As Jon points out below, i appear to have no idea what I am talking about, as my bellyaching is premised on the improbable (and, to me, apparently unwelcome) fact of my prosperity.
I have been sucking on this idea like a lemon for a few days and really don’t have even an analysis, let alone an answer. I value routine and reward as strongly as any bourgeois ever, and of late have been savoring the new rituals of daily lawn and flowerbed watering and the like. Why, just today I have been afflicted with a leaky soaker hose, fountaining profligately all over the place. Naturally, I have elected to pursue the appropriate, environmentally conservative resolution and have discarded the hose in favor of a new one, purchased at the same locale we bought the first, Home Depot. Thank heaven for Chinese labor!
There once was a time when men stood on their lawns with the hose and performed the watering duties personally, generally of an evening, towards dusk. I believe that we as a nation should return to this method. The soothing nature of running water, combined with a point-n-shoot nozzle, makes for a nice hour that could be spent in deep thought, or as is my case, a totally blank brain.
The quest for the perfect nozzle is a lot of fun, too.
I like the above, and would add that I was not addressing your prosperity (congrats on that) but your age. When not busy having midlife crises, men in their 40’s devote themselves to stabilising their position in the world. They water their lawns, raise their children, rise to positions of authority in prison gangs, write the follow up to the masterpiece they produced in their thirties. It’s one of those life stages. Please, as you approach 50, try not to go through the sighing over younger (usually much younger) women. I’ve seen a couple of guys make complete fools of themselves on that one. I promise that you will have come up with some kind of satisfying lawn watering routine by then. Life’s a bitch ain’t it? Maybe not.