Lawn From Hell: The Awakening

So, my lawn sucks. Big time. I mean King Kong meets Godzilla sucks.
Taking care of a lawn isn't something I've really ever had to do. When I was a kid, I mowed the lawn when I was told to, but really had no clue about lawns. Now, I have a lawn. Last year I nearly killed it. I have no clue how to take care of a lawn, so I thought I'd better learn this year.
First thing I learned about a lawn, it's best to try and rescue it in the fall when it's settling down to sleep. Great... now you tell me.
I've been looking at lawn care sites, and it turns out there are different types of lawn grass. Who knew? I think I have that kind called Bermuda, with a healthy dose of crabgrass all over the place. Also I have ants all over the place. I got some ant stuff for that so we'll see how it goes.
What I'm doing today:
Downloading my lawnmower user manual. Turns out you have to change the oil on your lawnmower every year, as well as do something to the gas (or drain it). I need to stop off at the hardware store and get some oil, lubricant and an air filter for the lawnmower, apparently. I'll probably get that done tomorrow.
Trimming/butchering the hedges. I hate hedges... I've been trimming the one's in front of our house. They're the prickly pokey kind that are supposed to keep out burglars. They don't from what I've heard, but they do prick me quite easily. I call them vampire bushes, since they seem to feed off little drops of blood they get from me when I get close to them. Honestly I'd like to pull them up and burn them and just have lawn going up to the front of the house, or maybe a flower garden. Flowers are nice, aren't they?
Depositing said hedge trimmings into paper bags for pickup by the city of Plano... the prickly, pokey hedge trimmings. I'm going to look like I got into a fight with a cat by the time I'm done.
Add to all that my horrible state of health (for various reasons) and I can't do too much at once. Anne told me to just do the hedges in the front yard. I'm going to be lucky if I get one of the three done today. But... the secret is to keep plugging away at it.
I need to get more information on lawn care so I can figure out how to bring the yard back from the brink. It's dying and needs some help. Oh... I have to get the sprinkler system working too. Nice thing about our house is the in ground sprinkler system. Just don't have a manual or anything about it.
Anyway. New category going up on the blog dealing with the lawn from hell.