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Driving 4 hours to mow my mom's lawn felt stupid until it didn't
Dad's been gone almost 4 years. Mom's still in the same house up north. Stubborn about staying.
Drove up last weekend to do yard work because the guy she'd been paying retired and she "didn't want to bother me." Took half a day to drive there, half a day to mow + edge + clean the gutters, slept on the couch I grew up sleeping on, drove back Sunday.
Eight hours of driving for four hours of yard work. On paper it's stupid — there are guys 10 minutes from her who'd do it for $80.
But she made me a sandwich at 1pm and we sat at the table and I told her about something that's been bothering me at work and she told me about her sister's hip. That sandwich is what the trip was for. The lawn was the excuse.
Anyway. If you've got a parent two states away, find an excuse. The excuse is the whole thing.
"The lawn was the excuse." Yeah. My version of this is taking my mom to her cardiologist appointments — they're 25 min from her house and I could pay a service to drive her, but the 45-min round trip is the only time I have her alone in a car with no one needing anything from either of us. The cardiology is the excuse. Put me down for one of those a month.