Yeah. When I was sick (can't recall if it was sore back or COVID) she mowed the lawns for me to be helpful. She mows about once or twice a year, it's one of my jobs (and one that I enjoy). She left hay all over the lawn (left too long before mowing it), and I normally do three circuits blowing inwards before turning to blow outwards. She did two circuits, then blew grass all over the decks, the boat, the paths. Somehow also managed to scalp a bit of the grass, I know we have a bit of grass grub that loosens the roots, but an unusually large section lifted up for some reason.
I just thanked her for mowing, and said how nice it was to not have to get on the tractor when I was sick.
My spouse is someone who likes to help, it's how she shows she cares. The fact that her helping often slows me down is irrelevant. And if I get grumpy then she gets very sad, because her helping is a big part of who she is. I try to just bite my tongue and work through it.
I had the benefit of a BX first, which is really the size of an overgrown ride on, before stepping up to the B. And of course, she's a farm girl, so she grew up driving a Caterpillar D2 for track work, and driving the hay truck. She's well competent to do these things, she just chooses not to do it if I can do it instead.
I learned a few things from teaching Mum some stuff with her equipment. Dad passed recently, and she didn't know how to drive the excavator. Which is weird, she drives the Massey TEA, she drove the big Kioti, she drives the ride on. Turns out that she believed Dad wouldn't teach her. Even worse, he was happy to teach the grand daughters, and put up with them doing whatever to his machine, but Mum always had to get it right.
What it actually was, was that with the grand daughters they'd only drive it once or twice. So he just tolerated them being hard on it. If they pop a track off he'll just put it back on. With Mum, she potentially would use it all the time. So he wanted to show her all the things he'd learned by getting it wrong, so that she could have the benefit of that experience. And how she interpreted that was that he was setting impossibly high standards, expecting her to do things perfectly when he'd taken a couple of years to learn what to do and what not to do.
What I learned from all that is that you can't expect to transfer your knowledge to someone else like that. People learn by doing, so you have to accept that they'll make mistakes and break stuff. And you just have to fix the things they break. Consider it "playing with your tractor" rather than "fixing the stuff my wife broke."
Now that it's officially Mum's excavator, she can drive it how she likes, and if she breaks it then she has to get it fixed. They're pretty bullet proof anyway, and she lets me drive it and I'm no expert....I always figure that the small Takeuchis are really common in rental fleets. And if they're not getting broken by the muppets who rent small excavators, then probably they won't get broken by me.
Started a thread on chain hooks just today.
https://www.orangetractortalks.com/forums/threads/chain-hooks.63117/#post-632743
Grinding the paint, welding, then painting it again in Kubota orange is a long term solution. Scratching it is something that will just continue to get worse over time. To be honest, I've had mine two years, and I've used chains a few times. I don't really have any material scratches from the chains. It's more that chain hooks would be way more convenient, and it's a thing I can do easily.
You can get bolt on ones pretty easily, that'd avoid the welding on the paintwork.
And yes, the paint takes a while to wear thin where it needs to be thin. My quick attach is still stiff (although I think one of the pins is a bit misaligned, so it's potentially going to need encouragement with a hammer forever).
I just posted my video on mower deck off and on - for the B2601, not the LX, but may be useful to you.
