Usually I'm sort of like Spock on the old Star Trek series. I plan things, probably way too much, before I ever take any action. I'm just one of those persons who takes that old Boy Scout motto, “Be prepared”, right to my very heart. So I tend to think about things that might happen and then prepare for them before they occur, if they ever do. Once in a while though I neglect to do that and end up being a prime example of the answer to that old question that goes something like, “Why do smart people do stupid things?” That happened to me just this week.
I had had this old wheelbarrow for years and, as I got older, I started to realize how unwieldy and poorly-designed that antiquated tool really was. I found that I couldn't fill the furschluggener thing to the top anymore because I just couldn't control it. As I tried to push a wheelbarrow full of garden dirt or something else heavy like that it would start to pivot on its one point of contact with the uneven ground, begin to wobble like a gyroscope about to run out of steam and, when I was about five feet from the dump point, it would just lay on its side and spill its contents all over the lawn or whatever. I knew the problem couldn't be that I wasn't as strong and macho as I used to be. OK, I was never strong and macho to begin with. More like Arnold Stang. And if you're old enough to remember him your attention span is probably so short that you've stopped reading and are watching butterflies or Judge Judy by now so there's probably no reason I should even continue with this post; but one of my idiosyncrasies is that I have to finish what I start, so that's what I'm going to do. Anyway, I was sure that the problem was just the fact that wheelbarrows have always been impractical things right from the get go and had nothing to do with me personally.
Then one day a few years ago when my old girl and I were out on a day trip and she oohed and ahhed and got all “I gotta have one of those” over a planter out in front of this little shop that was made out of a wheelbarrow (that is, the planter was made out of a wheelbarrow; not the shop; that would be sort of Alice-in-Wonderlandish and it wasn't that kind of trip), I decided to be a hero and offer to give up my ancient wheelbarrow so she could use it as a planter. Of course, to do that I had to buy myself a new garden cart, but I was willing to make that sacrifice, cause that's just the kind of guy I am and, after all, I was more than a little bit sick of the thing dumping its load when it wanted to instead of when I wanted it to. When I turned that evil, cantankerous wheelbarrow into a planter I got my revenge on it by drilling the bottom full of holes and filling it with potting soil so my wife could stuff it full of plants and ceramic birds and other whimsical stuff. Her word, not mine.
Once the wheelbarrow/planter was installed in my wife's side of the garden (I think I already explained in an earlier post that my wife and I have divvied up the yard into her half and my half, but if I didn't, let me know and I'll do that), I began a study of all of the implements of garden cartage in any home improvement store and nursery in, oh, probably a 150 mile radius of our little postage stamp sized yard. I love stuff like that. So I happily compared design features, prices, ergonomics and Internet reviews of more garden wagons and ersatz wheelbarrows than I can count on my fingers and toes, even the extra ones. Eventually I pared the list down to one that was the garden cart of my dreams. It had everything you could possibly want in a nouveau wheelbarrow. You almost didn't have to touch it to get it to work. It would practically walk, talk and eat ice cream under water. Unfortunately it cost about as much as our last car, so I settled for this plastic thingy that had four wheels and a little rack for trowels and stuff and that was nice and light and easily moved. Also, it was all I could afford at the time.
For three years I used that plastic monstrosity to cart stuff around the yard and garden and I have been way less than happy with it. Sure, you could put trowels and stuff in the rack; and it was light and small and fit in the garden shed nicely. If that's all I was going to do with it, I would have been happy as a clam. OK, OK, I admit that I don't have any idea how happy clams are, especially when they get ripped out of their shells and consumed raw with horseradish and other stuff intended to make masochists think they are really eating some kind of delicacy instead of a quivering lump of mucus. Or is that oysters? Oh well, never mind. The point here is that the cart performed well until I tried to actually use it to move mulch and compost and stuff. Then, in spite of its four wheels, it turned out to be more of a Tippy Tumbles than the wheelbarrow. If you didn't put a bag of mulch or whatever in there just right, the doggone thing would fall right over and lay there kicking its legs like a turtle when you flip it over on its back. Of course I never did that ... often anyway. Besides its inherent floppiness, the plastic cart just didn't hold up. Eventually it cracked and tore and looked like it was about to spontaneously disintegrate at any second.
Sooo, I did a new garden cart study. I checked online and talked to friends and family to get recommendations and finally settled on this heavy-duty Rubbermaid garden cart that is perfectly balanced and can carry kilos of whatever you have kilos of to carry over hill and dale on its sturdy pneumatic tires without making the clattering sound that my old plastic-wheeled cart did whenever I rolled it over the faux stone walk in the backyard. This time I had enough money squirreled away to buy the cart I really wanted, so I put that baby in the back of the truck in a fit of lifetime gardener ecstasy... which lasted right up until I tried to roll it into the backyard and nearly knocked the air conditioner off its foundation in the process.
Remember that postage stamp sized yard I mentioned? Well, one of its many attractions is that the width of the yard is just a little bit greater than the footprint of the house. In their infinite wisdom the folks who built the house decided to put both the path from the front to the back and the air conditioner on the narrowest side of the yard. It is sooo narrow that the new garden cart was about an inch and a half wider than the space between the air conditioner and the fence. Oops. Forgot to check that during my detailed and intensive garden cart comparison and analysis. So my old girl got practical on me and suggested that we just take the cart back to the store and get our money back and then I could do a new study and get a cart THAT WOULD FIT THROUGH THE SILLY PATH, DUH! But being a man, I of course, couldn't do that.
This post is getting way too long, so I'll just cut to the chase. Instead of exchanging the garden cart of my dreams V2.0, I got our a/c guy to move the air conditioner over a few inches so I could fit the cart through into the back yard. One might ask why I hadn't thought of doing that during the ten previous years that I had slammed wheelbarrows, the plastic cart and every part of my body below the knees into the stupid a/c unit, but I'm going to pass on that one.
The moral of this story is this: It's probably true that you shouldn't sweat the small stuff in life. Nevertheless, it is really easy to overlook the important little things when you're trying to stretch that fixed income and get the best bang for your buck. So don't do that, OK?
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