Adventures in an Urban Back Yard, the Sequel

As always, permission to post this blog was NOT granted by my husband, but he finally relented.  He just asks you to remember that he’s IRISH, for heaven’s sake, and things just aren’t done the same way here!  Never mind, of course, that he’s lived here for over ten years already.  That’s beside the point, naturally.

In many cases, the sequel isn’t as good as the first story, but I submit this to you with confidence that you will, in fact, find this even funnier than the weed trimmer tale.  The story begins long ago–Saturday morning of this past weekend, to be exact.  Liam wanted to beat the heat of the day, so he hopped out of bed with the vigor of a man living in northern Canada and headed out to mow the yard before the day could become unbearable.  The lovely lad let me sleep while he worked, and woke me at 9:30 with a request for help.

I grabbed for my glasses so I could help him untangle whatever he’d tangled and ran out the door with bare feet, like any self-respecting Tennessean.  He led me around the side of the house, and pointed.  There, in the clear light of day, was a busted pipe gushing water into the yard at an alarming rate.  My dear friends, the man had mowed our lawn for three full months before “only now” seeing the standing pipe, just before he ran over it with the lawn mower.

I was at a loss.  Of course, my first thought was just to stanch the flow with my foot, but you know that didn’t work too well.  I don’t maintain that I’m smarter than my husband in any capacity, and that right there is the proof.  I looked at him helplessly before running to grab my phone.  It had never occurred to us to ask where we might turn off the water flowing to the house.  Of course, it hadn’t really occurred to me that someone might run over the pipe with a lawn mower either, so there you have it.

Ten minutes later, we managed to get into the water meter on the street and cut the flow of water, but not soon enough to prevent the creek that had formed in our front yard.  I stared at the crisp, clear water and saw only dollar signs.

“Well,” I said, “at least we got it stopped fairly quickly.”

To which the man–my lovely Irishman–blushed (and wow is he cute when he blushes!) and said, “I didn’t wake you right away.  I didn’t want to stop mowing while I still had momentum, so I finished the front yard and half of the back before coming to get you.”

Can’t wait to see this water bill, folks.  Just can’t wait.