I Wish. . .

I have never lived this close to neighbors before. For the past thirty-five years my nearest neighbor was nearly a half-mile away (and sometimes even they managed to annoy me!). So it's particularly ranklesome that of all the neighbors I could get, the nearest one is, by trade, a builder.

Apparently "being a builder" means that if you don't have any jobs to go to, you keep yourself and your man busy by performing Random Acts of Violence on your own house, otherwise known as "projects," projects such as "Strip the (Perfectly Good) Siding Off the Back of Your House and then Have Your Man Pound on Something Metal at Eight o' Clock in the Bloody Morning."

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Pause.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Pause.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Repeat as necessary until you've deprived your neighbor of a solid hour's sleep, and driven him to distraction once he's awake.

Another interesting project that unemployed builders do with their time off is, "Drive Around Your House on a Mini-Tractor Without a Shirt On, Sweating Like a Pig All Over Your Ugly Fat Belly."

I shall have to come up with an Interesting Project or two of my own. Right now, the front runner under consideration is, "Build a Molotov Cocktail and Heave it Through Your Neighbor's Window."

-- Freder.

I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK --

Today has seen yet more gloomy and dismal skies, and I guess everyone knows what that does to me by now. I won't go on about it. Other than to say that it's too chilly to run the fans and too moist and humid not to. Today I was going to attempt work on a ghastly short story that I started, oh, a couple of years ago now, but so far have not felt up to it. Just now I discovered that I hadn't even moved it onto this computer.

Yesterday was also humid, but sunny and hot. So for me, it would have been better to have swapped the planned activities around. Yesterday I played lumberjack.

I'm normally against cutting anything back, I am a pro-growth sort of person. I like it when foliage takes over the property a bit. But the tree growing beside my house -- I don't know what flavor of tree it is, but I like to think of it as my monkey-puzzle tree for the ways that its branches have writhed so confusingly amongst each other, even though I just looked at pictures of a real monkey-puzzle tree on the interwebs and mine looks nothing like it -- was causing problems. It's branches were pressing on the side of the house and actually laying on the roof, which made it impossible to rake snow off in the winter, which caused an ice dam to form (damn) which caused a nasty leak inside my porch where all my unread books are kept.

We kill trees to make books (although in the case of Nicholas Sparks I think it would be better to kill him), and what I was proposing stopped far short of killing the tree. Just sacrificing some limbs in the service of preserving literature (and home!).

So it had to get a trim. Just two branches would do the job. They were wild and crazy branches. I don't own a chain saw (and wouldn't -- they scare the crap out of me!) and I quickly discovered that my rusty handsaw wasn't up to the job, so I got my axe out of the garage and started whaling away at it. I'm actually pretty good with an axe, knowing how to use it and having a good swing, but my axe is dull and it was a hot day, and there were frequent pauses for huffing and puffing. The first branch came down reluctantly, and the second one was worse: it was high enough that I had to stand at the top of my stepladder on uneven ground and strike with the axe well over my head. Even then I was afraid it was going to drop right into my face. So for once in my life (usually these sorts of projects really bring out the Dumb in me) I did the smart thing: when it started to crack ominously I climbed down, gripped the lowest branch and pulled it the rest of the way.

Then of course I had to break these crazy branches down so that I could dispose of them. The thin ends I dragged to the wild ground at the edge of my property and threw them in. The heftier stuff I chopped up to use as firewood in my fire pit out back. I could have knocked off at some point and finished it up another day. But I was determined to get it done, although I was so exhausted by then that I could only get about four or five whacks in before I had to stop and catch my breath.

I hadn't planned for this to be the only thing I got done yesterday, but that's the way it worked out. I guess that's why chainsaws were invented. I'd have been done in nothing flat. Instead it took a big chunk of the day and I was so shagged out afterwards that all I could do was grab a shower and drag myself to the porch sofa, where even looking at the White Flower Farm catalog proved to require more effort than I could bring to it.

My neighbor has a chain saw, sitting enticingly out in the open. Perhaps he left it in plain sight to frustrate me when he heard me chopping myself silly. But they don't attempt to talk to me any more, which I guess is a pleasant side-effect of the "Midnight Mowing" I did a couple of weeks back. Oh, yes I did! Just after midnight on the day that I was woken at seven AM by Millie the Morning Mower, the Evil Bugs Bunny in my soul got the better of me. I opened the window of my playroom and blasted loud music in the general direction of their house. After about fifteen minutes of that I went out and fired up the lawnmower. I did that whole side of my house (poorly, because after all it was past midnight!) and occasionally growled at their house, out loud, "You get the message, Doc?"

Apparently they did. Just yesterday I went out and found their lawn miraculously mowed. They must have done it the day before while I was at work, because I never heard a sound!

Revenge is a dish best served with a freshly-mowed lawn.

-- Freder.

Neighbors is the bunk

When I told C______ at work today that I was wakened this morning at seven AM by my neighbor mowing her lawn under my bedroom window, she laughed and said, "You're not used to living in the city!"

But I don't think that's the problem.

This tank town does indeed call itself a "city," but I say it has delusions of grandeur. The postcard above was taken sometime near the beginning of the last century, and Main Street has barely changed since then. This isn't a city, it's a blot on the landscape.

And I'm finding its people to be sickeningly provincial. It's barely an exaggeration to say that they roll up the sidewalks at five o'clock. At nine PM I can walk around two blocks in my neighborhood and never see a car and most of the lights in the houses are off, but at seven AM on a Saturday morning everyone is out there driving around, who knows where they'd be headed at that time of the bloody morning.

This is not "city" life as I know it. I have spent some time in cities, including New York, Boston, San Francisco, London, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and city people do not behave like this. Real cities are alive all night and quiet on a Saturday morning. This is the way a Sane and Civilized Universe works. W_______, you are populated by hicks!

I'm not sure what action I'll take, but Action Will Be Taken. I've watched too many Bugs Bunny cartoons to let this go. The Elmer Fudds who live next door to me are going to get a taste of their own medicine.

Perhaps I'll mow my lawn under their windows after midnight. Perhaps I'll point my CD player directly at their windows and play loud music until All Hours.

But I don't want to punish the whole neighborhood (or get them all mad at me for that matter). The next time I'm wakened by my neighbor's lawnmower, I could douse her with a bucket of cold water. That might do the trick.

Mustn't be too hasty. The punishment has got to be subtle, and fit the crime. Time to get out the books on Dirty Tricks and do a little research. . .

I'm reminded of a Warner Brothers cartoon where Daffy and Porky are trapped in a hotel room by the manager. They try everything to escape, then in desperation Daffy says: "I know! Let'th call Bugth Bunny! He alwayth knowth what to do!" The call is made, and soon the familiar voice is on the other end of the line. "Did'ja swing across on de rope?" "Yeth!" "Didja try. . ." "Yeth! Yeth! Yeth! We tried all of thoth thingth!"

Cut to Bugs. He's in a similar hotel room, shackled to the wall. "Ehhhhhhhh, don't woik, do they?"

End of cartoon. I can tell that mine is just beginning.

-- Freder.

Closure

It's here! The jailhouse! There it is in its new home in my "formal" garden. The last piece in the moving puzzle. The final proof that home is here.

What is this thing? you may be asking. I'll tell you.

It is, literally, a drunk tank, dating back to around the turn of the last century. When a cop on the beat found some gent who was drunk and disorderly, he'd lock them in one of these things, where the person would literally chill until the paddy wagon came around to take him to jail.

That's its history. But to me, today, it looks and feels like my TARDIS.

My father had been very interested in using his truck to move the thing here. I had my doubts: he's getting on in years and has a bad back. But he insisted. Late last week, I asked if he would be available sometime over the long weekend with the provision that if it proved too much for the two of us that we STOPPED and I called in the movers.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, the plan got changed, and I didn't have much say in it. Instead of us going over together on Sunday or Monday, Dad and his wife wanted to go out there on Tuesday -- alone.

How do these things happen?

Well, thank goodness that as it turned out they had plenty of help. The new owner and his father were there, and they were anxious to get rid of the thing, and they did most of the work of loading it into my father's truck.

When I got home from work Tuesday afternoon, there was my father's truck with a hoosegow strapped down in back!

My backyard neighbor, R____, the one that I like, came out and climbed into my yard to see what the hell was going on. She was nice about it, a real sport, because she and her Significant Other will have this in full view of their back garden, and I can well imagine a lot of folks wouldn't appreciate that. Dad being the self-proclaimed raconteur that he fancies himself, he gave her the whole history of the thing.

She climbed up onto the truck and helped us unload it. We shored it up with a bit of stone paving from the garden and two stakes from the garage.

She actually laughed when I made my TARDIS comment. Sometimes I wish people wouldn't do things to make me like them.

As I was coming back from putting away the remaining stakes and the sledge hammer, I saw Dad talking to R____ seriously. I don't know what he was telling her, but she looked concerned and sad. The conversation broke up as I came down to them. I hate it when that happens.

R____ and my Dad's wife suddenly really started to hit it off. They're both gardeners -- and both outgoing. M_ went down into my neighbor's garden and she showed her the whole set-up.

Dad and his wife came in and cleaned up a bit, and then we toddled off to dinner at Ruby Tuesdays. They had a coupon. I used to take Mom there for lunch every so often on a Saturday. I'd forgotten that the first thing you have to do with one of their hamburgers is cut it in half.

*

On Monday afternoon I was doing what I could to recover from what felt like a minor case of heat stroke, picked up that AM working in the garden under the suddenly hot sun, when my friends from college, who live just down the block, showed up on my doorstep to invite me to dinner. This didn't sit so well with me, because it was unexpected and a disruption of my Routine, but I accepted because -- well, that's what I have to do to break out of myself, I guess.

When the time came to leave I threw the deadbolt on the back door and went out the front way. It turned out that Pandy Bear had been hiding on the front porch, so I had to get him back into the house somehow. I have no keys to any of the front doors. I went out the front, walked around to the back, tried to use my key to get in --

-- except that I had thrown the deadbolt.

"I'm in trouble now," I thought.

Thank god the downstairs windows were open, and thank god the screens aren't bolted to the house, and thank god I have a stepladder in my garage. I ripped the screen away, squeezed myself through, fell ass over head into my study here and banged my knee on the floor.

After that experience, a little bit of socializing was relatively easy.

But I must say -- as much as I sometimes get lonely and crave social contact, after two straight nights of it under these conditions I was glad to have things back to peace and normalcy tonight!

Gonna take out the trash (so I don't have to do it tomorrow morning) and scoot quickly around the block. G'nite!

-- Freder.

Here's to Stillness

I have much less to blog about now that life is becoming, thank goodness, less "interesting" -- as in the old Eastern curse "May you live in interesting times." Even though my disease sometimes causes me to dread what may be lurking, unknown, in the months ahead, it feels good to metaphorically bury the last twelve months. I'm going to try not to look back on it for at least a while.

This means my blog posts will most likely grow fewer and farther between as my focus shifts somewhat to things like reading and working on the new website. I'll still be here when I feel like Mister Ed and have something to say, but I'm not going to add to the internet's White Noise by just typing in search of a subject.

But I'll make an exception today.

*

The rain this week didn't just slant the skies with non-stop gloom: it created jungles of grass in the yards along W_______ Avenue, and probably frustrated the hell out of homeowners who care about this sort of thing. I hadn't mowed my yard in two weeks, so I can sense my neighbors seething and obsessing about the grass -- The grass! The GRASS!! It's two inches high! Must -- mow -- NOW!

Whatever the reason, on this Sunday morning when it would have been my pleasure to sleep in, instead the pent-up compulsion to mow that must have been building up in my neighbors over the past few days caused them to fire up their mowers on both sides of me at the ungodly hour of 8:30 in the morning, which in turn caused me to drag myself, rumpled and fuzzy-headed, to the computer and fire off an Indignant, venting post.

With no other option, I fed my cats and surrendered to the suburban mores and went out there to tackle my own lawn.

It seems so awkward and phony to smile widely, wave loudly back at my neighbors just because that's what they do to me. Especially when I am thinking such dark thoughts about them and their lawnmowers, usually something about throwing them under one. It's a part of the life-long game of "Let's Pretend" that I've had to play.

Another thing: Both couples on the two sides of me seem to spend a lot of time sitting on their porches or standing in their yards, talking to each other.

It seems to me that, if this is normal, it's probably the reason why I've never been able to sustain a relationship.

What can they find to say to each other? What can they be talking about for an hour? What language are they speaking?

I've always been pretty quiet and in my relationships I have been the listener. I never know what to say; if I do I never feel at ease saying it. First, I have to determine what she's really saying, or, if her words are clear to me, what she really means. Then I have to decide how I feel about it. Then I have to think about how to frame it back into understandable words. This can take a while. Sometimes, she has gotten indignant by then, and is saying something like, "Why can't you tell me what you're thinking?"

Well, I'm trying, but you're making it harder by stressing me out with your impatience for a quick response.

Oftentimes, whether I am with women or with my small circle of friends, the conversation moves on without me. I'm always finding the perfect words when the time for them has come and gone.

Shortly before she dumped me, my next-to-last girlfriend Lorna complained to me about our relationship. I could see that she was really upset, but I didn't know what to say to her about it. She said, "All we ever do is go to the movies and have sex!" -- as if that was a bad thing.

To me, she was describing the perfect relationship!

Looking at the normal couples that now bookend me on two sides, I begin to understand for the first time. Oh -- you have to be relaxed with each other, and you have to talk.

But those are the two things that I'm desperately bad at.

Looks like it's me and the quats, and my books and DVDs, for the indefinite future.

-- Freder.