Watch for Snakes!

I just love mowing the grass (with a riding mower, of course!)! It is so relaxing to me. In some ways, mowing occupies your mind 'cause you are operating a heavy piece of machinery and concentrate on the task at hand and you get a pretty quick payoff and sense of accomplishment and a tan. In other ways, you have nothing to do but think while mowing. My mind always wanders on silly things like yesterday. . .

Yesterday, I decided to mow to mow as much of our yard as I could (we have 7.5 acres) to help out ol' Rhett. He's been working alot of overtime and weird shifts and is just worn out. The first little while of mowing, I kept thinking Why, oh why did I put on ooey, gooey lip gloss right before mowing? And it was some pump your lips up kind so my lips were all tingly with a billion pieces of grass and dirt clingy to them. Very attractive. Then, as I went around an old tree stump, I saw it! A little snake poking his head out watching me. I screamed bloody murder like a school girl. And realized I am on this big ol' machine that would chop him up into a million pieces and I'm screaming? But after seeing this snake, it was all I could think about. After all, I only had to drive by him about 40 more times. Wait, I gunned it past him 40 more times. Probably anything you could think about a snake, I thought it. I wondered what kind it was, if he could possibly lunge and latch onto my leg as a mowed past, why was he living in a tree stump, why was he watching me mow so intently. I remembered that I heard somewhere that snakes couldn't hear. Then, I thought maybe the vibrations of the mower had charmed him or something. 'Cause that's how he was watching me, raised up. Now that would be a circus act--Come one, come all to see Mama Said, the Lawn Mowing Snake Charmer! I kept waiting for him to make a move so I could mow him into oblivion. But he never did. Oh, well. I guess Rhett can take it from here.

As I moved on to the rest of the lawn, I realized that from the time I saw the snake the song "Indian Outlaw" had been running through my head. After singing, "Cherokee people, Cherokee pride" a few times at the top of my lungs (gotta love being in the country! so much privacy!), I started thinking about how weird that was that seeing a snake would make a song I haven't heard in years pop into my mind. And why "Indian Outlaw"? What's the connection? Then, I started a psychoanalysis of myself to figure out why seeing a snake spurred me to think about Indians. Then, I started thinking about how crazy I was to be trying to figure that out. Luckily, before I got any crazier, my body was hurting too bad to think. That back field is rough! I called it a day shortly afterward.

Well, so the mowing wasn't as relaxing as usual. But Rhett sure was happy.
Watching for snakes,
Mama Said