So, the leaf-raking ... I did not do as much as I could have, admittedly. On Saturday I had dreams of doing it very early in the morning because I had nothing to do until the afternoon, and instead I went outside well past 9 and raked for, at most, an hour (and probably more like half an hour). I gathered together the leaves on the driveway and the side ... way, behind the fence, and that was good because I mixed around the really wet leaves at the bottom of those piles, but that's all I did Saturday.
On Sunday, I woke up at 10:30 and thus got in eight hours of sleep. Beautiful. Too bad that I lost a whole morning that I could have used raking leaves. And I didn't bolt outside after I woke up either; I watched The MacLaughlin Group, then checked my fantasy football teams, then I ate something at Burger King, and then I started raking the front lawn. At 2 in the afternoon. So sue me.
As soon as I started raking I knew this was going to be a pain-in-the-ass. I try to be meticulous in my raking because I want to do it only once, but there were so many leaves that the raking is still going to leave bits of leaves behind. At some point I just said screw it, I'm not going back, but I must say that after a few hours of alternately raking and having enough leaves to bag (oh yeah, I stopped raking after barely starting to go to Home Depot to get those huge paper silo bags for leaves, but the two I went to said they're sold out. I don't believe they're sold out; I believe they just stopped selling them because it's mid-November. Hey, it's an El Nino winter, and Minnesota still has lots of time to bag leaves. Break the inventory pattern, Home Depot, I need bags!), my lawn was pretty leaf-free. The downside to that was that dusk was coming, and in these days the sunlight disappears very quickly.
I really didn't think I was going to finish the front lawn, but I had dreams, you know? So, past 5 and dusk rapidly turning into night, I decided that I'll just have to quit and take this back up next weekend. But as I was about to close shop, this woman comes up to me while I was working on my front lawn. That usually doesn't happen to me -- or, I would say, anyone in this state. It's not the Minnesotan thing to do.
But I recognized her. While I was out raking the lawn she was out raking her lawn, across the street, one house down. I, still kind of shocked that she approached me and with, admittedly, some malevolence, said, "Can I help you?"
She answered back with pleasantries I did not deserve and an offer I could not refuse: "Well, with night falling, I was wondering if you needed help bagging these leaves."
Honestly, I don't remember the last time a neighbor has offered to do that for me. I feel confident in saying that no neighbor has ever offered to do something like that for anyone who lives in my house. We are an insular family. Hell, we're a hostile one. But like I told the neighbor during our raking (and yes, I accepted her offer; I admit that I was hoping that I could get some help, but from some angel that descended from the heavens because I didn't think anyone was just going to walk up to me and volunteer), keeping to ourselves is the Minnesotan thing to do. A neighbor just sauntering over to help with yardwork? That might happen in, say, the South, but not in Minnesota. No, we keep to ourselves. To my detriment, in the case of what I was doing yesterday afternoon/evening.
So with her help I was able to fill half a dozen bags with leaves. We are not completely finished; it was getting late even for her. But the two of us together, over the course of, oh, 20-5 minutes, got through a hell of a lot. I might need an hour or two to finish the rest, but without her help I likely would have needed a whole weekend to finish the front yard.
I thanked her, profusely. And yeah, I am indebted to her. I have absolutely no idea how I am going to pay her back. And -- and this is a Minnesota and/or Asian thing -- I now feel weird and kind of bad to feel, um, obligated to say hello to her when I see her outside. But saying hi is what neighbors are supposed to do, right?
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