Around here I'm known as Mr. Anal Efficiency, a label I wear quite proudly.

Today's episode is about lawn mowing. You see, to me, lawn mowing is a game of optimization. The ultimate goal is to do the least amount of work possible -- not only to minimize my own time input, but also to reduce the environmental impact of this silly activity (lacking catalytic converters, most lawn mowers create a disproportionate amount of air pollution). So I put a lot of thought into mowing efficiently. I carefully plan my route and patterns to avoid driving back over any section I've already mowed. I run the mower at the lowest throttle necessary to get the job done. I painstakingly maximize the width of each pass with the mower, running the edge of the last cut dangerously close to the outer limit of the mower deck (I didn't buy a 42" mower deck to cut 36 inches at a time, dammit!). I even time myself to quantify the efficiency of various patterns. I estimate that over 90% of the time the mower engine is running, the mower is cutting grass.

The result is, coincidentally, a great looking lawn. The rows are straight, each an even width, lacking any extraneous tracks or loops. But while I take some pride from the visual appearance, I take more from my own satisfaction at optimizing the job as much as possible.

So on occasion (as in about once a year), Kelly will decide to mow the lawn. This is great -- I really do appreciate her helping -- but Kelly doesn't exactly share my frame of mind on mowing. Kelly's method of mowing seems to be to drive around in a vague circular pattern until most of the grass seems like it's been mowed. Then she glances back over the area and steers randomly back around to pick up the inevitable missed spots. She swings around in wide circles to return to a spot she could've just backed over in reverse. She says her father instructed her to never use reverse, perhaps for safety reasons, when she was younger. He must've also told her to mow only about half the width of the mower deck with each pass, since that's about all she gets. She avoids any obstacle by a generous mower's width, and swings in a wide arc at the end of a row. She seems to take a random unplanned route, mowing in whatever direction the spirit moves her. I'm pretty sure she drives around at full throttle but is only actually mowing uncut grass about 40% of the time. I seriously think she takes two or three times longer than me to mow the same lawn.

And after Kelly mows, the result is much more... artistic. No parallel straight lines. Instead, there are odd bulging shapes, large loops, random diagonal trajectories, and some missed spots of tall thriving grass. I like to think that pilots overhead are trying to discern the written message in our back yard.

But it's hard to be upset with her when she looks so good doing it.

Rob and I have similar views on most things, but there's at least one issue on which we are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Trespassing. As in, he sees a No Trespassing sign and stops in his tracks and I see a No Trespassing sign and consider it a personal invitation.

I learned early in our marriage how extreme his view of trespassing is. We had pulled into a campground and at the entrance was a sign that said Registered campers only beyond this point. Thing was, we weren't sure we wanted to camp there - we wanted to check the place out first. So I said, "Let's drive around the loop and see if we like it or not."

"We can't," Rob said, pointing at the sign.

"Oh please. Ignore the sign."

Rob looked at me like I'd suggested we set fire to someone's tent. "We'll get in trouble!" he exclaimed. "That's trespassing!"

"Honey, it's not trespassing. And besides, we are driving through as potential registered campers. That sign is just to keep non-campers from hanging out. If anyone stops us, we'll explain that we have every intention of camping here and are just looking around first. We have the right, as consumers, to do that. Besides, they aren't going to yell at us because then they'd lose our business. Now then, keep driving."

He said no. He wouldn't do it. I then tried a more philosophical approach. I explained to him the process of morality development in humans, which I'd learned in one of my college Education classes. I explained that younger children have a less sophisticated sense of morality and follow rules solely because they are afraid of punishment. Typically during the teenage years our concept of morality progresses and by adulthood most people maintain a more advanced sense of morality, following rules because they understand and agree with the reasoning behind them. And likewise, if the reasoning is illogical or does not apply to them, they do not feel obligated to follow the rules. I added that intelligent people like ourselves surely have an advanced notion of morality rather than the one that governs third graders.

He responded, "But we might get in trouble."

So I suggested we walk around the loop, pretending to be registered campers. He wouldn't do that either. "Fine," I said. "Go into the office and pay the fucking registration fee. But if this place sucks it is your fault!" As I recall, he pulled to the side of the road right there because parking near the office would have required driving past the sign. I mean, seriously people!

Now, I don't go around trespassing on personal property if it's occupied - that's just a matter of respect. But I have no qualms about sneaking into an abandoned building. But Rob? Hell no. A few weeks ago we stopped along a backroad to photograph some barns. I marched into the barnyard, right past the gate with the No Trespassing sign, and then slipped through one of the barn doors. "Rob!" I called. "Come in here! It's really neat!" Nothing doing. We were practically in the middle of nowhere, with little to no chance we'd get caught, but dude refused to cross the No Trespassing line.

But last week, I thought he had finally come around. He came home talking about this old abandoned building near where he works that we should totally explore. That we should totally take photos of inside. That we should definitely check out soon - like, this weekend! - since there's rumor it's going to be demolished.

Given the prevalence of his usage of the word we, it seemed apparent that he was, in fact, planning to go inside. Afraid to raise the issue but my curiosity getting the best of me, I finally asked, "Are there No Trespassing signs?"

"No, just signs that say Posted: This building deemed unsafe for occupancy." Ah, well that explained it. Dude techincally wouldn't be breaking any rules by going in.

So we talked about whether there might be homeless people living inside whom we should try to avoid startling and we discussed the possibility that the place might be a gang hangout (yes, we have gangs here in Redneck Valley - really). We finally settled on a time that we felt it would be most safe for us to enter the building.

And so on Saturday we drove there, D-Fiddy in tow. We walked across the parking lot toward the building, Rob leading the way. But as we approached the building's dark open doorway, he handed me the camera and said, matter-of-factly, "You know I'm not going in, right?"

Dude is such a third grader.

I've been lusting after a pair of workout pants at Target. I've refused to buy them because they cost $30 and I just cannot justify spending $30 on a pair of pants that exist just so I can sweat in them. Of course, I tried them on anyway because I never miss an opportunity to torture myself. In the dressing room I went through every justification I could think of for why I should buy them. Such as, I should reward myself for working out so diligently. Such as, it was a rough day at work and this is a well-earned gift to myself. Such as, I deserve to pamper myself because I had to stop at four stoplights on the way here. I even tried to convince myself that, as good as my ass looked in these pants, I owed it to the world to buy them.

But in the end, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Because I am (and you won't believe this) a cheapskate. (My mom once gave me a lecture in the middle of Gap about how I needed to be more realistic about the price I was willing to pay for jeans - and she was suggesting I increase my allotment.) It's true that I love to shop, but I am ridiculously strict about what I'm willing to spend on a single item. Of course, the irony is that I have no qualms about loading up on less expensive items. And this is why Target is my downfall - hardly anything in that store costs too much. I'll buy fifteen $20 items without a bit of guilt but I will NOT spend $60 on a pair of Gap jeans.

So anyway. I deemed $30 too much for workout pants. And with a wistful sigh I put them back on the rack with the hope that maybe someday I'd find them on clearance. Except I knew I wouldn't because they were WAY too cute for clearance.

And then, you know, I promptly forgot about them.

Until today. I was walking through the clothing section at Target and among the workout clothes I saw a 50% off sign. Ooh! I thought. Cheap workout clothes. Awesome! And then in a flash I remembered my longed-for supercute workout pants. And I stopped midstep because I was afraid to look, afraid that they wouldn't be there and I would once again have to suffer the crushing devastation of not owning the pants. But then I permitted myself to peek, ever so briefly, at the rack and I saw a flash of charcoal gray (with turquoise stripe!) and then I was running! running! running! to the rack. And there they were! And even as I was looking for my size I knew they weren't going to have it because the universe is a total bitch like that but then OMG! there was my size! Right there on the rack! The 50% off rack! And I skipped into the dressing room (beaming, I dare say) and indeed they were as fabulous as I remembered!

It totally fucking made my day. And then I came home (with the pants!) and told Rob all about it, with much enthusiasm and animated hand gestures and perhaps even a well-placed soliloquy, and dude was all, "Uh-huh, that's great." And I was like, "Um, Rob? Aren't you, like, totally excited for me and stuff?! You should be totally excited because this is totally exciting!" And he was like, "Whooo." Fucker.

been reading: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

I'm not going to discuss the plot here because, to be honest, after the first chapter it is of secondary importance. If you wanna know what the book is about, go to Amazon and frickin' look it up. (Okay fine, I did it for you: click.)

Mr. Mojo recommended this book to me, and when I emailed him to say I'd finished but was still digesting it, he wrote back directing my attention to a part that he felt was particularly important. I had, in fact, tagged that same section - that very page, actually - as I was reading. (Folding page corners is a habit from my English major days. The hardest part of writing a paper was digging through a book trying to find that one critical section or that one perfect quote, and so while reading I pretty much tagged any page to which I thought I might want to return. To this day I still do that. Yes, even with library books. So sue me.) In this part of the book, Eggers suggests that self-obsession is rampant within his generation (which is basically mine), and that this self-obsession takes two forms. Some people turn it inward, constantly focusing on themselves and their issues until it completely consumes them. Others turn it outward, finding themselves so fascinating that they insist on sharing their story with others.

This struck me not only because of the way it informs the rest of the book but also because this is exactly how I classify bloggers. We are, obviously, self-obsessed. (He describes self-obsessed people as those "for whom the idea of anonymity is existentially irrational, indefensible" (176) - and damn if that isn't me to a T.) And I've always divided bloggers into two categories: the ones who focus on their personal struggles and the ones who believe they have something worth sharing with others. Turns out Dave Eggers sees the same distinction. He goes on to say that because we cannot stand the thought of living anonymously, "the cultural output of this time will reflect that - there'll be lots of talking . . . talking about talking, ruminating about talking about wondering, about our place, our wants and obligations" (176-7). And yeah, I'd say that pretty much sums up the blogworld. Blogging is the ultimate tool for the self-obsessed. And I'm not suggesting that's a bad thing - I think it's fucking fabulous.

Okay, three more things I want to say and I'm not going to put them in pretty paragraphs because frankly this is too long already and probably few people are reading this far down anyway. One thing I loved about this book was how Eggers poured his thoughts - raw and unfiltered - onto every page. Very stream of consciousness. This is especially satisfying when he relates it to the work itself - when he considers the worth and technique of what he's writing even as he's writing it (or, actually, as he's writing about planning to write what he ends up writing, which is this book). Very metafiction. There's one place in particular (note to self: p. 236) where this is brilliantly done. Interestingly, the interjections of his thoughts (writing-related or otherwise) are both what make the book and what cause me to dislike Eggers as protagonist. I don't like him, but only because I see in him so much of what I don't like about myself and recognizing those things in him forces me to acknowledge them in myself, which makes them all the more real. Secondly, it totally kicked ass when the characters broke out of character to chide him or call him on his shit or to move the story along because he couldn't think of any other way to do it. Those moments made me both distrust his reliability and admire his ability. Finally, the Acknowledgements were my favorite part and I think James Frey should read the Preface.

at the shadowy trees that reach toward a star-filled sky

Guess who's back (back) (back)
Back again ('gain) ('gain)
Grady's back (back) (back)
Tell a friend (friend) (friend)