Relative Something

It happens every time I have been up at the lake. For a week following, my mind is pulled away from the here and now, continually yearning to return to that precious body of water. Our lake has a special allure that is definitely lacking from the otherwise idyllic surroundings of Wintervale.

It has been a tough week for me at the day-job. I’m so exhausted that I struggle to stay awake during the commute, and my mind has noticeably lacked focus. Poor Katie has had to repeat things multiple times for me, and even then, I’m not sure I’ve properly tracked the pertinent facts.

The added responsibility while Cyndie has been convalescing from her hip procedure has definitely taken a toll on me, and I’m noticing that the effects have been accumulating. I am so looking forward to my vacation of biking and camping with my cycling clan in a couple of weeks. I will be more than ready for the refreshing reset that will provide.

After work yesterday, I was taking care of some mowing. It was a simple enough task, but I found ways to complicate it. The grass is growing so fast now that it had gotten too tall between mowings and I ended up with unwanted rows of clippings laying on top of the grass. I have been long overdue to figure out the sweeper attachment that the seller included in our purchase of the lawn tractor, so I decided to give it a shot.

It actually seemed to work pretty well, until I got stuck when trying to force the tractor over some of the deep ruts that still haunt us from the skid loader tracks left by the fence installers. I had to get off and disconnect the sweeper and then push the tractor out of the ruts. When I went to re-attach the device, I didn’t have the clip that locks the pin through the hitch.

I have absolutely no memory of where I put it when I disconnected it. In a pocket? No. Dropped it on the ground? No sight of it. It vanished into thin air.

As I pulled the sweeper forward over the ruts to bring it up to the tractor again, it dumped all the grass clippings that had been collected. I decided to laugh at the absurdity of my situation and forge on.

I connected the sweeper without the locking clip. At the first jarring bump, of which there are so many they are practically continuous, the pin jumped out and the sweeper fell behind as the tractor got stuck in another rut. I left the sweeper there and drove back to the garage to get a trailer to haul away the grass. That done, I came back, with a borrowed clip, to retrieve the sweeper and bring it back to the garage. In front of the garage, when I disconnected the hitch pin, two metal bushings that the pin passes through both dropped to the pavement. I picked up the one that landed in plain sight and began searching for the other one.

It had vanished. Did it roll? I hunted far and wide. Did it land on the mower deck? Not that I could find. Where the hell…?

Exasperated, I threw in the towel for the night. Simple tasks had gotten just too darn complicated for me.

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