When Is a Day Off Not a Day Off?

When it’s a working holiday, of course! I was off work Wednesday and Thursday because I work for a synagogue and the holiday of Shavuot (First Fruits) is a no-work holiday. It was nice, but it’s leading to a strangely disrupted life-rhythm: two work days, two days off, one work day, three days off, three and a half workdays, two days off, and then, finally, two days off.

Only days off aren’t really “days off” nowadays. They’re more like working holidays. For example, on Wednesday and Thursday, I spent 75 percent of the time working — hard — in the yard. Using my square shovel, I cleared a two-foot wide swath of lawn next to the driveway and planted 96 plugs of “dwarf monkey grass,” laid 27 feet of landscaping fabric, and put down mulch three inches deep. Then I mowed the front lawn and sprayed it with Weed B Gon.

The other 25 percent of the (waking) hours were spent grocery shopping, taking my son to his guitar lesson, going to choir rehearsal, cleaning the kitchen, watering the back yard, measuring for a new (wooden) fence, completing a financial analysis for my court date on Tuesday, and doing half a dozen loads of laundry at my mother’s house. And helping her organize her attic. All that in two days.

This weekend, I need to lay landscape fabric down along the side of the driveway and mulch it, help Dad replace the electric box, clean house, till the south flowerbed and plant the rest of the iris in it, mow the back yard, plant seeds and seedlings that I have on the back porch, iron, and clean up my youngest son’s room. I’m only working a half day on Tuesday, thanks to the court date, and then next weekend is a curriculum fair — this one is in my town, so there will be no long road trips at midnight.

I am so proud of my older son. He’s growing up so fast! On Monday, when I went to waken him for the day, I was stunned beyond belief to find him awake, dressed for the day, with his bed made and his room completely tidy. On Tuesday night we went to Home Depot for a few things, and he saw a kid-size shovel that he wanted. I couldn’t get it for him, and he was so upset. But the next day, he came out and helped me with clearing the lawn, planting the monkey grass, and mulching it. He worked, hard, in the sun, sweating, for almost three hours, and didn’t complain once. I was so impressed with how grown-up he was being that I went and bought him the shovel he’d wanted, along with a fancy mylar balloon (expensive!) that he’d asked for the last time we went grocery shopping. He has been acting so grown, helping me with hard work with no complaint, washing his own dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, keeping his room clean, and helping his brother. I am almost worried that someone switched my kid.

And the tiff with the neighbour (Ms. Keep-Away-From-My-Bushes) isn’t really any better. Poor woman. Last weekend, I transplanted some bushes from the hedge on the south side of my yard into the hedge she is convinced that I killed, and I was washing breakfast dishes yesterday when I noticed her out patrolling the hedge line, picking up the little clods of dirt and bits of mulch from where I transplanted those bushes, and tossing them over into my yard. It was at that point that I lost all anger toward her, and felt an overwhelming wave of pity. How sad to be so petty and bitter that you spend all your time tossing bits of dirt into someone else’s yard. How pathetic that the most important thing in her life is a 53-foot line of cheap, ugly bushes.

As I remove the hedge from the south side of my lawn in preparation for planting white azaleas there in the fall, I am going to put every healthy bush I remove into the north side hedge line. I’m still going to put up a fence, as I am tired of the stress this woman causes me (and not just about the bushes), but I’ll give her a whole new hedge first. It won’t cost me anything but a little sweat, and that’s good for burning off the extra weight, so it’s a win-win. Unless she gets angry and gives me grief about adding the bushes. If she does that, I’m not sure what I will do. I hope I can keep my temper and be dignified.

I suppose I ought to mention that I am not the only person whose nerves she gets on. I thought maybe I was until last Sunday afternoon, when I was out planting things in the yard. Her neighbor to the north (two doors north from me, so I’ll call her Ms. Two-Doors-North) came out and said hello, and Ms. Keep-Away-From-My-Bushes said, “Hi! How are you? You have really gotten fat! Why do you let yourself get so fat?” (Now, you have to realise that Ms. Keep-Away-From-My-Bushes talks very loudly — you can hear her from 300 to 500 yards away. So she practically announced poor Ms. Two-Doors-North’s personal business to the entire neighborhood.) Ms. Two-Doors-North said, “Well, it just happened, I guess,” and practically ran back into her house.

Now, I mean honestly, where does Ms. Keep-Away-From-My-Bushes get off making those kinds of comments? I know she hurt Ms. Two-Doors-North’s feelings, because she has said the same thing to me several times — back when we were on more friendly terms. And it hurt, but I just chalked it up to her being old and from another culture. That was before I found out she’s lived in America for more than 20 years. You’d think she’d catch on that we don’t make personal comments to casual acquaintances here. Ah well. It’s just sad because I think she’s really very lonely, but  she is driving away all the people who might befriend her.

Tags: child-rearing, children, chores, errands, holidays, neighbours, parenting, relationships, single parenting