Mama's new best friend

MissChickie has a best friend. She calls it the Braun Silk Epilator. I called it 'attack of the killer bees'. Somehow I just don't get the idea of yanking out the hairs God put there for supposedly some perfectly good reason. ;)

I have a different best friend. He does many things for me - provides exercise, performs a necessary task, and drowns out the shouts and screeches of my children. Obviously, the perfect multi-tasker. I am talking about--

my lawn mower.

Sure, he's stinky and rattles, but many an unwanted toy has been conveniently "taken care of" when left in his path. Even some of Twit's corpses, although it was unintentional!

Take today, for instance. Several Freezie-pop wrappers, an absolutely disgusting tiny bath toy left behind by the previous owners and tasted by Twit, Rascal, and Kye over the last few months (why didn't I get rid of it sooner? One of the three has been harboring it in a secret location), and assorted twigs and sweetgum balls (pictured) that pepper our lawn by the berzillion. All choppity-chop lawn fertilizer now.

But getting back to the most important aspect. I usually do two or three swipes of the lawn and then go looking where all the kids have wandered. This time, I caught them waiting for me. Standing there completely calm (but with faces screwed into position), 2 of them broke into wails as soon as they saw me coming. Great timing kids.

Yes, I must be that dumb. Actually, I just turned around, yanked on the cord and spent more quality time with my best friend.