You know...

...the weather in Georgia sucks. I know that it could be worse but there's something dreadfully wrong here. Ordinarily, you'll get a few days in the 80's as early as February and by March, you could easily hit 90. This year, cold, damp and overcast weather has taken over. Luckily, I did get my lawn taken care of.

Over the weekend I was looking at the yard and wondering how I was going to deal with that mess when it occurred to me that I needed to use my most appreciated tact...blatant honesty. Yep, I advertised online for a "Bored man with a lawnmower and some free time." Here's exactly the deal I was willing to make:

"I'm bored and alone today so I decided to mow my lawn but the lawnmower won't work. I need a bored dude with a lawnmower who wouldn't mind mowing my lawn in exchange for dinner and a movie this afternoon!"

Well, it worked. I received hundreds of responses, my inbox was full of pages like this:

Of course, not all of the men fit the bill but they all had an alternate "plan". They could come over and fix my lawnmower. A lot of very rude men wanted to change my part of the deal. They didn't need dinner and a movie...but they had a back-up plan of the oral nature. A lot of guys couldn't get away right then (It was Easter Sunday.) but they were available any other time. Of course, there were those who would have loved to help me had I not chosen the day of the Master's here in Georgia.

Most of the guys responded very pleasantly and gentlemanly. Here is the winning email:

"You are the cutest thing! I live in Dallas Ga. so I am not too far, I need to get mine done first today and would help if no one else steps up, but I would rather mow the lawn and let me take you on a date, dinner movie whatever your ad is so darn cute I bet you are a great woman to date! Do you like karaoke?

John

I love your smile.

How nice...he has to do his OWN yard first so I figured that he would be all funky anyway. That automatically lowers the standards that I have to live up to. Actually, I did put effort into primping for that guy and it paid off. We never did karaoke...we sipped margaritas and talked for hours.

My father wouldn't be happy about this...only because the guy's last name ends in a vowel and my father doesn't think that we should mix ending letters. He's old enough to get away with that old people, folksy racism that he learn decades ago.

Now, I HAVE had some vowel ending dudes and to a man, each of them has been a disaster. I should have heeded by father's warning. But this time, I think it's OK...his last name ends in a vowel but he's half Irish too and luckily, his brains seem to come from his Irish ancestors.

Oh, he doesn't break any of MY rules...that's cool.

I feel like Sally Fields accepting an Oscar, "He likes me! He really, really likes me!"