Sisyphus

There's nothing like spending four hours in the sun mowing the back yard with a push mower to help you reevaluate some of your life decisions.
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When I bought the place, I remember telling one of the realtors that I'd just use a push mower. I didn't need an expensive riding lawn mower. It was good exercise, I told him. I worked in an office and the fresh air would be good for me.

He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot he'd seen all day. Given that he works in real estate, I think I accomplished something.

If there is one thing I consistently bitch about it is the yard. It's just too much work and makes me resent the neighbors, who all have riding lawn tractors --some with XM radio and bluetooth capability, I'm sure. If they don't, they can afford to pay truckloads of scruffy, tattooed guys to show up in a pick up truck dragging a trailer loaded with those cool, speed mowers that wipe out an acre in about twenty minutes.

I just have me and the push mower my sister gave me two summers ago. I can't even reliably get my teenage kid to help. He'd rather sit in his room, play video games and post disturbing things on Facebook.

I'd rather do that, too, but the yard has got to get done. Otherwise, I'd never see the deer coming. 

The next owner will be wiser than me or more well-heeled and can afford the tools needed to make this place something special.

I think sometimes about where I will go next.

Back at the first of the year, I spoke with someone about getting a raise. With the Affordable Care Act, I was finally going to have to take the company insurance. I needed it. I hadn't had insurance since the divorce and had been skating on my typically excellent health, but I figured all streaks come to an end eventually.

The state is full up of people with bad health, bad habits and dim prospects. 

The bite for the new, mandated (but still sort of crappy) insurance was about $180, which sounds like a bargain if you can afford that --and I probably could, if I didn't also have a car, or if stopped buying groceries regularly.

I tried to explain the predicament I was in and thought my work should speak for itself.

He said, no. 

A couple of months later, I posted on Facebook about my plans to put the house on the market, I was asked about that. Of late, it seems like there have been a lot of comings and goings --mostly goings. He wanted to know if I was looking at leaving.

I said I wasn't, but that I couldn't afford to keep the house much longer. He asked me, "Well, don't you have a girlfriend? Couldn't she move in with you?"

I barely had an answer for that one, except no. It seemed baffling that he would think that was a suggestion he could make: I can't pay you any more. Why don't you get a roommate?


The other day, some friends visited from Louisville. They left last year for better opportunities, more money --seemed very happy with the Bluegrass State -- and asked why I hadn't joined them already?

The house, I told them, the house. 


This isn't to say that I will leave West Virginia. My radio show debuts next month and even if I think the pay sucks, I still like my job at the newspaper.

There are other reasons more complicated and I think of them while I push the mower back and forth --but maybe not for a while.

As the sun was drooping over the horizon and I was finishing the back half of the lot, the oil cap on the mower inexplicably came off like a champagne cork. Oil, like thin, store-bought gravy spilled out all over the mower. The motor came to a stop and has not started again.