5 Minutes of Peace

When I was a kid we had this book called "Five Minutes of Peace". It's the story of a mother elephant with lots of kids and all she wants is five minutes of peace and quiet. Except everytime she sits down one of her kids comes because of something. Basically, as I understand this it's every Mom's story. In the end, she locks herself into the bathroom wearing a bathing cap, and her cup of tea.
Even though I'm not a Mom, I get it. Sometimes you just need a bit of quiet. Of course, growing up in a family in which everyone plays at least two instruments and we only ever practiced when other people were practicing gives you a different concept of "peace and quiet". I once slept through an entire afternoon in my bunk with my head against a metal wall that was being rust banged (which is exactly what it sounds like, pardon the pun).
But now I'm trying to study for my comprehensive exams (big deal. If I fail I won't exactly be kicked out of the program... yet, but probably strongly encouraged to re-think this phD-thingie). I need a good place to study, a little bit of peace and quiet and a chance to focus.
Not that easy when the temperatures are in the triple digits (that's the only good thing about Fahrenheit, you can express HOW INCREDIBLY HOT it is by saying "the temperatures were in the triple digits) and it's so humid it feels like you're in a sauna at all times. Reading my notes gets difficult when there's sweat dripping off my nose and messing them up.
I found a good spot in my room. This is also when I discovered that none of my neighbors do their own garden work. They all hire people to come. People who professionally mow lawns have BIG LOUD machines. I didn't realize how many neighbors I have until there was a constant lawn mowing, bush cutting, leave blowing and other annoying sound stuff going on.
I'm trying to remember why everyone in this area was so worried about the house being rented out to students. Oh that's right - because  we're so LOUD and constantly PARTY and NEVER study.
I guess if you don't mow your own lawn you don't understand you really don't have to do it every other day. I'm still wondering how the guy across the street who had somebody put a fence in managed to schedule it for the one day nobody was mowing their lawn. And why he didn't understand that people understand his instructions if he left his front door step.
The one day it rained I thought I'd be safe. But no - somebody decided to mow their OWN lawn. Now I know why people here don't do their own garden stuff. You can't mow a wet lawn. And you should realize this after an hour or two. There's no reason to continue ALL AFTERNOON.
Yeah, I tried moving to study in my office - but then they decided it would be a good day to finish construction on the roof. I tried going to the library. But they decided it was necessary to tear up the road.
So I did the natural thing one does when one wants 5 minutes of peace. I went fishing. One of my class mates is trying to catch white perch in order to tag them and.... yeah, I'll spare you the details, the important part was that we were going to spend the ENTIRE day on a REMOTE river in a WILDLIFE SANCTUARY on a BOAT. FISHING.
We tuckered out, threw in the anchor (this was my boating job that day, I'm really good at chucking anchors), baited our rods, tossed them out and settled in.
Then they decided to cut down trees with a chain saw.