#1 Happening at the new house

I started painting at our new house on Sunday.  I got the entire living room done (with some prep help from my sister and niece.  :)

The tenants decided since they were having to move (since I'm buying the house), they wouldn't mow the grass.  What a nice thing to do to someone who LOVES to mow the grass.  (I'm being serious.  I am a grass mower junkie.) 

(Not my picture)

My son, who is 16 and drives, took some of his finals at school yesterday.  They are on an "open campus" schedule, so when they are done with their exams, they can leave.  He was finished at 10:40 am.

I work full time, 40 miles away from home. 

Our new house is right near his high school and about 10 miles from our other house, so it made PERFECT sense (to me! not him!) that after he was finished with exams, he could go home, eat lunch and relax and then after 3 pm, he was to go to the new house and cut the 4" long grass.  It has been raining a lot here, so it grew out of control.


I was told by my friend (who is the current owner until closing), that there is a decent push mower in the shed that she is leaving with the house (Yay for me!).  She said that "somehow" the mower was on its side and all the oil leaked out.


These are the text messages I received from my son.  If I only could have been a fly on the outside wall of the house to watch this transpire.


Me:  "Don't forget to buy oil for lawn mower."  [2:58 pm]
Matt (texting from tractor supply store): "What do I need to get?" [3:23 pm]


I call him and tell him to ask someone in the store to show you where the oil is.  Duh!  :)


With gas can and a quart of oil in hand, my son begrudgingly made his way over to mow. He's not a grass mower junkie like his mom and was NOT happy.

(Not my picture)

I look at my cell phone and see that I have THREE missed calls from him.  I call him back.


Me:  "What's going on?" [3:40 pm]
Matt:  "I put the oil and gas into the mower.  I started it up and it blew a big puff of black smoke out and died."
Me:  "Died?"
Matt: "Yeah."
Me:  "Try and start it back up."


He does and we hang up.


He calls again a few minutes later.


Matt:  "The mower keeps dying."  [3:45]
Me:  "Well, do your best, ok?"
Matt:  "O.K."


The "do your best" verbiage pretty much means, I expect that he'll give up trying and say, "Well, you told me to do my best and I did." 


Matt:  "Mower stopped and started smoking." [4:28 pm]


That was the last text I got from him about the grass.

UPDATE:  I went over to the new house after work.  Matt managed to get the backyard cut.  The mower started right up for me, didn't "die" or smoke (probably because he already had the oil put in and worked it through by the time I used it) and actually kicked butt in tackling the 4" grass. 

I told him, when I got home, that it was probably "dying" for him because the grass was so long and you had to do a "back and forth" motion instead of one long pass.  He rolled his eyes and walked away.  [LOL]