Yard Man blues

Our neighbors have a yard man. He cuts the grass and weeds at several different houses on our block. He used to cut our grass and weeds, too, until Robert's cousin, who was living in the other side of the duplex, fired him because she was afraid he would kick Pippin.

Anyway. For the longest time I thought this guy was homeless. He grows his beard all scraggly and his hair is also quite unkempt. His clothes are stained and full of holes. He is white, but it's hard to tell under the tan and the layer of motor oil he sports on his hands and face.

I've always been kind of creeped out by this yard man. I generally tried to avoid him until one day he came to cut the neighbor's weeds and grass right during K's nap time. Our neighbor's driveway is literally right underneath our windows, and K's window is right in front of the gate leading to their back yard. And his weed whacker, leaf blower, and lawn mower sound 15,753,974 times louder to me than they ever have because I HAVE A SLEEPING CHILD IN THAT ROOM RIGHT THERE. I, naturally, went all Momma Bear on him and told him to scram for another 52 minutes so my kid could finish her nap. He said he understood, that he had kids too, but he was on a time schedule. Yeah, right. Time schedule my foot. He shows up at the randomest of random times, sometimes every week, sometimes every six weeks, sometimes at 9 in the morning, sometimes at 5 in the evening.

Anyway. It didn't work. She woke up that day precisely seven minutes after I'd told him to beat it. 

Today, he showed up almost immediately after K had fallen asleep. He was here for 35 minutes, and every second of that 35 minutes (2100 seconds, in case you were wondering), I had a mini heart attack. I couldn't ask him to leave again. He just creeps me out too much. So instead I stood in the kitchen window giving him the evilest of evil eyes, stuffing my face with carob-coated peanuts (so much for my sugar fast), willing my kid to stay asleep with all that infernal racket. I don't generally wish death on people, but today I really wanted a big branch of the neighbor's orange tree to bean him.

But, of course, that would have woken up the baby.

And today, she stayed asleep for another 20 minutes after he left.