i spent the better part of the daylight hours mowing and weeding and raking with the neighbors. the neighborhood i’ve moved into is full of very nice men (and women) who personify that stereotypical cliche of american country living whereby families gather around the bbq of any given house on a saturday afternoon, drink beer, and tell tall tales until the sun goes down. children run around chasing each other with squirt guns; back and forth between the houses and all the moms have each other on speed dial so as to pick up the phone and say, “is tucker over there? can you send him home?”

the men all have riding mowers or tractors. the heavy duty types because we’re not talking about sissy lawns here. i’ve got nearly three acres of land with grass so high i was afraid to let kaileb outside to play for fear of losing him. so two of my male neighbors decided what with me being a single mom and everything they were going to come over and “tend to that lawn” of mine today.

which, you know, was awfully nice. and i don’t mean that in a pervy way. the tending to the lawn thing. in case you were thinking that. because, when i reread it, that’s the first thing *i* thought of.

i’m just not used to all this country living yet, i guess. i still have a hard time just letting the boys run all over the countryside building forts in the backforty with all the neighbor’s kids. i can’t get used to the idea that sometimes they’ll be running around with a squirt gun and sometimes it’ll be a bow. as in a bow and arrow. with actual arrows. and they’ll be shooting bales of hay. did i mention they’ll be using actual arrows?

sometimes they’ll be riding their bikes around in circles in someone’s pasture. but sometimes they’ll be riding their bikes in someone’s pasture doing “mega-wicked cool” jumps and tricks off this mound of dirt someone just had delivered. this 9 million feet of dirt. and when they come home i have to hose them down with the garden hose to a) allow them to walk through the house to the shower and b) make sure i’ve got the right kid.

all this is well and good. i did the same kind of stuff when i was growing up in south carolina. i was a tomgirl who scraped my knees on a regular basis and shot cans off the fence with a twenty two. i can hardly expect two growing boys to sit at home and play with dolls. i wouldn’t want them to. it’s just that we went from a small two bedroom duplex in the city where no one ever spoke to us or even acknowledged our existence, to a spacious three bedroom on three acres in the country where the entire street knows our name. which is odd considering in the city we were all slammed right up against each other. you could throw a rock in any direction and hit someone’s front door. but out here you have to walk a good bit just to be able to see the front porch of your nearest neighbor. so the logic escapes me. it takes some getting used to, this familiarity.

so the guys come over today, unannounced with their tractor and their weedeater and their beer and they just proclaim that we will be doing some yard work. what could i do? the lawn was beginning to take on a life of its own and i had no other options. it was the first decent weather we had had in a while and they were offering to do it for free. so i put my back into it and started working. work, i don’t mind. we worked until the sun went down. the boys ran back and forth between our house and the neighbors and i adjusted to being told what to do by a sweaty man on a tractor who was neither my father nor my lover.

however.

as i was going through the yard picking up toys hidden in the grass discarded by poe and/or the boys my neighbor climbs off the tractor and goes over in between two trees, opens his fly, and PEES. (!!!!) he peed on my tree. what does THAT mean? was he marking his territory? did he just have to go really bad? was it the beer? was he sweaty and dirty and didn’t want to trouble me by asking to use my restroom? was he staking a claim? what the helen of troy was that all about?

it’s not that i’m a prude. i’m not. not by any stretch of the imagination. urinate all you want. urinate until the cows come home. i’m not even that concerned about a semi-strange man whipping his cock out in front of me. i’ve seen them before. they’re nothing to write home about. but come on. i tried to avert my eyes. i turned and starting walking the other way. i pretended to be looking for rocks and general what-have-you in the other direction. i know that he knows that i knew. he didn’t seem that fussed about it. just got back on his tractor and started mowing again.

okay. so this is the thing: i decided i don’t care. the three acres? they look great. all around the house is beautiful and back to being ship-shape and lush and green and i got some great tips for the garden. i could have paid someone to come out and do it for me. but it would have cost an arm and a leg and it feels like cheating. these guys came over and helped me do it for free and all it cost me was a …well i had to let him pee on my tree and do what they told me for a few hours. it’s my land, my responsibility. so i guess if i’m going to be a grown up i have to pick my battles.

to be sure this never would have happened in the city.