As you know, WG and I have been more off-again than on-again this past week or so. In addition, he’s been heavily involved in the Great Battle of the Chipmunks at his house. The little critters are getting into his attic through his eave troughs. He’s tried blocking the downspouts, smoking them out of their underground holes and poisoning them with bait. Alvin and his brothers seem to be invincible. With additional time on his hands since we’ve been apart, he finally set up a stake-out from his bedroom window to spy on the little guys. Eventually, the 22-guage was brought in and he set up a sniper’s pose out of his bedroom window. (Apparently this is what boys do. I had no idea.)

Filled with bird shot, WG aimed the 22 and shot Alvin in the neck. The poor chipmunk did a dying back flip and died on the back lawn. Feeling remarkably satisfied and vindicated, WG patted himself on the back and made plans to provide a similar fate to Simon and Theodore. His thoughts were interrrupted by the worried voice of his roommate in the room next door. “WG…..?” came the fretful inquiry.

His roommate, knowing WG and I haven’t been talking much this week, had heard a gunshot from behind WG’s closed bedroom door and thought the worst.

Apologies were made, new chipmunk-sniper rules have been established at WG’s house and I suspect a drink or two may be owed. So while there may not be a new Chipmunk Christmas album produced this year, WG will still be around to sing it for us, should we so desire.

I was mowing my lawn two days ago when my engine made a loud POP! and then promptly died. I wasn’t optimistic, but I tried to start it again only to get a sputter-sputter-chug-chug-plop and that was that. Eli and I gave it a fretful stare and then I pushed it into the shade to cool off, hoping it was just somehow, mysteriously overheated.

About an hour later, I went back out and gave it another yank or two, to be met with the same sputter-sputter-chug-chug-plop, but no engine starting. My fretful stare became a more serious worry.

I spoke with Bear (ah yes, poor Bear) and he suggested I check the gas cap and maybe purchase a new one as they had experienced similar problems years ago and it was solved with a new gas cap. I thought $7 sounded like a great fix idea.

My dad suggested I check the spark plug. He wasn’t sure beyond that or the air filter thingy, but the spark plug made a lot of sense now that he mentioned it, and so I headed out the the garage, thinking a $3 spark plug and/or a $7 gas cap was still far better options than a new $250 mower.

I pulled the mower out of the garage into the sunlight and took a look around for the spark plug. I immediately realized how right my dad must be. The spark plug MUST be the problem, because there WASN’T ONE. There was an empty hole and the little rubber cover was hanging loosely, but the actual spark plug itself was unexplicably AWOL.

I called Bear. (Ah, poor Bear) I verified with Bear that I must have had a spark plug to have started the mower when I started the back yard. While unlikely that a spark plug would just wiggle itself loose, it was most likely to be found somewhere in the yard. And so I searched. And I searched. But I didn’t find a spark plug.

Bear had mentioned that in lieu of the old plug, I could take my model information to Tractor Supply and they could look it up for me. Which is what I did. Only the catalogs full of useful spark plug information didn’t list anything for my make and model in combination with the horsepower mine proclaimed to have. The saleswoman suggested I return home and find the actual model number on the deck of the mower.

Running out of time before I had to be elsewhere, I wrote down the model number, but wasn’t able to return to Tractor Supply until this morning. A new (and remarkably good looking) man tried to answer my question, but he came upon the same information and nothing more. We google’d it, we looked in several parts catalogs, but none listed my make, model and horsepower together. He asked me several times what color my mower was and if the plug was on the front or the side, and I became aware that he didn’t believe the information I was providing. He suggested that the model number on the deck is not necessarily the same for the engine, as this particular company likes to just confuse people by providing two different things. I told him I lived just up the road and I would go home and find the OTHER number that he apparently needed.

Flash met me at the door when I returned home and asked if he could help in anyway (I know, I nearly fell over, too). I explained the problem, and I began taking pictures of my mower and the lack of another model number to take back to hottie at Tractor Supply (who, by the way, I am certain was as impressed with sweaty, gross, pony-tailed, make-up-less, Saturday morning mess, me) I asked if Flash would walk the back yard and see if he could find the missing old plug that I wasn’t able to locate.

Armed with photographic evidence, I headed back to Tractor Supply. As I was about to walk in the doors, I had a text message from Flash saying he found the old plug and he provided me with the serial number on it.

I found hottie and shared the triumphant news. He located the right part for me and even looked it up in the catalog to see what sort of engine that part is said to go with (and still wasn’t the one I have). I thanked him profusely and returned home to install a $3 spark plug and immediately start up my mower.

I don’t know how men just know these things. I don’t know how they can just fix things with such little to-do as they do. It must have something to do with that stinkin’ Y chromosome. With my two X’s, I feel completely helpless when it comes to some mechanical malfunction. I just stare at it and I know it has me beat before I can even pretend to put up a fight. I am in no small part, so grateful to Bear and my dad for their little words of wisdom, without which I would have a mower in a repair shop for $90, or would be contemplating the purchase of an entirely new one, all for want of a missing spark plug.

It reminds me of something a friend said in college when the dorm vacuum stopped sucking things up. “Did you check to see if the bag was full?” I asked.

“Bag? What bag? I didn’t know these things had bags? Wow, look at that, it is full! Thank goodness you were here. I’d never know to check the bag. I would have just had to throw the vacuum away and buy a whole new one.”

The mower may have outwitted me this time, but let the record stand, it will not fool me so quickly the next time. Unless, of course, the repair has nothing to do with a $3 spark plug.

Perhaps the person who will suffer most in this breakup is really my brother-in-law, Bear. I haven’t been single for two days and I had to already hit him up with broken lawnmower questions.

The poor man.

For a few months there, he only had one honey-do list.

I should restock my fridge with his favorite beer. He doesn’t even know about the shutters yet.

In a conversation about nothing really, Flash retorted with a quick, “What? So sue me for being a romantic!”

And I realized, of all things to hand-down to your child, of all the genetics, dispositions, inclinations, habits, tendencies and beliefs to pass along to your offspring, could there be anything worse than condemning them to the life of a romantic?

I wanted, then and there, to just hug him and beg for forgiveness for passing along the romantic curse. I wanted to apologize and try to sway him off the course I know he is now destined to suffer through.

What fate could be worse than to be a romantic in this life? Is it not a life of continual disappointment? Is it not a life of frustration and suffering? Is it not a life where the glass, while rose-colored and lovely, is not just half-empty, but full of poison to boot?

Romantic.

But maybe there is hope. Maybe there is a glimmer in all of this, for Flash is not just any romantic, he is a male romantic. The romantic male is a rarity indeed, is it not? I don’t mean to suggest Flash is some sappy, effeminate poet. He merely believes that life’s precious moments are worth savoring, worth contemplating, worth creating and planning to bring out full emotion of the occasion. He doesn’t leave to chance the important moments, and he makes little moments important with his care and thought. A first kiss is a masterpiece in his mind. Scripting the perfect, nerdy love-letter takes days. He even sweated out the details to make sure just having his girlfriend to dinner was planned and thought-out and not just happenstance. He worried over the timing: dinner then movie? Movie then game? Game before dinner? Until he thought he had it all orchestrated just so.

Life won’t always go this way, in fact, it won’t even go this way often. But from the viewpoint of a 40-year old romantic cynic, I guess I admire his naive tenacity. I admire his effort, his desire, his enthusiasm. Ahh, puppy love. What the innocent enjoy before they learn that love bites.

I’ve always told myself that no man is worth crying over for more than 24 hours. One day is it. Wallow, pity thineself and then, 24 hours later, move on. Certainly, for first or second dates gone badly, it’s a good theory. There’s no use getting upset for longer than the wretched bad date lasted in the first place, but along my many years of single-hood, I’ll admit, there has been a time or two when 24 hours wasn’t quite long enough to cure my heartache.

Without a doubt, I know that this is one of those times.

I made the call, I own the decision, and while I regret that it came to an impasse, I couldn’t have kept going as things were.

But I liked this one. I loved this one.

Maybe after this summer’s brief hiatus from each other, I should have been more prepared for this inevitable. I think it only made it worse. I thought…well, it doesn’t matter now what I thought. We convince ourselves there’s a reality to the things we hope most for, don’t we?

Sigh.

It has been 24 hours. We’re still sorting through the “I’ll return your…” and the “What do I do about…” emails, still discovering things in my life, my home, that belong to him and vice versa. Things I don’t want to let go of, but things that remind me too much.

Six months was a long time for me. Long enough together that I know 24 hours apart isn’t going to even come close to healing this heart. 24 days might not even cut it.

This is going to take awhile.

School work done for the day? Check.

Kitchen cleaned up? Check.

Bowl of popcorn? Check.

Blanket to take the chill of the evening off? Check.

Oh how I love Sunday Night Football!

Flash was helping me unload the car yesterday after I returned home from another morning at school. I had brought back boxes of books that are too difficult for first graders, a small table I need to paint and take back to my classroom, a posterboard and a few small crates.

“What is this thing?” Flashed asked, pointing at a heavy item in a white case.

“Aunt Jules’ sewing machine.”

“What do you need it for?”

“The next time I’m procrastinating doing anything truly important, I thought I would sew a skirt for my overhead cart.”

“I thought you had a sewing machine.”

“I do, I have my mom’s. But it doesn’t work very well anymore. It’s older than I am, Flash. Things that are older than me don’t tend to work very well.”

“Papa is older than you, is that why he is retired?” Flash said with a smirk.

Sigh. Teenagers.

but it bears repeating. I have the sweetest boyfriend ever.

I blame it on Super Mario. If Flash hadn’t started playing the Wii, I might not have insisted that we do something so crazy. But I did. Maybe it was just the cool weather, maybe it was the sense that summer is rapidly slipping by and my child is rapidly growing up that made me seize the opportunity with gusto and suggest, nay, insist that we go for a bike ride together.

The bike ride itself wasn’t really the issue. It was the destination that secures my room at the insane asylum. I suggested we ride to WG’s house. It’s only four miles down the road, I proclaimed with confidence! Four miles is nothing. It’s just that I live on a hill, and WG lives on a hill, and suffice it to say, they are not the same hill.

Flash agreed with as much confidence as I had suggested the original proposition, making me immediately aware that I hadn’t thought this out very well at all. I had water, granola bars, cell phone, keys, helmets, but no sanity. Certainly the necessary muscles for peddling up the numerous hills were lacking as well.

I sent a text to WG about half way through the ride (not while riding, geez, I can barely peddle and look over my shoulder without fallling off the bike! Flash had to stop to fix his chain so I thought it was a good time to check and make sure my prince charming might be home to save me from myself.)

The second worst hill of the entire ride is the one leading up to WG’s driveway. The worst hill is WG’s driveway itself. Being gravel, I wasn’t even about to attempt his driveway, but being winded from trying to get up the street itself, just trying to push my stupid, old body bike up his driveway nearly killed me.

WG met us at the top of the drive. “Are you okay?”

I think it took me five full minutes to be able to breathe well enough to actually answer him.

He declared us both mentally insane. He offered water and chairs and a chance to sit and rest. Then he fed Flash leftover lasagne and he quietly went out and put the bike rack on his Jeep. We loaded the two bikes on and he drove us home without once telling me I’m a wuss or an idiot or perhaps, quite reasonably both.