If I had to guess what the most mentally exhausting part of my first solo week as a stay-at-home dad to a toddler and a newborn would be, I never would’ve guessed: “watering a giant patch of dirt.”
Yet, since the landscaper told me to water the spot twice a day “enough to really get it wet but not so much that it pools or makes puddles,” it’s practically all I think about.
This section of our yard has been a continual source of interest to our household since March when the sewer-line-repair excavator first dug it’s shovel into our soil.
Even if you disregard the entire part where the excavator hit a power line delaying his work for three days until an electrician could repair the damage, my toddler daughter spent tons of time watching the excavator work (and even more time since asking, “where excavator go?”).
Now we’re hopefully in the final stages of returning our yard to its glorious crabgrassy nature among the rocky, sandy soil our property has been blessed with – provided I manage to water the area sufficiently for the next three weeks.
Here’s the thing: I haven’t done anything sufficiently in the three months since our second child was born – so expecting me to keep doing something sufficiently for every day for three full weeks is setting the bar really high.
Though I haven’t met that bar on most of the days, I’m trying really hard, which is probably way more than I need to, but is fully in line with my character as an overthinker.
The college-aged kid who laid the grass seed did a fine job but I don’t believe for one minute he stopped to wonder about the contours of the landscape, the implications of his approach or what the final result would look like.
His dad said, “go overseed the giant spot” and he did. As simple as that.
He probably hasn’t thought once again about the job while I’m spending at least some of my consciousness every waking moment thinking about the scale of “enough to really get it wet but not so much that it pools or makes puddles.”
Is that a rain cloud on the horizon? Maybe I should hold off for now.
Hmm, there haven’t been many clouds at all today, perhaps I should water extra long!
Adding to the problem are all the adjustable features on my sprinkler.
My initial instinct was to buy the cheapest, simplest oscillating sprinkler to just blanket the whole area, but then I researched all the options and found a “deluxe turbo oscillating sprinkler” for just ten dollars more.
The marketers had a field day describing these features with phrases like “twin touch technology,” “dirt-resistant drive,” and “advanced-efficiency motor.”
In a sprinkler? Sure.
It’s just a lot of words for saying that you can control the width of the spray and the range of the oscillation, which immediately sold me on the upgrade.
However, the sprinkler manufacturer neglected to warn me that each additional feature adds a variable to your sprinkling capabilities and that variables are an overthinker’s worst enemy.
Instead of just throwing a sprinkler into the middle of my yard and walking away for twenty minutes, I’m now spending the entirety of the time tweaking its performance.
Spatial planning isn’t a strength yet I’m setting up each day like an old-timey sailor trying to chart his course by the stars.
It is surprisingly difficult to get full coverage on an oddly-sized dirt patch tucked into a hill.
If this were a cell phone game, thousands of senior citizen “cat mamas” would be putting down the candy crush to try and make all of my grass seeds wet.
The wind factor alone creates a huge challenge. When you’re shooting twenty small jets of water straight up into the air, even a mild breeze can impact the uniformity of each stream’s performance.
So I stand watch over my set-it-and-forget-it “deluxe turbo oscillating sprinkler.”
Studying the moment instead of living it. Just enough to meet my insatiable need to overthink things, but not so much that it pools or makes puddles.
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