Don't Fence Me In

Last weekend, D bought some of the wood he needed to replace the fence at the back of our yard - the 40-year old one that was most horribly dilapidated, being held up only by a few twigs of ivy and the wire cage that contains one of the neighbor's pit bulls. Yesterday, he bought the rest of the material.

Yesterday he also told the neighbor, Luis, that if Luis and his friends would tear down the old fence and dig the post holes, then he (D) would build the new fence and put it up. Luis had his half-asleep teenage daughter shuffle out of the house to hear the explanation a second time, since Luis' English is not great. Along with the gist of our message, the girl must have translated a sense of urgency we didn't quite have.

Within an hour, the old fence was gone.

It was that rickety, yes - as D pointed out, to tear it down someone probably just had to sneeze in that direction. But we hadn't expected them to move quite so fast, and now we have nothing between us and three unpredictable (mostly neglected, sometimes even teased) pit bulls, except the cyclone fence cage for one (Damian), and chains from collars to trees for the other two (Blue and Kilo).

So D worked like a one-man demolition crew to clear away the big rocks and old cement-and-wire pond bed that had been along the back of the property.

The girls and I, meanwhile, played. R went to the county fair with friends and S and I met other friends for swimming and a picnic. I did move a few rocks before I left, but mostly, D sweated alone. Now he and the girls are crashed, and I'm feeling the panic and stress that is bound to come after 9 days away from the office. This is especially true because I'll be sitting in another department starting tomorrow, and I'm training a new employee, a friend of the company's owner for decades.

This is me acknowledging my anxiety, observing it, and now recognizing it for what it's worth - basically nothing. This too shall pass. And in the meantime, I have several hours of sleep to look forward to.