard.

She had dinner started tonight. It was leftovers from the freezer, but Linda peeled potatoes so we could have mashed potatoes too. There must have been some kind of glitch with that because Linda told me that she is now keeping bandaids in the kitchen and that I should resupply the bathroom! I noticed that she put aside the paring knife she usually uses on potatos and finished with a potato peeler. Much safer.