Shocking!

Part of my new found responsibility as a “widow” (oh, how I HATE that word) is lawn care.

At the back of our house, we have a walk out basement so a two-tiered deck as well – one for the kitchen upstairs and one for the basement. Obviously with that deck comes a set of stairs. As with any stairs, inside or out, there is an area underneath the stairs.

INSIDE, it’s easy – you just have to fill it with storage items, close your eyes and pretend it doesn’t exist.

OUTSIDE, everyone sees it so you have to take care of it. Which, in this case, means cut the grass underneath. I guess if you were 4 feet tall and had a mini lawn mower this would not pose any problem at all.

However, I am 5’10″+ and have a regular sized lawn mower.

Enter problem.

In my world (which is often a mix of real memories and something that I think I remember but, in actuality, I likely dreamt it) I had always simply pushed the lawn mower underneath the stairs to cut the grass.

NOW I know that this was more memory than reality!

I was cutting the lawn and pushed the mower under the stairs and heard a HUGE ZAP sound and an electrical cord snapped back and almost hit me in the face.

I screamed – more out of surprise then from being hurt because, at first, I really did not know what I had done.

When I turned off the lawn mower and moved in to see, it all made sense – AND I felt like a FOOL!

The pool pump is about 4 feet from the stairs and it is electrically plugged in to the wall.

As I look at the picture above, I realize NOW there is no way I ever just ran the mower over that. Perhaps it used to be buried a little or off to the side or ….. I really can’t think of any more excuses. I can guarantee you it was NOT laying out on top of the grass like in the picture above.

However, the day in question, I ran the lawnmower right over the cord, obviously severing it.

I had to call for help on this one. Going right in to “don’t know what the hell I am doing panic mode”, I was sure that I was going to need a new pool pump. Yup – that’s me – worst case scenario-er!

As it turns out, which makes TOTAL sense now, we needed to cut the cord and splice the wires together and tape it and then buy a new plug for the end. I think it ended up costing me $10.00 – way cheaper than a new pool pump!

Lesson? Use the support boards in the stairs as a hanger for your electrical cords so that they are completely off of the ground when you are mowing the lawn!

(Thanks Cory, Neil and Ernie who offered suggestions and helped fix it!)