You might say this past weekend was an action-packed one, especially if you looked over my schedule.

I spent most of it working, attending all the events that were held over the weekend at one time or another. In spite of being forced to attend in order to receive a paycheck this week, I enjoyed all of the events. I prefer to pick and choose what I will go to, but that isn't always an option when you work for a newspaper. I can honestly say that most of the events in this area have been entertaining for me to cover for the past six years or so. I almost always had a good time.

As for this past weekend, I did manage to have some personal time, including time to go out for a birthday celebration with the family and some friends, watch a terrible movie, visit my parents, go to church one place and a church dinner another and take a nap. The movie was called Daddy Day Care. If anyone tries to force you into taking friends with children to such a film, raise your hands and run away screaming.

I can tell you that having a tooth extracted is not much more enjoyable, but at least it is over with more quickly.

In a way, I feel cheated when I come into work on Monday morning and haven't had very much time to do what I usually get done on weekends — catch up on my chores. In fact, I kind of feel guilty if I don't get to work most of the weekend — gardening, building something, fixing something or at least mowing the grass.

Speaking of grass, I haven't mowed mine in two weeks as of this Wednesday, meaning that I can now officially start losing my lawnchairs and other similar-sized implements amongst the weeds in the near future. What with the rain and my work schedule, the lawn hasn't been a top priority. I would say that it will be my number one priority by Saturday, if I don't get around to it before then. If it keeps raining, I may just wait and get a tractor to bale the whole thing.

It isn't the fault of the grass, I could have done it last week when I had a two-hour window of opportunity, but I opted to do another task instead. Surely the yard could wait another day, I thought. Little did I know that the monsoon season was about to be upon me.

One of my friends here in town used to have a ‘round tuit,' which he frequently used for demonstration. In other words, he would offer it so that a body could say he had "got a round tuit." I think he lost it recently, but told me he plans to look for it, as soon as he gets around to it. I need one of those sometimes. There is never enough time to get the work done.

But enough about me, what about my poor cheap mower? I do think that it will be feeling sorry for itself when it finally comes time to chop through that mess I used to call a lawn.

I haven't had much sympathy for my mower since it started giving me grief. Last fall I went to the really big super store and noticed that the mowers were on sale for about 40 percent off. There were about 30 some to choose from, but most had been used. These mowers came from the factory with a defect that made a drive belt slip off. While the factory paid to have them repaired, many of the customers who bought them returned them. As luck would have it, after checking each and every mower, I managed to find one that hadn't been sold or used in the past. I now realize why most of the people who bought them took them back in the first place. The engine is difficult to start, the power to drive ratio is terrible and the wheels are already falling off the back end of the deck. I can always tell when one comes loose. The grass I just finished mowing will be three inches tall on one side and down to the dirt on the other. The flimsy little wheels were made cheaply to start with, not to mention the cast metal arms that seem destined to fall apart from the get-go.

The deck on this new mower is also suspect. I bet the one I have now isn't half as thick as the last one I used. I'll probably wind up hitting a gravel and knocking the entire engine off the chassis.

That would never have happened with my old mower. I bought it at an estate auction for $50 and used it for years. By the time I got it the name had already worn off the body, but I could tell what kind it was from the green body parts. I should have just bought new parts for it.

Quality new equipment costs big bucks these days. However, the longer I live, the more inclined I am to believe that the price is worth it in most cases. Even if I have to work with last year's piece of junk mower for another three seasons to save up for it, I will never again succumb to my tight-waddery and buy cheap mowing equipment.

When it comes to tools, I feel sure that it is much better to find something worth using and take care of it than it is to find something not worth using and suffer through using for a couple seasons just to feel like I got my money's worth.

That was one lesson that I should have learned from my father. He always tried to buy quality stuff to work with. Not that it stayed good stuff forever, mind you. Once that tiller reaches the ripe old age of 12, which is about 135 in human years, you just have to deal with it. Even so, prior to its old age, we already had gotten years of worry-free service.

Oh well, it's too late for me to worry about that now. I'll just go home, drill a new hole in the body and bolt on an old metal tricycle wheel. If I am lucky, maybe I'll get the yard mowed without having to fix something else on it.

Get more tongue in cheek commentary this week's issue of the Alleghany News!

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