Sit me at a desk and I can not only build you a computer but I can also make a slow computer fast again.  Put a lawn mower in front of me and I’m completely clueless.

Darrin bought this lawn mower from the local family owned hardware store maybe 6 years ago because we just couldn’t afford to keep paying a gardener to mow our lawn every week so the job fell into my lap.  Well, that sucks for me because I have really bad allergies.  When the gardeners came and I could smell the fresh cut grass, my eyes would start to water and burn and my nose would get stuffed up and I’d start sneezing.  So it wasn’t good that I had to start mowing, for me anyway.

So every year we have to bring this lawn mower back to that hardware store to have them service it before summer comes because all of a sudden it wouldn’t start up again for me.  We usually have them change the oil and spark plug and clean the filter, you know, the usual maintenance.

So Darrin has been paying them up the nose to do all of this work every year and I get 3, maybe 4 mows out of it then that’s it for the rest of the year and we have to have someone mow our lawn for us because our lawn mower doesn’t work.  We can only afford to have the hardware store service it for us once a year.

Our lawn has gotten so out of control with the high grass and weeds that Darrin decided to ask our neighbors across the street if they could mow it and he paid them $30 (for 2 houses, our lawn is HUGE) and also paid him $20 to look at ours to find out what’s wrong with it and fix it.

He said that the filter really needed to be cleaned so he cleaned it.  Well, I’m so stupid, I didn’t even know how to access the filter to clean it.  Darrin kept telling me it was the filter but I didn’t believe him and I had no idea that that’s what was wrong with it.  All these years he could have saved $60 every time they serviced it because all I had to do was clean the filter.  And, they would keep it for 2 weeks.

And you know, I’ve asked that hardware store to tell me what was wrong with it and they wouldn’t tell me.  Why wouldn’t they tell me?  Because if they told me what was wrong with it then we wouldn’t keep bringing it back to them to have them clean the filter out.  We’d continue paying them every year.  So telling me how to fix it isn’t good for their business.

So, I’m feeling stupid right now but at least now I know for future reference so I can clean it after every use so I never have to worry about it giving me problems starting up again.

You know, I had an issue with our weed whacker.  Every time the line would get small I’d have to unscrew the thing that had the spring in it and pull out some of the line.  Edging with the weed whacker took forever.  I had no idea that all I had to do was smack it on the sidewalk so the spring action would pull out more line lol.  I didn’t even know why it had a spring until I saw a video on YouTube.

Look, I’m not a gardener.  I am so stupid when it comes to that.  Well, knowledge is power and it saves $60 every year.  So screw you hardware store for not telling me how to find the filter lol.