Splendor In The Grass?

I whacked my knuckle on my right ring finger and it's swollen and black and blue and I can't get my ring off.  I have a huge bruise below my fingers in the palm of my left hand. Waaa waaa waaa.  Boo hoo for me.  The source of all my "agony" is this -- I bought a gas powered 25 cc trimmer (aka a "weed eater") God, I'm such a girl...It is insanely dry in the Hill Country and my land is over grown with flammable material and I need to tame my place and get the fuel away from my house before it burns to the ground in a lightening storm. Ok a little drama never hurt anyone!!

I pride myself on following written instructions exceptionally well.  The assembly instructions for this trimmer confuse me though since I am replacing the original "spool" with one from another manufacturer. The instructions for replacing the spool talk about trimmers that are "left rotation" and "right rotation" and tell me to choose the nut from the package that threads most easily onto the shaft (after, obviously, I have removed all of the factory made parts from the original  trimmer spooler). Exsqueeze me?  I love the phrase "A fool with a tool is still a fool".

Ok barring all further details, I get the unit assembled, then disassembled, then put back together with the new spooler and now I have to load the line.  For right rotation machines, I need to go counter clockwise, for left rotation machines I need to load clockwise. The owner's manual doesn't tell me which one I have so how do I know unless I have line loaded and can watch it rotate? And here's another problem...Yes, if I see that I have a right rotating machine when I'm looking from the top, when I flip it over so it's upside down to load the line -- which way do I interpret the instructions? Counter clockwise from the bottom is opposite from counter clockwise looking from the top. Shit. It takes about one minute of eatin' weeds to figure out I got it bass ackwards.

Ok. I admit I feel a certain surge of power when I start up the beast with a couple of expert (ok, instruction-led) adjustments to the throttle and some pulls of the cord. Yep definately more powerful than my Black & Decker battery operated baby that I killed.  That little girl would have been no match for all this tall dry grass and brush that I need to deal with this year.

I do four or five twenty minute sessions. When I come inside to get a drink of water, I can't hold the glass because my hands and forearms are shaking.  I am happy I have some of those Ozarka sport water bottles to suck water from. I'm hot, I'm sweaty, I'm itchy, I'm frustrated, I have so much more to do, I have grass in my panties and yet I HAVE THE POWER!!

Day Two begins with me not even remembering how to get the beast started again. I'm up early because of the heat.  After multiple attempts, I reread the instructions and finally get it cranking. I do three or four more sessions by 1:00 p.m.  It hits a record high for the day at 95 degrees, today, May 1, 2011. When I'm completely and utterly whipped, I take a shower and come out to sit and cool off and find that a cold front has come through and dropped the temp about 25 degrees or more.  It's cool and dry and breezy all the dry grass I chopped down is blowing down my hill.