Yard Care

1) Avoid mowing lawn with an attentive, demanding 2 and 4 year old audience standing on the porch.
2) Avoid mowing at the audience's dinner time: it makes them crankier.
3) Don't get annoyed when your neighbor snottily asks that you sweep the lawn clippings off her side of the side-walk.
4) Don't book visits from tree trimmers for "sometime between 6 and 7 pm" if you solo parent small children at that hour.  (And don't be so ashamed of your yard at 5pm that you are driven to mow.)
5) Don't expect to seem composed and sensible when the tree-trimmer arrives at 6.45 and your two freshly bathed children are demanding, distractingly: blankies, water, tv, to be carried, books, water, blankies.
6) Do muse on the attractiveness of the tree trimmer (with Italian accent!) whose looks remind you that your 70 year old colleague has been going on for years about the massive crush she has on her tree trimmer.  Is this, by random angie's list chance, the same man? More pertinently, will he take away the chunk of tree he's going to come and cut down next week?  I hadn't the presence of mind to ask.