Lawn Mowers and Fast Food

In this episode, I celebrate 1,215 days of alcohol retirement and tell the story of what should have been a routine Friday cutting the grass but instead turned into an all-day battle with my aging Troy-Bilt lawnmower. What started with me blaming the mower’s increasingly temperamental safety switches turned out to be a corroded battery cable, followed by a disconnected ignition switch, and then—once Tyler and I finally got the damn thing running—a hidden tree root bent my nearly new mower blade badly enough to start digging trenches through the yard. After a hurried trip to the mower shop, forty bucks for a replacement blade, and considerably more aggravation than I had planned for, I finally managed to finish the yard.

But the whole ordeal also made me realize how differently I handle frustration after more than three years without alcohol. There was a time when a day like that would have pissed me off enough to quit, start drinking, make everyone around me miserable, and wake up the next morning regretting how I'd behaved. Instead, I kept working the problem: figure out what’s wrong, fix what I can, and move on to the next thing. At 1,215 days sober, that ability to deal with aggravation without letting it ruin the rest of my day—or everyone else's—is one of those less obvious benefits of alcohol retirement that I probably appreciate more than I ever expected.

Then I move on to another modern-day aggravation: the absolutely ridiculous price of fast food. A Burger King run for four people—four burgers, two large fries, two large onion rings, two specialty sides, and seven extra zesty sauces that I paid for but didn't actually receive all of—came to $67. That sent me down the rabbit hole of comparing fast food to pizza and realizing that I can buy four or five Domino's pizzas, feed everybody for several meals, and usually spend less money. Along the way I defend my appreciation for Arby's cheesesteaks, profess my love for Domino's, reminisce about the legendary old-school Pizza Hut Priazzo, and generally wonder when grabbing a few hamburgers became a financial decision. I wrap things up with a little housekeeping about The Book of Donovan, my Podscope platform, and the new newsletter signup at bookofdonovan.com.

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Email: podcast@bookofdonovan.com
Website: https://bookofdonovan.com