What a Day!

Ever just have one of those days where nothing goes right? The first line of Josh Wilson's "Pull Me Through" describes my day pretty well.

Everything that could go wrong is going wrong;
Everything that should go right is going wrong too.

The day started out with my mom waking me up at 8:00. Now for a 16 year old guy, that's almost a crime on a Saturday. Never mind the fact that I would've probably had to get up by 8:30 anyway. That last 30 minutes is precious! Anyway, she was waking me up to connect her video camera to the DVD writer so that she could record something off onto a disk. The problem with this is that it seems she has lost the cable to do so. Now, as much as I love technology and confusing wiring and such, it's not what I want to do the second I roll out of the bed. So I work on that for about an hour and finally she comes to the conclusion I had reached in about 5 minutes: You can't wire two devices together without a wire to go between them.

So then I proceeded to get ready for my job. I always mow the music leader's (from church) yard on Saturday because it was pretty much the only job I could find for the summer. After I got almost ready to go I started looking around, and I couldn't find my shoes for the life of me. I looked all over the house at least 3 times. Then finally I found them in the far corner of my room that I never even go into. So I put my shoes on and realized that somewhere in the process of looking for my shoes, I had lost my belt. After searching the house once again I found the belt, grabbed my stuff, and left. After I locked up and went to the car, I realized that I had forgotten my cap. I left it at home last week and got sunburned even more than normal, so I didn't want to make that mistake again. So I had to go back inside to get it.

Well usually, my friend Sam helps me, but this week he was out of town and I had to mow the whole thing by myself. I don't know the exact acreage, but it's a big job. A house, a separate apartment, 2 fences, and *dramatic theme* a pond. Yes, by the dramatic music, you probably know what happens already, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I mowed and mowed and mowed, then I weed-eated weed-eated weed-eated.Then I mowed some more: back and forth. You get the idea.

[Intermission]
*Lights dim*
*Dramatic music swells*

"And now back to our regularly scheduled....uhh...blog post"
*Curtain opens to show a small pond and a teen on a riding lawn mower*

So there I was. Riding a mower around the pond. All of the hard parts already behind me, the only part left was the small peninsula on the south side. I rode the length of the peninsula as I always do, and then as I was going to turn around I realized (dun dun dun) I'd gone too far. I had gone too far down the slope on the end of the peninsula and I couldn't turn around. My rear wheels were just spinning with no traction, but luckily I wasn't going down yet. So I set the parking brake (wouldn't want it to roll in) and got off to adjust the rear wheels to a different angle on the hill to get some better traction. This I did successfully, but alas, when I got back on I still couldn't quite make it out. Thinking I could do the same thing I had just done, I set the parking brake and got off again, but the moment my weight left the mower is started it's descent into the depths of the abyss (or, ya know, the shallow end of the pond). Sadly enough, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't keep it from going in. So I watched as my employers mower (which costs more than my life savings) slipped down the slope at an increasing rate and landed half submerged in the water, still running - barely. It died due to water intake, I guess, but that's not really the point. I was forced to go inside to Bro. Scott and admit my mistake and explain to him that his lawn mower was in the pond. I felt really bad about it to say the least. Luckily, he didn't seem to be mad. That mower has apparently been in the pond at least 2 other times.

So after we changed the oil...oil filter, fuel filter,and the air filter, and I mowed the rest of the yard, he was gracious enough to still pay me. So I left his house with the payment for this week's mowing plus another 101 dollars that I had from previous weeks that I hadn't had a chance to deposit yet. I went to Lifeway because we had a 25% off thing that we were sent in the mail, and I was going to look around some. So I was there a while, and I got ready to go home. It's amazing the looks you get when you go shopping in the local Christian book store with grass and oil all over you. I was ready to go, so I took my purchase to the register, and he scanned it and the coupon and gave me the price. I reached in to my pocket and my hand hit the bottom. I had lost my wallet. The man that was checking me out gave me a kinda weird look like "Why aren't you paying me?" So I had to explain to him that I had apparently misplaced my wallet, and that I had had it only a few minutes before. He told me that he could hold my stuff until I found it, so I went outside to search the car. I ended up finding it, but I was starting to wonder how many things could possibly go wrong.

I didn't have any more major problems for the rest of the day (or they were so traumatic that I blocked them from my memory), but what was so interesting to me was the fact that I was ridiculously giddy through almost all of this. I think maybe I'm sleep deprived. I might add that this blog post has kept me up an extra hour. The things I do for the entertainment of my imaginary friends.

It's sleep deprivation and it's sweepin' 'cross the nation!