Summer Sunday

Do you know how to work?

I never really thought about it until recently, but there really are very few people of my age and whatnot that know how to put in a full day's labor. And I do mean labor. It's a very strange thought to me.

I was just sitting here, gulping down some ice water and putting yet more sunblock on my shoulders, and feeling guilty because it's 7 pm and I should still be outside working. Dad is mowing hay, a hot and weary job, and who knows where Alex and Allie are. Working somewhere, I know. I'm going to go find them.

But it suddenly occured to me to wonder, what are all of my friends doing today? If they're in summer classes, it's just another day of sitting somewhere and studying. If they aren't, well, what do regular people do on summer Sundays? I really don't know.

We work from the time we get up to the time dark falls, or thereabouts. Dropping, tetting, and baling hay always means sore backs and aching muscles, but it has to be done. There are gardens to plow, horses to train, plants to seed, raise, transplant, water, and weed. There is fence to build, which is what we were doing today, and a barn to finish building. Sheds to paint, ducks to raise (they hatch next week!), and wood to load. There was also a tractor to tame and a skid-steer to learn to use. I mowed our estwhile yard with the tractor at first, trying to wrest it back from the woods that had claimed it for so long, and then today I smoothed it with the zero-turn mower. The rocks almost won. There are also people to feed, three times a day, groceries to get, laundry to do, and a house to keep clean when the sweaty people come in every night and fall into bed exhausted. Tomorrow, being a holiday, will be more of the same.

And that's not the half of it. My point is, does anybody else work? What do people do during a summer weekend at home? Does it look anything like mine? Does anybody want to come and help me? Haha...