My son, Jeremy has been looking for a car he can fix up for the past year or so. I've been hoping he'd get one to drive back and forth from Norton for the past year or so.

He finally found a 1974 Ford LTD. It cost him $200. It needed a little work -- new brakes, a seat cover for the front seat, a duplicate title. But we finally got him on the road.

The car had a quarter of a tank of gas in it. I figured with a 1974 Ford LTD, that would get him from our house to the intersection of U.S., Highway 83 and South Street. Which means I also gave him money for gas. I figure that will be a bi-monthly expense. I've added it to my budget. I had to drop a week's worth of groceries to cover it.

He spent half the weekend checking the car out and replaced the front brakes, and the other half of the weekend telling me about the car.

I now know that it has a 400 cubic inch motor, which is larger than a 350 and smaller than a 451 (or something like that.)

I know that the front brake rotors need to be replaced, and he needed to take the car in to the shop and heat up the hinges on the hood so that he could straighten them up and get it to shut. I know the passenger side door of the car won't open, but he can fix that if can just get it open.

I know that in mint condition, the car is worth between $1,000 and $5,000 and I know that this car has a long ways to go before it gets to "I took my mom for a ride in my car," condition.

We found out it could haul as much as a full-size pickup when we picked up 24 two-cubic-foot bags of mulch.

Which is how I spent my weekend -- or at least the first day of it.

While Jer was changing his brake pads, putting his new seat cover on the front seat of his new classic car, checking out the lighter, the lights and the first radio he'd ever seen that didn't have FM channels on it, I was in the front yard, trying to get rid of an infestation of bindweed by pulling it, covering it with black plastic and mulch.

In order to protect my back from ending up in its usual knotted state, I decided to squat down to pull the weeds. I got down on my hands and knees to lay the plastic, getting up after lying plastic on each section to grab three bags of mulch per section. I opened the bags of mulch and dumped them before getting back on my hand and knees to spread the mulch.

I didn't notice any back pain. My knees felt fine. I was sure I had made it through the day without my normal aches and pains and with a feeling of achievement -- and exhaustion.

I went to bed that night, proud of the fact that I had accomplished what I had set out to do.

When I woke up Sunday morning, I didn't care about my great accomplishment. I didn't care that there were still five bags of mulch waiting to be spread. All I cared about was the pain that was running from my gluteus maximus (my derrière) to my ankles.

I sat up in bed and immediately felt the pain in my gluteus maximus. I thought if I sat in the recliner it might help -- it didn't.

I spent the next two days trying to find a comfortable place to sit. I never did. The worst part of the whole ordeal was trying to get in and out of the Crossfire, since the Blazer is broke down. I didn't realize how obvious it was until I arrived at work and my boss asked me what had happened.

I've made a very important decision, the next time Jeremy comes to McCook and I give him money for gas, He's going to have to earn it. We're going to learn how to install a front end on a Chevy Blazer, because next time I hurt my gluteus maximus, I have no intention of curling up into a cracker box in order to get to work.