"Follow your Random-ness"

Title courtesy of Sloganizer.net

Hmm...it's been a long and interesting weekend. Yesterday, I apparently apilled some narcotics into my breakfast cereal because I thought it would be a GOOD idea to load the kids in the car and do about 10 hours of driving. Three of our senior volleyball players were named All-Region and had the opportunity to play in the Georgia All-Region/All-Star game in Augusta, which unfortunately is about a 4 hour drive from where we live.
Lisa and Allison were game to go to, so we all hit Starbucks at 8 am yesterday morning and hit the road. Unfortunately, on the way back, we were running our mouths and not paying any attention to where we going. I was driving, and we had been on the road about 2 hours when it occurred to me that I had just been driving like a mindless robot.
Feeling slightly alarmed that I hadn't been paying attention and had lost track of time, in one big breath I said, "HeyLisawheretheheckarewe?what'sourexit?whatarewedoing"? to which she stared at me blankly for about 4 seconds and then began scrambling about the car for our directions. Long story short, we had gone past our exit by a minor 150 miles, but whatever. It's not like it had been a really long day and there were really crabby kids in the car.
Kudos to Allison for not sawing off her own ears as she sat in the backseat and listened to the boys cry, whine, fight, and sing Thomas the Tank Engine songs for approximately 9.75 hours.

We finally got home and Steve helped me put the boys to bed. AJ was really restless, having trouble falling asleep, so I dumped him on Steve and went to sleep in peace in the boys' room. By 1 am AJ was tossing his cookies all over the living room floor (and Steve's leg). The smell was horrible, Steve-o was gagging, I was stumbling around with paper towels and Febreeze. Steve-o was grousing about having to get up and watch the boys all day the next day (I'm desperately behind on work and told him I'd need all day Sunday to catch up) so I told him to go to bed and I'd take care of AJ.

The two of us moved from the couch to the bed and back all night, trying to sleep, watching movies, throwing up into a bucket, etc. etc. He had eaten yogurt with berries, chicken nuggets, and halloween candy for dinner if that gives you any idea what I was dealing with. I checked the clock every time I was roused from my dozing for another round of whimpering and dry heaves.....2:15, 2:47, 3:19, 3:36, 4:30, 5:08, 5:56 - at which point I gave him some Motrin to lower his fever and he finally crashed on the couch until 8:30. I let Steve sleep until 10:15 (I know, I'm too nice) and then got him up to man the kids so I could start working.

Which leads me to randomness:

When I was in high school, we had a MASSIVE yard. It was huge. I'm talking like, 3 hours to cut and trim it on a riding mower. By the time I was of mowing age, lawn care became my responsibility, since my brother was away at college, and my sister (being the baby) didn't have to do a blasted thing in the way of manual labor. Well, I diligently mowed the yard to my father's psychotic whims (diagonal in one direction this week, diagonal in the opposite direction the next week. He insisted it was "better for the grass" - I think it was a load of horse puckey, but I digress...).
After several years, our trusty riding lawnmower broke and my parents were reluctant to spend the money to buy another one, since I was a college student myself at that point and I was only around to mow the yard in the summer when I was home. What about my little sister, you ask? Pah. Need I remind you, she was the BABY - oh, and perhaps an insightful tidbit to know about her: my dad's nickname for her? "princess" (*insert gagging noise here*).
Yeah, she wasn't going to be racking up any frequent-mower miles anytime soon.
ANYWAY, so my parents instead bought a self-propelled walk-behind mower. Now, mind you that I am perfectly capable of operating heavy machinery. I had single-handedly mowed the yard with the rider every week of the summer for YEARS in addition to PUSH mowing around the 5-gazillion trees we had planted all over the back line of the property where the riding mower was too big to fit. So when mom and dad proudly broke out this new fancy "walk-behind" mower I rolled my eyes as my dad tried to show me how to use it.
"Please, dad. I'm not an IDIOT", I sighed.
So off I went mowing the yard and mentally calculating how many extra hours it would take me to cut all the grass when I was WALKING behind the mower. I figured, the faster I walked, the fast the grass would get cut and the faster I could be finished. By the time this brain synapse had occured, I was reaching the small drain ditch at the front of the yard where the grass gets thinner and you have to maneuver the mower to cut grass at a 90-degree angle as you walk in and around the ditch.
I'm not sure how it happened. But the lawnmower (it was probably defective anyway) took on a mind of it's own and being that it was self-propelled, it took off of it's own accord and ran right over the drain pipe at the edge of the driveway, despite my frantic wrestling of the handle and flipping of switches to turn off the engine. My reflexes kicked in too late, it seemed to happen in slow motion - and I saw the brand new, shiny, red, fancy-schmany self-propelled lawnmower drive itself right over the drain pipe where it made a horrific metallic grindy noise and came to a sudden stop. I cursed in my head (yes, even then, mom and dad) and attempted to remove the mower from the pipe, but the blades had become entrenched in the metal and there was some smoking and a strange smell anyway, so I decided to face the music and somberly walked back up the driveway to get my dad. He, almost always the more patient and definitely the more optimistic one calmed my fears and told me not to worry about it. I could tell he was frustrated but he knew it was an accident and "we'll get it fixed" and "it's probably not that bad" and "let's wait and see" blah, blah, blah.
My mom, on the other hand, went into full flip-out mode: "oh my goodness!" "Tammi! What did you do?" "Ohhhhhh. Our brand new mower!" "oh, oh, oh" moan, moan, blah, blah, blah.
Turns out my mom's reaction was a little more apropo, since I had totally busted up the motor and the blade shaft and the thing was basically unreparable.

Later that week my parents hired a local high schooler to mow our yard every week. Which he did, until my parents moved out of that house this past summer. I took a picture of the pipe for posterity's sake. Marvel at my handiwork:





Oh! And I came across this picture today when I was digging through pictures in my harddrive, which made me think of the story, that you are now privy to. Hope you enjoyed the blast to my past.