Friday, September 4, 2009

34 is the new 18.

My upstairs neighbor is out back right now mowing the lawn and it literally sounds like he's running the mower over a bale of hay. It keeps jamming and he keeps stopping and looking at it and I so badly want to go out there and say, yeah, that is what happens when you never. fucking. mow it.

When I moved in here I asked my landlord if I would have to mow the lawn or do yard work because after living in a house with the largest and most frighteningly out of control yard on the planet I've grown to hate it, and he said that, no, the upstairs neighbors do it all. All I have to worry about is shoveling the snow on my half of the driveway. And I thought that was cool because I actually don't mind shoveling snow. But now it is September and the upstairs neighbor has mowed the lawn all of one time all year and the yard was beginning to look like a jungle and it was causing me considerable stress because I actually do have my own high tech battery powered lawn mower but it's broken and I've only had it for a year and it cost me $400 dollars for christ's sake and THAT's stressing me out because I have no idea what to do with it and I've basically wasted $400.00 and, what? I could use their lawn mower? No, I can't, due to the fact that my dad said we could never use the lawn mower at home because THEY ARE SO DANGEROUS so I can't ever use an electric lawnmower without constantly being scared shitless about running over my toe or EVEN WORSE the cord and electrocuting myself to death, so I couldn't even mow the lawn myself if I wanted to. And I don't want to. Which is the point.

So I complained to my landlord that the back yard is starting to look like a jungle and that the neighbors are starting to complain and by neighbors I mean me because, technically, I am a neighbor and he finally, I guess, told the family upstairs to please take 3 hours out of your day to mow the back lawn for the love of god and, yes, it will take you that long.

So, now maybe I can sit outside on my patio this weekend without tensing up into a giant ball of rage. That's something to look forward to.

What sucks about living here is that I don't have the male friend base that I had built up where I used to live. Back home I had two guy friends who, without fail, would come over and do stuff for me every time I called. I need help with my yard. They're there. My roof is leaking at 11:00 at night. Dude is on his way. There are maple bugs everywhere and I'm going insane. Both are at my door with caulking guns and Raid. All I had to do was provide the beer and make them food. It was a beautiful thing. Now my lawn mower is broken and I don't know what to do. I don't want to fix it myself. I want someone ELSE to do it. I want my guy friends to come here. They're the ones who put it together anyways. It just makes sense.

In other news, I decided yesterday that I was going to buy a condo in June because I would really like to not live in a basement bachelor suite when I'm 34 and possibly also have my own laundry so I was pretty pumped for about 12 hours until I found out that I can basically afford nothing because I make about as much a year as I did when I was 18 years old and working at Subway.

Come to think of it, if I was to actually describe my life to someone I didn't know they could very possibly think I was 18. I'm single, living in a basement, making very little money, living pay cheque to pay cheque, and I've actually handed my name out to start babysitting again to make some extra cash. That is slightly depressing.

I think it's time to start drinking again.

Update: I think my neighbor gave up. Awesome.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it was going to take me three hours to cut that tiny back yard, I would just burn it down. Do you have access to arson-ey stuff?

Elan Morgan said...

I used to know a guy who had two relatives who had been run over by lawnmowers, and he'd had a near miss.

I, too, am afraid of mowers. Keep the fear. They're evil.