Day One--The Lawn Mower Incident

So remember the new focus of my blog is like cooking all of Julia's recipes in a year and blogging about them. Only in my case, I've decided to share an incident, usually involving some sort of imbibing. I thought about a chronological blog, I thought about starting with the worst and work in descending order. Finally I though let's start with something fun and see where it goes.
So a year or two ago I was hanging out with a bottle of Pinot on a Sunday night, and you know the worst sound is that last drop hitting the wine glass! I was on the verge of doing some drunk dialing that would have surprised at least one old boyfriend. Fortunately, I got both distracted and couldn't manage to find the number in the phone book. While I was still letting my fingers stumble through the yellow pages, I was interrupted by the current flame who was not at ALL pleased I had managed to suck down the bottle. While this discussion was going on he reminded me that the lawn mower was still in the driveway and it was beginning to rain. And specifically told me not to go after it! Catnip to the intoxicated!! So while he was looking for a jacket or something, I went out for the mower. Now my driveway isn't really steep, but it has a good incline, and the mower was half way up the drive, sheltered by a tree, but facing sideways instead of up or down the drive. So first I had to manuever the mower out of the tree, and that went pretty well. It was already half way up the drive, so that didn't seem so daunting. Unfortunately, I was good and hammered and the mower was harder to push than I imagined after I got it pointed up the drive. You might see where this is going-- after a 10-15 feet the mower became stronger than me and a backward motion began. Now, the mower was pushing me backwards down the drive, and maybe it ran over me a little. Wound up laying on the concrete driveway next to my car tire with the mower as my new best friend. No serious injuries. Some pretty patches of scrapes from the drive way. Sort of scrap/burns on both my wrists. This is about the time my boyfriend found me, and he was even less pleased about this new complication than he was about the bottle of wine. One of my favorite parts is that he came on the scene was I was already down, and his take on the back scraping was that I feel with the mower into the pine tree. People die that way he said. Rolling backwards, drunk with a mower isn't the picture of health either, I might add. To this day I don't think he believes I slid down the drive and skid across the concrete. My friends saw all the battle scars and I bet the easy money was 10-1 he scraped me up. Being battle weary as well as drunk by this time, I was ready for bed. Mostly fully dressed. There was dirt and pine tree debris well into the next day. Now, I don't generally drink like that anymore. All my rowdy friends and I have settled down. So I thought the whole thing was hilarious. Every time I told the story I laughed my ass off. I got a few strange looks! I did try to explain that since it was no longer a regular occurrence I could enjoy the irony of using the mower for the first time in my life, on my lower body and wheel well of my car! But there is another antidote to the saga. That year for Christmas we sold wine bottle holders that were reindeer laying on their backs with the bottle pointed toward their mouths. I never, ever sold a reindeer without telling that story. My only real regret is that I didn't get on. Would like to put it on the mantle as sort of a little token of that Sunday night. You know, like collecting a snow globe from the places you travel. All I got instead were scares on both wrists from the down ward slide!
The beauty of this adventure?? No drunk dial, I didn't really hurt myself when the mower ran me back over all the way down the drive. And if we ever get those reindeer again, it's going with my snow globe collection.
All well that ends well in this adventure. I've never had to move the mower again!
Good to be back guys, first thing I've written this year!!