Splendor in the Grass

My dad is sick, so I mowed my parents lawn out of the sheer goodness of my heart (read- my parents guilted me into it. Ugh, why don't I have a brother and/or why don't my parents own a goat?!?) I'm really crappy at mowing lawns. I can't get the lawn mower started at all. Someone else has to start it for me, which means I have to do the front and back lawns all at once cause I can't let the mower shut off. The real problem is the shaking. I've got kinda puny arms, so lawnmowers and weed trimmers shake the crap out of my arms. I overcompensate by holding on with a death grip. So needless to say, I've got blisters on my hands.

The mowing actually went pretty well until the very end when the lawn mower started making strange sounds. Maybe it was running out of gas, maybe it was tired? I'm not really sure. I'll admit, I have rarely ever mowed a lawn, so I'm not up-to-date on my lawnmower sound diagnostics. I only had a small section of the yard left. And you know the section of the yard I'm talking about. It's the small patch of grass on the side of the house where it connects with the neighbors crappy little patch of grass. You both secretly hope the other one over-mows so you don't have to, but that rarely happens. So I half-assed finished the job and put the mower back in the shed.

Then I saw Brooklyn. Apparently, she thought it was a good idea to roll in dog poop, followed by grass clippings. Basically, she tar and feathered herself.

So now I had to give Brooklyn a bath. It's actually pretty easy to give Brooklyn a bath at my parents house. When they had their master bath remodeled, I don't think they planned on creating a dog spa utopia, but they did. They have a very large walk-in shower with swinging glass doors and stone floors. So once a dog gets trapped in there, they can't get out. The shower head is removable, so no matter what corner they try to hide in, you can squirt them down easily. My favorite thing about giving Brooklyn a bath in that shower is, without fail, she will attempt to open the door with her paw at least once during the bath. She walks up to the glass door and rests her paw against it. It never moves. The problem is that I don't think Brooklyn knows how to push. I think she assumes doors work by merely placing your palm against them -- like in Star Trek. She doesn't get the whole pushing thing, or she's just too lazy to push...I'm not sure which it is.

In the middle of Brooklyn's bath, I heard a loud KABOOM!!! My initial reaction was that it was the lawnmower exploding in the shed. It was not. It was the Blue Angels practicing for the air show this weekend, and they got a little close to the house. Hopefully, they didn't get too close. I would hate for them to notice the crap job I did on the lawn.