The Write Mommy For The Job

by Jennifer Brown

Snakes alive!

I love to mow the lawn; I do. I actually argue with The Hub for the opportunity to do it. When you live your life as stay-at-home mom of three and catch-as-catch-can writer, you have to carve out any possible snippet of quiet time for yourself. Time to work out plot snags, create new characters, brainstorm ideas. Lawn mowing time is my quiet time.

The other day I was in serious need of some alone writer time. I grabbed my MP3 player, laced up my yard work shoes, and headed out into the backyard. I mowed. I worked on a plot snag. I mowed. I created a character. I mowed. I…

…looked down into the eyes of a giant snake.

I’m talking Lemony Snicket kind of giant snake here. Like, I wasn’t afraid of it biting me – I was afraid of it eating my entire house. Like, I’m pretty sure that snake got to my backyard by way of Volkswagen bus. And it was the driver.

For a moment time stood still. I stared at the snake. The snake stared at me. I blinked. The snake blinked. I licked my lips. The snake licked its lips, tied a napkin around its neck, and dug out a portable mess kit and a shaker of Mrs. Dash.

The important thing is, I didn’t scream. I just turned and mowed the rest of the yard, content to leave peacefully among nature’s bounty of creatures.

Okay, I’m lying. I took one look at that sucker, left the lawnmower running in the yard, and hightailed it, screeching the whole way, back into the house.

Immediately, I called my mom.

“Snake!” I cried (I still hadn’t regained the ability to use full sentences.)

“So?”

“In my yard. What do I do? What does a normal person do when the snake kingdom’s answer to André the Giant is in their yard?”

There was silence on the other end. I’d forgotten that my mom (aka: Mother Earth’s more nature-loving twin sister) would have no earthly idea what a normal person would do. My mom makes friends with scary creatures. She’d likely invite it inside for a glass of iced tea and a chat with her friends, Mr. Grizzly, Miss Scorpion, and the Killer Bee twins.

“Nevermind,” I said. “I’ll get a rake.”

So I did. I went to the garage, tied a Karate Kid bandana across my forehead, popped the “Rocky” soundtrack into my portable CD player, and fished out a rake. Ripping the sleeves off my shirt and snarling Terminator-style, I bravely marched to the back yard with rake in hand, the plan to turn that little wussy snake into coleslaw.

Okay, I’m lying again. I picked up a rake and skulked out there, my plan to pick up the snake from as far a distance as I could, close my eyes, and squeal like a girl as I flung it over the fence into my neighbor’s backyard. If that didn’t work, I had a Plan B: give it $500 and MapQuest directions to Tucson.

I got to the backyard. I let out a manly wrop! I flexed my biceps. I lifted the rake.

The snake was gone.

“Good,” I thought. “Obviously my sheer presence was enough to show that snake what I’m made of. I can get back to working on my plot snag now. That’s right. Don’t mess with The Jennifer-nator, baby.” I calmly restarted the mower and got back to business.

Okay, I’m lying again. I spent fifty minutes spinning in circles, chopping random spots in the grass in desperate panic, so much so, that I think I might land me a lead spot in the next Freddy vs. Jason movie. I cried; hyperventilated; screamed in blind throat-ripping hysteria when a baby toad hopped across my shoe.

But the snake never showed itself again and eventually I was able to convince myself that what I’d seen had been a mirage — A garden hose, maybe, a really thick blade of grass. So I put the rake down and mowed the rest of the grass without slowing down a bit.

Not true. I did put the rake down. I did mow the rest of the grass. But I did it on tiptoe, vacuum cleaner-style, finding a “safe spot” and flinging the mower out and back, creating a new “safe spot” that I could move to, all the while making “icky” noises, repeating the Lord’s Prayer and making the sign of the cross. It took me six hours of mowing that way to decide that there’s a reason mowing is by and large a “guy’s chore” in my neighborhood. The Hub would have wrestled that snake to the ground and bitten its head off, Ozzy-style, just so any other neighborhood guys who might be watching could get a load of his testosterone-ness and fear him properly. Sounds like Plan C to me.

And, go figure! I can work out a plot snag under a seaweed wrap in a mud bath with a mojito in my hand and Enya singing softly in the background just fine.

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