I can’t seem to stop embarrassing-and hurting-myself when I’m doing yard work. Mowing is especially problematic. I’ve been a homeowner now for a year and a half, including five whole seasons of lawn care, but I’m still unbelievably inept. If you’re skeptical as to how a person can be inept at something as simple as lawn maintenance, read on.

Before I mow, it’s become my habit to pick up sticks and branches, as well as candy bar wrappers thoughtfully dropped by high schoolers, so I don’t have to stop in the middle to move something. I missed a huge branch a few months ago, however, so I had to turn the mower off and move it. And when I tried to start it again, I couldn’t-no matter how much I cursed and yanked. So ever since then, I’ve done everything in my power not to let go of the handle that keeps the mower running-no matter what.

Last month I was faced with a unique problem while I was mowing a patch of grass next to the street. As I closed in on one section, I noticed what I thought was a short, thick branch lying on the lawn. Confused, I wondered how I had missed it when I made my usual pre-mowing rounds.

As I got nearer, however, I discovered the branch was actually a squirrel. And this squirrel was beyond all human help. But that left me with a new problem: what to do about the squirrel situation without turning off the lawnmower.

So I stood there, mower running, and thought about this dilemma for a good five minutes. And then I simply decided to mow around the squirrel. It seemed like the easiest answer. After I finished mowing, I again decided to do nothing about the squirrel and hope it somehow got moved before I had to mow again. I fully intended to let a squirrel-shaped thatch of prairie grass mar my otherwise manicured lawn before I’d touch a dead squirrel. But lo and behold, the next time I mowed, the squirrel gods had removed the deceased.

The next lawn mowing was not without incident, either. On one side of my house, I have an entirely useless quasi-driveway/ramp that sits at a 45-degree angle. Essentially, it’s a steep slab of concrete that cuts into my lawn. I was using the slab as a pivoting spot to make my turns, when I suddenly felt my feet slide out from under me.

Seemingly in slow motion, I landed hard on my posterior, feet in the air, track pants pooling around my upper thighs. But-and this is the important part-I managed to hold onto the mower and keep it running.

Then I did the classic I-just-made-a-fool-of-myself move: I stood up, brushed myself off with one hand, and surreptitiously looked around to see if anyone witnessed my moment of grace. Naturally, the neighborhood was packed. It wouldn’t have been a humiliating experience if nobody had been around to see it. Kind of like the tree-falling-in-the-forest thing.

But perhaps the most embarrassing incident to date wasn’t lawnmower related. One afternoon as I traipsed around my yard collecting debris, I came upon a long tree branch. Like all of the other branches I’d found, I wanted to break it into smaller pieces so it would better fit in my fire pit.

I braced my foot in the center of the branch, ready to use my body weight to break it in half. What I hadn’t counted on was the thickness of this particular branch. As I leaned forward on one foot, the branch didn’t break. My brain didn’t respond quickly enough to this information, however, so my foot never left the branch. As I plunged headfirst into the grass, nothing but my face broke my fall. Again, an amazingly large number of my neighbors were outside.

Some people bake cookies for their neighbors during the holidays; I spare them the calories and, instead, provide the gift of year-round idiocy. One day soon, I’m hoping to go the cookie route, though. Falling hurts. TPW