Almost There...

(listening to "Joe's Garage," in its glorious entirety, by Frank Zappa)
Hopefully, my last day at Starbucks is no more than a week away (the next schedule is not finished yet).

Hurricane Charley had no effect on my home in North Raleigh, thank God. It was a big, ugly blob on the radar, but it passed us by. He beat the hell out of Florida, though. We received a tad over 8 inches of rain within three days. I believe San Diego averages something like 9 inches per year.

Things finally dried out enough, so I got the lawnmower (I have named it "Black Beauty") out of the car. I assembled it, oiled and fueled it, and fired it up. My lawn is smaller than the lawns I grew up with, but it's mine nonetheless. It was astonishingly satisfying. I felt like a grownup and like a kid again, all at once.

I grew up in Michigan, the son of a man who loved his home and lawn. I grew accustomed to seeing an immaculately groomed yard, and I could virtually hear that damned lawn growing as I lay in bed at night. One of my chores was to mow it. It wasn't vast, perhaps half an acre in total. During the warm months, mowing it every other day was not unheard of. My shoes were stained a vivid green. I remember the smell and the vibration of the mower's engine pulsating up the handle to my arms. I remember pouring gasoline into the tank. The thwack of small branches and pine cones as they met a rotary, four-stroke oblivion. It all came back to me this afternoon.