The farmer’s market here is a constant source of pleasure for me. I love the varied smells, popcorn, sausage, grilling onions, the smell of fruit. I also love the sight of it, the colorful items on the clothes vendor’s racks, the bright piles of the fruits and vegetables. There’s usually a band playing on one corner. It always makes me feel glad.
Creepy UPS Guy
So the Wonderful Spouse and I, or rather I and the Wonderful Spouse are having a rather strange experience and I’m just not sure how to handle it.
It’s the UPS driver. He creeps us out. Both the Spouse and I have both had experiences with him. Experiences that creeped us both out. Experiences that occurred on different days at different times, but leave us both feeling more than a little itchy.
He made a delivery one day, stopping as I came out the gate, sitting down on the planter wall, and saying “You’ve been doing a lot of shopping, haven’t you?” I could see that he was looking around behind me into the yard. I said “Yep”, went in the gate and locked it.
I told my husband about my feelings. He looked at me and said that the same guy had come into our garage when he was working there, going to the front gate and then into the garage, the door of which opens onto the street. He’d already thrown the package over the gate and had no reason to go into the garage. My husband was working at the workbench behind the car, so the guy didn’t see him at first. The Spouse also said that he’s seen him parked around the corner for long periods during which he seems to be checking out the neighbor’s home.
Now the guy hasn’t done anything that’s actually wrong. But I trust my creepometer. I have to deal with people who have issues on a weekly, if not daily, basis. It fine-tunes your radar for people who are a little bit off quite quickly. I’m wondering if I should tell UPS to check and see if there have been any murders along this guy’s route. No doubt they would think I’m crazy. Well, I am crazy, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
Lunch
I buy lunch every day at work. I really feel like I shouldn’t. It’s wasteful, unhealthy and expensive. Every once in a while I resovle to take my lunch to work. And every time I do, I find out all over again why I don’t bring it. There’s no place to eat it except in the basement break room, windowless, cheerless, boring. I call it the dungeon.
Lunch is my only chance during the day to get out of the building. Go outside and walk a little, get away from my desk. There’s no place to go nearby besides the dungeon. Maybe my car, parked in the parking structure. What fun that would be.
I resolve not to resolve to bring my lunch until I can find someplace to eat it.
Sun, please
The weather has been driving me crazy. It fools me nearly every morning. At 6 am the sun comes streaming through the window and I think “Oh boy! A sunny day!” By the time I’ve actually gotten out of bed, taken care of personal hygiene and gotten dressed, the cloud cover has moved in and the day is gray.
We’re nearly at the solstice and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of even partially sunny days we’ve had. This is Southern California, for cripes sake! Where’s my sunshine?
How to rid your garden of pests or Evil Plans
I have pests in my yard. Or rather, my neighbor has pests and they’ve ended up in my yard and are making a mess of it.
My neighbor has a couple of teenage sons. For a long time they and a couple of other boys have practiced skateboarding in the street in front of our houses. I don’t mind; they don’t run into cars, they get out of the way of traffic. But recently there have been girls. The girls, I’m afraid, are the pests.
They run up and down the walkway the common area, giggling and throwing the stones in the path at the boy’s satellite dish. Their aim is exactly what you would expect of adolescent girls and most of the stones end up in our yard. If I look out the window, they scream and run.
They also stand in my yard and talk to the boys. I think because the boy’s parents can’t see them there. I would care, except that the girls like to kick the mulch out onto the sidewalk and into the street. At first I thought it was a cat or a dog or something. The mulch would be out on walkway and in the street. I’d go out and sweep it up and the next day it would be out again.
Finally my husband pretty much caught them at it and told me about it. I immediately started plotting. How do I get them to stop without making the situation worse?
Asking them to stop would probably make it worse. Hell hath no fury like a resentful teenage girl. I could rake the mulch back and water the dirt to mud every day. But that’s wasteful of water and not good for the plants besides.
I thought about setting the sprinklers to water for a minute every 10 minutes for an hour, but my system will only water every hour on the hour. It might be workable, but once an hour is not all that usefull. So far the best option seems to be a motion activated sprinkler. Now wouldn’t that be a surprise.
The whole thing may be moot. When I got home today the mess they’d made last night was gone and my husband said he hadn’t cleaned it up. I’m wondering if the kid’s dad came over and cleaned it up. He’s been an exemplary neighbor so far and it wouldn’t surprise me at all. Much better if he caught them at it and made them stop. That way their resentment won’t be focused on me. *Sigh* I was kind of looking forward to the squealing and running.
Frankenbutt
This morning, day 10 since his surgery and the first allowable day to have them removed, the Spouse took him to the vet to get the stitchest removed. Poor cone-headed kitty (thanks Canyon!) is finally cone-free.
That has not stopped us from calling him ‘Frankenbutt.’ The poor fellow has exhibited some pretty odd behaviors over the time since the collar went on. Last night, after being woken by thunder, I went downstairs to find him ‘coning’ the floor. He would walk a couple of steps and put his head down until the cone was flat on the floor, walk another few steps and do the same thing over again. He did it five or six times while I was watching. I still can’t figure out what he was doing. I am hoping that this already neurotic cat is not going to permanently affected by his torture.
Valley Carpenter Bees
I think that the internet is a wonderful thing. If you need information, it’s out there, somewhere. It may take a little persistence to find it, but it’s there.
We’ve had bees in the piece of driftwood I brought back from Oregon for about 5 years now. Every year sawdust piles up in drifts at the bottom of the stump and every year I think the thing must be hollow by now.
For the last couple of years there have been golden bees along with the black ones I’ve seen all my life. My husband and I wondered what the heck they were. A different species? Some sort of mutation. Turns out, all of the above. They’re boys!
Thanks to the UC Davis Department of Entomology for answering a long standing question.
Misery is catching
We found out this weekend that my husband’s cat has an abcess on his hindquarters. We’d noticed that he was limping slightly and licking that area constantly and when we looked more closely there was obvious swelling.
The Spouse took him to the vet immediately. They discovered the abcess, and performed surgery to drain it. They stitched it up and left a plastic tube in so that the wound could drain if necessary. They sent the poor cat home with one of those cone collars on. By the time he’d gotten home he had it off. We put it on again and got it off in seconds. The third time we got it on to stay.
Since then he wanders around the house yowing. The Spouse feels bad for him. I feel bad for him. The cone freaks out my cat and she’s been very skittish. One cat collar has affected our whole household.
We’re hoping that the vet will allow us to take the collar off today when they take out the drain, although we don’t think it’s likely, because he’ll still have stitches. I don’t think I’d have the heart to put it back on if we take it off. I’m not sure he’s ever going to forgive us as it is.
I am about to commit catricide
The new kitty likes toys that jingle. We have several of the plastic balls that have bells in them for her to chase around the house. Which she does whenever she can find one of them. The trouble began at midnight last night when she discovered one under our bed and started playing with it. I was just falling asleep when she found it and started rolling it around. It was LOUD as we have wood floors. I got out of bed to try to find her or the ball. Couldn’t find the ball and she ran away. I got back into bed. 15 minutes later, same thing. And again 15 minutes after that. And then again. That time I waved a pillow at her and tried to shoo her away. When she did it again I got down on the floor, found the ball, threw it into the trash and chased her out of the room. She doesn’t know how close a call that was.
