I Love My Hubby, But Sometimes I Want to Kick His Butt

I love my husband dearly. And most people who know me can attest to the fact that I don't bash my husband. I'm not into men-bashing of any kind, but especially not of my beloved hubby. He's too good to me, and I love him too much to speak badly of him. Of course he has his flaws, but *NEWS FLASH* so do I.

That being said, I'm going to poke a little fun at him in this post. I told him I was going to, and he laughed, so it's all in good fun.

Here is the scenario. I've wanted to buy a lawn edger for a long time, because I really like a neatly manicured lawn. We've never had one, (a neatly manicured lawn, that is) but by gosh, I decided this was the year I was going to make it happen, so I started by purchasing a manual edger and some "weed & feed".

I started using my edger on Mother's Day - what can I say? I was in the mood for gardening I guess. I managed to make it down one side of the front sidewalk and then practically collapsed in agony. I've also been nursing a sore shoulder for a few years now and that little gardening spree made it worse.

I mentioned to my husband that I needed his upper body strength to get the job done - yes, I used a little shameless flattery, but he is indeed quite strong in the upper body department, while my muscles resemble a limp rubber band.

One morning, I went off to a meeting and I came back to find this. I seriously thought that some neighborhood dog, or perhaps a rodent, had dug up our yard. Then it dawned on me. My husband had tried to do some edging. However, I made the natural assumption that he actually knew how to do it. I had made the mistake of thinking he had noticed many other nicely edged lawns, and was salivating to have his very own neatly trimmed yard. But I was wrong. I was so wrong.



I went inside and tried to casually ask my husband how the lawn had come to look this way. In my mind, I was wanting to yell, "What the hell did you do???" But I managed to maintain control and simply asked what was going on in the front yard. He flatly answered, "I started the edging". OK. . . .So, I waited for the rest of the explanation, perhaps something along the lines of, "but then aliens came and started to control me with their mind powers so that I ended up flinging dirt every which way". I would have understood then, but there was no further explanation. And he clearly expected some gratitude.

I responded, "Uh, thanks, honey. Do you want me to help you pick up the clumps of dirt lying all over the yard?" His response, "Nah, I'll just leave them there and let the mower chop them up when I mow the lawn again."

Naturally, I thought he was kidding, but when I asked him again (a little more impatiently, I might add), to pick up the dirt clumps when he went to mow the lawn the next day, he asked, "Why? The mower will get them." That's when I lost my temper, furiously went outside and picked up the stupid clumps myself, and ended up saying something a little snippy to him about how I know a little more about yard management and gardening than he does, so he should just do what I ask him to do.

Sadly, so sadly, those very words came back to haunt me. After the declumping and the mowing, I set out to apply the weed & feed. I carefully set the spreader according to the directions. However, I guess I didn't realize that I wasn't supposed to go back and forth over the same area 3 or 4 times. (I'm going to blame that on my 5-year-old helper, who really did insist on going over the same spots time and time again.)

Two weeks later, I have a nicely mown, nicely edged lawn, with nice big patches of burned, brown and dead grass. I was going to take a picture of that, too, but you get the idea. No reason to humiliate anyone else in our family.