Being a stay at home Dad who takes care of the vast majority of cooking, kid transportation, diapers, and laundry, I fight for every instance where I can assert (defend) my Male Role Modelness. Today is just such a glorious day.
I now have in my shed one of these beauties. It’s actually a used older model, but still basically the same masculinity-loaded piece of machinery. 9.5 horsepower motor. Enough noise to require ear protectors. (Which is a bummer, since I normally listen to my iPod while mowing.) A real gearbox with four forward and one reverse speeds.
It will also cut much higher than my soon to be retired mower. This is nice because I try to keep my lawn fairly long as part of my mostly-organic lawn program.
Best of all? A 33” cutting path via two, count ‘em, two blades. My lawn usually takes me 65 – 75 minutes to mow with the old mower, and I pushed that thing fast as a workout. Using my new toy today it took me 30 minutes. 30 friggin minutes! And that was with having to figure out how to efficiently get this monster around the flowerbeds and trees throughout the yard, plus the usual distractions of my daughter showing me how well she’s learning her cartwheels. (A distraction, but what a good one!)
There are a couple downsides to this. First, it’s a monster to get around corners and curves in the yard, but mowing the lawn’s one of the few regular exercise events I get, so that’s not a bad thing. Secondly, because it’s such a monster, I won’t be able to shovel off mowing to my kids until they’re a few years older than I was planning on. (Six isn’t too young for my daughter to use a mower, is it?)
Now Playing: Franz Ferdinand — Franz Ferdinand. Another great recommendation from James. He’s really starting to annoy me with his recommendations for music. I’m blowing much of my discretionary budget (fun money) on stuff he’s pointing me to, curse him.
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