Get off my mawn, she said

Tonight at dinner Stella asked if we could have a socially distanced yard sale. I thought (but did not say), "I'd rather have a tooth filled than have a yard sale, even when there isn't a pandemic happening. COVID probably bumps it up into 'I'd rather have a root canal' territory." What I said was, "What would you want to sell?""

"Lots of things," she answered. "The old strollers. And the mawnlower."

"The what?" asked Joe.

"The mawnlower," she continued, "and lots of the old things in the garage."

"Hold on," said Joe, "tell me more about the mawnlower."

Stella realized her error and blushed, but we all liked the substitution. "It works," said one of the boys, "because when you cut the grass you do actually lower it."

"I think that one will stick around," I said. "Like girl cheese sandwiches."

I said. "You know, sometimes I feel bad about our lawn because it's not a neat expanse of turf. Sometimes I tell myself that it's good to buck the lawn-as-monoculture trend and just embrace the violet/clover/wild strawberry/creeping charlie situation, and sometimes I look at it and feel like I'm flunking Homeowner 101. But what if it's not supposed to be a lawn? What if it's actually a mawn? A mawn that we lower when it gets too shaggy!"

Joe added, "Maybe there could be a mawnlower for your scalp. When your hair gets too high, you lower it! And someone needs to invent a mawnhigher for when you get too much hair cut off."

I think that the person who brings a mawnhigher to market as a solution for haircuts gone wrong could make a lot of money.

Tonight's dinner also featured a Jokes We Know And Love segment, with this contribution from my husband:

An infinite number of mathematicians walks into a bar. The first one says to the bartender, "I'll have a beer." The second one says, "I'll have half a beer." The third one says, "I'll have a quarter of a beer." "All right, all right," says the bartender. He pushes two beers in their direction. "You've reached your limit."

Tell me: are people having socially distanced yard sales in your neck of the woods? Or un-socially distanced yard sales? I'm feeling like this whole season is one long fraught negotiation, in which we're all just making our best guesses with inadequate and alarmingly polarized information.