Hey jerky, why the blog?

Kat, my wife, and I have lived in our house for 5 years now. She's handled the roses & flower beds, and the lawn has been my responsibility.
So, now we have beautiful flower beds and a crappy lawn.
Every year I throw some synthetic weed-n-feed at it in the spring, then it gets some high nitrogen junk fertilizer later when it doesn't turn green enough. I mowed when I felt like it (read: when I got nagged to do it), and watered when I remembered. Over the years my lawn has slowly become an ugly wreck that is trying to tell me I'm doing something wrong. I thought the simple solution would be to pass the responsibility to Kat, but she promised divorce was less than impressed with my logic.
So, this spring, I again tried an expensive brand of weed-n-feed in an attempt to get ahead of the weeds. The directions on the back (I know. A guy that reads directions. what the hell, right?!) said that it needed to be watered in with the garden hose, and then it is safe for people and pets to be in the yard once it is dry. OK, easy enough even for me.
Spread the junk, water, and wait. Once dry I let the dogs out back. My little Dachshund, Max, is a low-rider and grass weeds touched his belly as he ran to the nearest weed and shoved his nose into it. That can't be good....


Max in the winter. Despite the pic, he loves the snow.

So I researched (I typed it into Google) the active ingredient 2,4-D. A little poking around shows 2,4-D to be 50% of Agent Orange. Yikes.

There has got to be a better way.....