Ragnar the Destroyer*

*primarily of walls, yards, and carpet

For all things there is a season. A time to sow, a time to reap...

A time to attempt to rip small furry rodents into small pieces, pick fights with the neighbor's German Shepherd, and a time to howl.

Welcome to teenage doghood, where it's not the hormones that cause a pet parent to contemplate murder daily, but the instinctual need to define and defend the furry male territory. If you've never experienced teenage doghood stupidity, let me give you some examples.

• Idiot Puppy will sit nicely when the truck he recognizes enters the parking lot, but when the other German Shepherd gets out he will instantly Cujo out: full hackles, teeth bared, growling lunging in all the ways that would get him kicked directly out of daycare if he pulled that bullshit THERE. 
• Conveniently for all involved, GS is older and wiser and terribly sweet. He generally looks at me when Ragnar gets growly with a pained "children, amIright" attitude, and never ever responds negatively. Interestingly, he still comes over cheerfully to say hello every time he's allowed, which is often since his parents also recognize the "BUT I'M A BIG DOG YOU CAN'T BE ON MY GRASS WITHOUT PERMISSION" cockiness. 
• IP also sits at the back door and slobber-growls when he sees the GS's TRUCK parked across the lot. This is a new development since the snow melted, prior to which his view was blocked. It's annoying at 7am. He's been warned, by both me and fAngus. 
• fAngus's warnings generally come with a cat-paw-slap to Ragnar's face or a nip on the ear. Mine do not. 
• Apparently he occasionally channels Chewy, because the leaves are dangerous and must be announced when it's windy. Birds on the back step, however, are beneath his interest. 
• Birds are NOT beneath fAngus's interest. Particularly on the back patio. It's possible this was a consideration when a certain evil me set out birdseed on the grill this spring. 
• Mwahahahahaha
• IP has taken to getting between me and others in a protective manner I find amusing and helpful until he trips me or inappropriately shows teeth/growls at someone when I don't have an adverse response. 
• We're working on that, since big black dogs with giant teeth generally cause problems if they're not behaving in public places. And I dislike getting tripped while we're walking...or any other time. 
• It's worth mentioning again: not only does he behave well in daycare/boarding/dog park (except for going in the goddamnedishymuddypond without permission) and is a total social butterfly to everyone there, he ADORES the next door neighbors' new mop puppies. 
• I don't know what they are, but they weigh all of a couple pounds and are the size of my unused-running shoes, and Ragnar LOVES them. 
• Related: the bloodhound heritage is real, and loud. The other day we were sniffing the backyard (by "we" I mean I surfed Facebook for forever while Ragnar went over every centimeter of our shared yard-space with his nose in the dirt) and the neighbor girls brought the new moppies out. They were in the front yard.  Ragnar desperately wanted to go to the front, and when I said no he sat down, raised his nose to the sky, closed his eyes, and howled the most mournful sad and FUCKING PATHETIC ATTEMPT AT MANIPULATION OF MY EMOTIONS possible. My dog told on me to the entire damn neighborhood and the gods, because I'm a mean bitch who wouldn't let him sniff puppies. 
• Yes, it worked. Goddammit. 
• Sorry moppies, for the teenage puppy slobber. 
• All the neighbors think my dog is hilarious and cute. fAngus and I are the only ones who are less than amused at the squirrel-chasing, bunny sniffing, yard digging, wall eating, adorably snuggly teenager who has zero impulse control and a whole lot of unearned swagger. 
• To date, he's been unable to capture the elusive yard bunnies OR grey squirrels, both of whom are often spotted taunting him but fast enough to escape to the trees (up or under, depending on skill). I'm thankful for that: I give him de-worm pills and stuff, but I don't want to add any sort of small furry prey animals to my "Things Ragnar Ate" list. fAngus would have to kick his ass, since I won't let him hunt either. 

In all fairness to Ragnar's Destroyer of Walls moniker, the 3 holes he originally ate during his pica stage haven't increased in size or number for at least six months. I'm cautiously optimistic that it's time to fix the walls and maybe even get someone to paint. 

He is still occasionally the Destroyer of Carpet, which does not impress me at all and let me just say I've tried every product on the damn market and NOTHING is up to the challenge of a 75lb dog's pee. I hates it, precious, but I'm afraid of replacing the carpet AND I'm afraid if I don't he'll never stop. 

I think he'd happily destroy more of the yard if I let him. Because...dogs. 

Make America Educated Again

I'm not sure how to title this post, because the utter stupidity of the conversation that sparked it annoyed me so much I needed a couple of days to decide how to approach the subject.

Two days ago Minnesota held Primary Elections. I was outside letting Ragnar snuffle around instead of doing the business he was supposed to be doing, and my neighbor walked by. I've talked about her before, and to be fair we mostly get along. But Tuesday she received a real response from me, because her self-absorbed stupid was just amazing.

She started the conversation by complaining that our property taxes will go up again because my city had "yet another stupid school levy pass".

Ok, I was confused at the bitter snarky tone. "Why is that a problem? Good schools mean good neighborhoods which mean good housing prices and upkeep." I honestly think she expected me, a single woman with no kids, to actually agree with her. Instead I continued, "I don't have kids but I WANT good schools, so I'm happy to pay the levies...a good school system makes the whole city better to live in."

Selfish to the core, she immediately changed tactics, because ultimately her fussing is purely based on "I don't have kids in school, why should I have to pay" which I find to be an underlying formula based on self-absorbed myopia among many MAGA folks: "I don't have/do x, so I shouldn't have to pay for y." Yeah. I'll get to that idiot argument in a minute. Her argument changed to "well it all goes into teacher pensions anyway, none of the kids see any of that money."

OH MY FUCKING GODDESS, YOU SELFISH IDIOT.

I didn't say it out loud. I so wanted to. Instead I said, calmly, "So...teachers already don't get paid enough for what they're doing, and you begrudge them a decent pension after they spend decades putting their own money toward underfunded school supplies and work ridiculous numbers of hours for ridiculously low pay to educate the people who will eventually run the nursing home you end up in? I disagree."

She flounced (as well as a 70 year old cranky old bat can flounce, anyway) with the following parting shot: "Nobody paid for MY pension and I never made enough money. Why should I pay for them?" Can you hear the nasty combination of whine and bitterness in her tone? I did. Ugh. Then she slammed the door, thus endeth her proclamation.

So, as amusing and idiotic as she is, the whole conversation disturbs the crap out of me, particularly in this current political climate and with an a-hole like Betsy Davros at the helm of national education directives. Let's remember what the difference is between SOCIALISM and SOCIETY is, shall we, because there seems to be some serious confusion regarding freedom, socialism, education, and the benefits/responsibilities of living in a society by a whole fuckload of selfish asshats since the idiot cheeto came to power.

• If you drive on roads, YOU BENEFIT FROM SOCIETY. 
• If you get city water/sewer service to your house, YOU BENEFIT FROM SOCIETY. 
• If your public education is decent, your neighborhood is more desirable. 
• If your neighborhood is more desirable, your housing prices rise (including the value of your own property, which is essentially an investment of many folks' personal wealth) and those who buy into the neighborhood tend to take care of their property, and YOU BENEFIT FROM SOCIETY. 
• If your home is on fire and you call the fire department, YOU BENEFIT FROM SOCIETY. 
• If you have need to call 911 for cops or paramedics, YOU BENEFIT FROM SOCIETY. 

If you can read, you can learn to understand the laws (you know, laws enacted by society?). If you can understand the laws, you can support or dissent. If you can disagree with a law you understand, you can discuss with others and potentially change the law. Freedom requires participation, which in our country usually requires at least a base level of education. Otherwise, you are just going along with what others impose upon you and your say is silenced.

• Just for the record - SOCIALISM is defined as follows: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

Services society has agreed to pay for so we can use them and share the cost, like roads or fire departments, are not socialism. They are the result of participating in a community, which has zero difference from community-assisted barn raising or volunteering to trade harvest help a hundred years ago. I'm convinced that some of these folks who think in a selfish and short sighted way about education, health services, etc. must have had a seriously sub-par education. All the more reason to improve our schools. 

Here's the thing - education is one of the essential areas where anyone not in the 1% of wealth can be kept under control by that same 1%. If you are uneducated (by choice or by lack of resource availability) you are easy to keep down because you're too busy trying to survive on low wages, bad benefits (or none, including health insurance), and all the downstream ramifications. Education is a basic stepping stone to an fairer and more equal society where the majority of folks have at least a SHOT at that elusive "something better" this country is founded on. 

An uneducated populace allows propaganda and fear to rule their lives, and we get shit like the Inquisition. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT ANOTHER INQUISITION?

The tricky part of society's services that offer a CHANCE at more equality is that nothing is guaranteed. Just because the opportunity is there doesn't mean everyone takes it, and if we're all honest luck does have some say in success, but the simple availability of basic education is one of the services differentiating a successful functioning society and serfdom. 

The kicker, the lesson so many seem to forget after 9th grade civics, is if you are going to benefit from society you are also responsible to it. If you participate in life, you are responsible for making the environment in which you live the way it is (good or bad). I think people who recognize this responsibility make some effort to make things better, because bitching and complaining is a downward spiral. It doesn't have to be a grand gesture or a full time job: it can be as simple as recognizing that only shitty selfish assholes take without ever giving back and bitch about things like taxes for the roads they use, the emergency services they might need, the medicare they inevitably complained about paying into but then use at retirement (like my neighbor), or the free education that benefits all of us (even those who can't afford private school) just by being available. 

It can be as simple as voting: exercising the right and responsibility to participate in decisions that affect your environment. 

I want the environment I live in to be full of educated people who make decisions based on something more substantial than propaganda. I think those who do the teaching need to be excellently educated themselves, and compensated well for their particular skill set (good teachers are a combination of motivator, multi-subject expert, public speaker, counselor, cat-wrangler, and magician...I decidedly do NOT have that particular set of skills). 

So yeah, I'm good with a school levy that provides better education and better educators with well funded programs. AND pensions. Bring on the smart populace. 

End rant. 

Excuse Me, I'll Be Hiding Until This Is Over...

Mercury is in Retrograde.
This Friday is the 13th.
AND A FULL MOON over the weekend.

People, I greatly enjoy astrology for entertainment, but I'm telling you...something is rotten in the month of June.

With all the crap going on with the rental house (let me just say WOW, in the most horrified sort of tone, to the extent of hosery involved in using a management company's pet maintenance people for estimates) that is THIS CLOSE to being resolved in way that 1) gets things done in a way that will leave me grocery money and 2) let's me pay someone I know and like, supporting HIS business instead of a big company, I'll be lying low until this superstorm of astrological asshattery is over.

We still have stuff to unpack anyway...lying low is the ideal state for the time being.

I'm not kidding you guys, here's the weird ishyness for the week:

1) The city inspector put something on the list of required fixes given to the rental company that was DIFFERENT than mine.

2) Said list included things like repairing the paint on the oven hood (which by the way appears to have been steel-wool-scrubbed to take paint off by the cleaning guy, since it was NOT that way when we left), adding STRING TO THE LIGHT PULLS in the closets, and screwing the back patio step to the structure. Snort. That last one is owned by the association: they're fixing it.

3) Husband started a new job this week. Husband ended a new job today. For very, very good reasons: it was just a bad deal all around. But still, hope springs, hope dashed.

4) My truck's overhead map light/garage opener switch/moon roof switch panel decided to unclip itself from the roof of the truck. I'm not kidding, it happened overnight: perfectly fine Sunday afternoon, hanging by a single clip and the wiring on Monday morning.

5) Just about every normally-scheduled bill we have is extra this month for some reason or another. Mostly because we just moved and the first bill for utilities and such include fees.

I know in the long run things will work out, but holy crap these past two weeks have been an exercise in keeping my sanity through frustrations on almost every front. I think it's clear what has to happen here.

Margaritas. There will be many, as soon as these repair shenanigans are handled.

And a good long nap for my crankypantsness.

Townhome Twits: Episode Brothel. Yes, I saved this for last.

So I believe I told the Baba Yaga story about the old woman who sold her house for pennies a few years ago, yes?

This ties to the brothel thing, I swear.

Directly across from Baba Yaga's unit is a home that's flipped five or six times since we moved in. The last actual owner who lived there was a badass lady from Oklahoma, who told me once that her neighbor (Peeping Peeper) once tried to talk his way into her house to "check" something. She, being a take-no-shit-from-anyone woman, looked him in the eye and advise she's perfectly safe with her carry permit and .45. Then she shut the door in his face. I wish she still lived there. Unfortunately, she lost her job when the market tanked and had to leave her house to move back to Oklahoma. Various groups of renters have been in her place since then.

In the meantime, Baba Yaga's house was purchased by a very nice young family with three little girls. In five years I've seen the wife once: she advised (very nicely) that her kids couldn't play with our dogs because they couldn't let dogs lick the kid's faces (their religion says dogs are dirty). To each their own, I say, and we've been pretty decent neighbors overall (there's one house between us: the lovely and VERY forgiving Mexican family whose bird was murdered by my overzealous dog).

The same summer the no-dog family moved in, a group of college girls rented out Oklahoma's house. As typical college girls, they had parties. They had friends coming and going. The whirlwind bitch shared walls with them, and never complained at all so everyone assumed they weren't bothering anyone, and all was well.

Until I came home from work one day to be stopped by the Baba Yaga's new owner. He asked if I'm on the board (I was at the time) and "reported" that "those women" are running a brothel in that house, and something needs to be done. His exact words, which I will likely never forget: "I have small girls: I don't want them exposed to that filth."

What. The. Fuck.

Nope, I didn't laugh in his face. I asked what prompted this suspicion. He said "men come and go, stay overnight, and cars are always changing." Sigh.

I told him it's extremely unlikely the independent women in that house are running a whorehouse: if they were, likely their wall-sharing neighbors would say something. I reiterated that adult women are allowed to have whomever they like over to their home as long as they don't impede traffic or cause disturbances: they'd done neither. Then I asked how on earth a baby and two toddlers would have any idea they'd been "exposed" to "those women" unless HE said something to them. He couldn't really answer that.

To be fair, I was as professional as I could be in my response, no matter what I WANTED to say. I said if he saw actual laws being broken he'd need to call the police, but a house of female roommates with boyfriends is a LONG way from a brothel.

Since then the ladies have moved out (and we've had a few different groups living in that house...I suspect because they discover they're living next to a peeper and run like hell) and the family's girls are old enough to ride their bikes unsupervised around our driveway. Along with all the other lovely unsupervised spawn who taunt my dogs through my back windows, ride their bikes around blind corners with traffic and apparently create campfires on the hill in the backyard.

I love kids. I wish these had parents who paid some attention, because there's way worse things than being exposed to independent women in our neighborhood.

Townhome Twits Episode V: The Baba Yaga

Two doors down from us there lived an old woman who strongly resembled the Baba Yaga (well, without the chicken feet or the iron teeth). Her wiry steel-grey hair was always neatly bound up in a bun on the top of her head. Her teeth were strong and yellow (no dentures there). The combination of long nails and somewhat arthritic hands gave her a fairly creepy clawed look, but truthfully she was a very kind woman with a fairy-tale-witch look about her.

Baba came to every annual homeowners' association meeting and sat in the front row so she could complain about the kids and dogs in the complex. In all fairness, she complained more about kids than dogs (and never once yelled at us when Thor was a puppy and ever-escaping the house unleashed).

When our buildings were originally constructed in '78 they were intended to be a quiet retirement community (in my six years on the board I was often reminded of that fact by Baba) with no children or pets allowed. That, of course, explains why our complex has a giant flat-topped hill in the center with absolutely no amenities whatsoever: rumor has it there's no pool, garden, or park up there because the hill was created as a construction garbage dump by the contractors building the place. Or, there's bodies in there. Who knows?

Baba Yaga was a stubborn and nice lady who wouldn't allow anyone else to shovel her sidewalk (it gave her exercise and the opportunity to see what's happening in the complex in the winter), do her shopping or any other assistance. She always struck me as a rather lonely soul: her kids had all moved out of state and she'd expected to retire in a nice quiet community that ended up somewhat crazy with all the noisemakers moving in and out.

She moved out three years ago after saying "I'm 90 and I'd rather just have my money and die at my son's house." She sold her house and moved to Philly, I think.

In the end, Baba Yaga got us all back for our noise and general shenanigans. I'll never know if it was intentional or not, but I suspect those iron teeth are grinning somewhere.

She sold her place for $35k. THIRTY FIVE GODDAMNED THOUSAND DOLLARS. Sigh. Those of us who stayed when the bottom fell out of the market in our underwater-mortgages cried a little when one of the NOT abandoned units sold for under $50k.

The new owners...well, they're an entirely different post.

PS: Clearly spellcheck doesn't know Russian fairy tales...it's insisting "Baba Yaga" is spelled incorrectly and wants to change it to "Abba Yoga". Ha!

Townhome Twits Episode IV: Bitch Wars

Read the first couple Townhome Twits here: Sneaky Peeping, here: Snow White, and here: Eyeore.

Our place has excessively limited parking. Everyone gets a one-car garage and two assigned spaces. Visitor parking isn't supposed to be used for resident cars, which means for people like Husband (who currently owns one winter car and two fun cars in addition to the truck and my mustang) we are always fanaggling parking with neighbors.

Directly in front of our house we have one spot. The spot next to ours is Eyeore's, who rents it out to the neighbor across the way and down two places. I'm beginning to think I need to draw a damn map, but my skill with MSPaint is laughable. 

This would be the lady who has been a pain in our collective asses since we moved in eight years ago. She and her three barky little ankle biting dogs (and they are, indeed, biters...my ankles can attest) run the complex. Anyway, said neighbor we've called the Bitch since we moved in. Why? Well, the first winter we lived here there was a LOT of snow. The snow removal dudes clear a two-foot wide path where they guess our sidewalk should be, and that winter the snowbanks on either side of the walking path were pretty high. The Bitch's daughter kept parking her car in such a way that she blocked half of our sidewalk. I put a note on the car (not knowing it was Bitch's daughter's car: thinking it was a visitor, since it wasn't Eyeore's) asking please park appropriately so the sidewalk isn't blocked, and PS there's visitor parking around the corner.

This woman knocked on our door about twenty minutes later, screamed at me incoherently while waving an old parking map, and walked away without giving me any chance to respond. I'm not kidding: to this day I think she was screamumbling something about being allowed to park there and how DARE I harass her daughter. But she could've been saying something about doughnuts or dogs: she seemed drunk. After that she became the Whirlwind Bitch: swooping in to snark and bitch about parking and running away before anyone can respond.

She did so again last winter while Husband was in the wheelchair and had home-health nurses and PT people coming to the house. Have I mentioned when the association repaved the parking lot they didn't bother to line and number the assigned parking? Yeah. They didn't (because they're cheap assholes), so there's NO WAY for a non-resident to know not to park in assigned parking.

This time, however, I yelled back at her as she tried to escape.: "I'm SO TERRIBLY FUCKING SORRY that my WHEELCHAIRBOUND HUSBAND'S health aids don't know where to park and you can fuck off since they're here for 1/2 hour a couple times a week when no-one else is home. Oh, and please can you tell your asshole cougarized boyfriend with the very large "my penis is huge, really" truck to park straight so I can get my husband's chair out of our car without scratching anything? Thanks."

She hasn't been back since.

Eyeore and Woody. (and Oompa Loompa Flower Children, if we're counting ALL the weird today)

In today's edition of Townhome Twits, Eyeore.

But first...today at lunch I (foolishly) drove over to the strip mall with Byerlys (grocery store) so I could feed my book addiction spend too much money eat at Barnes & Noble. And read. This is the same Byerlys where a random old lady accosted me with racist commentary about how the neighborhood USED to be (which is why I no longer eat in the Byerlys diner area unless it's nice enough to be outside).

Anyway.

I paused for pedestrians like a decent driver (who doesn't like blood on the mustang OR filling out police reports) for a couple of teenage girls leaving the grocery store. One looked like any other teenager (and thus, I have NO IDEA what she looked like at all). The other looked like an Oompa Loompa had unfortunate sex with a 60's flower child. She was glowing in that unhealthy, Chernobyl sort of way under her short-shorts, and her bright magenta dye job was held down by a headband that looked like she's pulled it all forward and didn't understand that headbands aren't crowns. Or tiaras. And she wasn't wearing enough flowery bits to be a true hippie. Apparently the combo of hair dye and skin dye made her cranky, because I was given her most severe hairy eyeball look (also known as the stink-eye, if you aren't familiar). As an approximately 17 year old, she did a pretty good snarky teenage girl look, but the effect was ruined by her orange. And I was utterly unable to not chuckle.

I SO WISH I'd gotten a picture.

And on that note, let's discuss Eeyore and Woody.

Eeyore lives across the driveway from my townhome, right next to the CIA Sneaky Peeper. I suspect that drives some of her woe-is-me attitude, because honestly, who WOULDN'T be woe-is-me sharing walls with that dude?

The unit on the other side of hers was abandoned for over a year (the former owner passed away and his widow went somewhat off the deep end into drugs and such). Therefore Eeyore was constantly convinced that 1) SOMEONE was cooking meth in the abandoned house and 2) that I, being on the HOA Board at the time, should do something about it. I said "call the cops" because let's be realistic here: I'm only intimidating to certain types of people, and I'm 99.99% certain methheads and drug dealers are not included.

I actually have quite a bit of sympathy for Eeyore. She lived alone for a very long time, and I never EVER see company at her house. I'd not assume that means anything, except she gives off the desperation odor whenever I see her. You know that look: a little too much hope in the eyes combined with the hunched over posture that screams "I need to tell you how much everything sucks." I listened to her in the beginning, because I thought I should and felt bad if she has no one to talk to (I discovered otherwise quite fast, and the Whirlwind Bitch, Eeyore's best friend, is another topic).

Also, she's nosy as hell, which is both a detriment and a boon to our complex. I mean, when the crazy methhead dude (unrelated to the meth house next door to her, which turned out NOT to be a meth house and now has a very nice couple and their dog renting it) ran through our complex the first year we lived there, I was happy she was home to call the cops. 

But when she suggested that the board should keep a list of all residents living in our community and the license numbers for every car, I firmly told her that's NOBODY'S business but the homeowners' and she needs to get a different hobby (other than wandering around the parking lot looking for out-of-date license tags or visitor parking violators).

GOOD GODS can you imagine the amount of work that would've been for the board? NO FRICKEN WAY lady. No fricken way.

Instead, she got a dog...and now she has an excuse to walk around and look in windows, backyards, and cars every day while she walks Woody. Woody, the long-haired mini-daschund, is ridiculously cute and quite charming. Unfortunately, Woody hasn't removed any of Eeyore's generally glum attitude or outlook on life, and so Husband and I quietly go the other way when she's outside, except to return a wave and "hello" from a distance.

I listen to a LOT of people who need, emotionally. Eeyore is one of those who would suck out every drop of helpful energy a person possesses and point out just how shitty YOUR life is, as well. Yeah. No time for that, even though I do pity that she sees her life as so miserable.

Side note: when I ran Spell Checker (which doesn't recognize important terms like "meth" and "Methhead") I discovered I spelled "Eeyore" in about 15 different combinations. All of which are now fixed. You're welcome.

Snakipeder Defense League: ACTIVATE!

So this showed up on Facebook today.

thanks, J.H.Heimdal's Facebook page

And of course my IMMEDIATE reaction was to consider the value of a Viking Squirrel Horde, preferably in full Berserker mode, to send into the crawlspace under my house.

To attack and kill the Snakipeder(s) under there.

Because I planted a container vegetable garden on my back patio and seeded the dead space on the back lawn, and I STILL HAVE NO OUTSIDE WATER.

Because I'm a 6' chicken, that's why. I can face down human bullies all day, but I'm not going anywhere near any snake/centipede/spider things.

I'm not metal, so no, you can't call me Beyonce. She lives at The Bloggess's house.

When Snow White Gets Old (and Crotchety...and probably demented)

Townhome Twits
Episode 2: The Demented Disney Princess

This post is fairly rambly, but in my defense I did amuse the hell out of myself by creating a new creature word. You're welcome, and I'm not one bit sorry.

Kitty corner from our house there lives an early-retired woman who's last (patient) son moved out to California two years ago. And so she now lives alone. We'll call her Snow for purposes of this story.

Snow earned her moniker by perpetually leaving birdseed, bread, and other inappropriate offerings for the small wildlife in her backyard, which happens to face the woods (and therefore no one sees what she's doing).

She has charming landscaping and is actually a fairly decent neighbor in that she doesn't seem to care about my dogs barking, who's parking where, or whether renters are running a brothel out of their unit (more on that in another post).

However, while I served on the board she was a perpetual pain in my patoot. No landscaping/snow removal company was good enough (a complaint which was generally accompanied with racist remarks about the workers). She came to the one All Association picnic we attempted to have a few years ago (yeah, EPIC fail: our complex is mostly apathetic and/or unsocial) for the sole purpose of bitching out the property manager because squirrels and chipmunks were getting through the dryer vent grate, chewing through the dryer vent itself, and getting trapped in the crawlspace under her house.

I'm still creeped out by the idea of opening my dryer and finding ANY sort of creature looking out at me, cute rodent-ish critter or otherwise. It doesn't help that Husband EVER so kindly told me snakes would be in our crawlspace (because it's warm there) during the colder months. Asshole. This is why I still don't have an outside water source this spring..NO WAY IN HELL am I going into the first circle of hell to turn on the spigots if the potential is spiders, centipedes AND snakes. I watch too many creature features...the monster-mashup (SNAKIPEDER!!)...ugh.

So...yeah...she FEEDS THE SQUIRRELS. In eight years I can't honestly tell you how often she's bitched about creatures in her house/crawlspace, but she will NOT stop feeding them.

Did you know the phrase "bang like bunnies" is not really an exaggeration? Bunnies are ridiculously prolific, much to my dismay. Thor may be an old man, but he'll enthusiastically chase squirrels up at full speed up the hill to the big cottonwood in our yard, at which point the squirrel shimmies up the tree and chitters down disapprovingly (or tauntingly, if that's a word. It is today!) at his panting self. Of course, now that he's old and out of shape, if he repeats the performance more than once he either pukes, limps for two days afterward, or both. Sigh.

Bunnies, on the other hand, DON'T CLIMB TREES. Therefore, if he manages to get off the leash or away to chase them, he'll just keep going. I don't believe he can actually catch the little bastards, but I don't want a repeat of the bird incident, so I'd prefer NOT having 17,000 bunnies hanging around. I have no sympathy for her rodent problem.

This, by the way, was the same woman who marveled at my next door neighbor's tulips and lamented that all of her bulbs are eaten by the squirrels.

AHEM.

Before we went to Mexico I had a moment of pity for her: she found out we were going out of the country and responded in an...unadventurous way. Her advice can be summarized as: "they'll (she's not a fan of Mexicans, except when they grow gorgeous tulips in the house next door to me, apparently) all rip you off/don't eat ANYTHING because it'll make you sick/Don't drink even the bottled water because you know they just fill it from the tap" commentary. Sigh.

She also thinks the people who bring veggies/fruits/etc to our local Farmers Markets are both cheating (by not growing the food but buying it at a grocery store and repackaging it) AND contaminating it by using human waste as fertilizer. In this case "those people" refers to the Hmong families who are at many of the farmers markets around the Twin Cities area. Oh she's an equal-opportunity racist, indeedy.

I didn't bother to get clarification why they'd need to fertilize produce bought at the grocery store...I didn't want to encourage her.

I think it'd be sad, wrong, and frankly pretty pathetic to see a paradise like Mexican beaches through her prejudices.

Maybe I could get her to go into the crawlspace to check for Snakipeders and squirrels...and turn on my spigots while she's down there. Preferably before she's eaten by the SyFy-esq critters lurking under my house.

Merida, she is NOT (a teaser-trailer for the Demented Disney Princess post)

This is not a real post. I'm going to sunny gorgeous Cancun tomorrow for a week with the recovering husband (dude, after the horrible fall/winter we had, it's time for a fricken cocktail on the beach!). Depending on his vice-grip on the iPad, I may or may not have an opportunity to post rude pictures from my balcony.

By rude, I mean sun/sand/ocean postcard-quality pictures (or the blurrier kind, which is more likely, although whether the PICTURES are blurry or it's just my drunken eyeballs...well, that may be up for debate). I do not mean the sort Go-Oogle* uses to say I'm too lewd. 

I'm a little ADD this afternoon, counting down minutes until we leave, so this post is likely shit. Sorry!!

Anyway, since we'll be gone** and my posting opportunities will be stymied, I'll wait to post anything on the Demented Disney Princess until I get back. Although she HAS made a point of looking ever day at my next-door neighbor's tulip garden (that's not a dirty euphemism...she really DOES have a lovely garden of multi-colored tulips) every goddamn day.

Yesterday she said "I wish I could figure out how she (neighbor) keeps the rabbits/squirrels/chipmunks from eating the bulbs in the fall!"

I did NOT say "she doesn't fucking FEED them every day, you twit."

But I REALLY wanted to.

*My readers (and commenters) are AWESOME, and I'm likely to start using Go Oogle instead of Google all the time now. Thanks!!

**My mother in law is dogsitting at our house, burglars, so don't bother robbing us. Between the three of them I'd be afraid to even knock on the door. And I say that with love: my MIL is pretty awesome.

Jeepers, Creeper...you're a sneaky peeper!

This began as a single (snarky) post about neighborliness, and the extreme lack of it, in my living situation.

Then, while filling in the details about my crazy CIA neighbor, the suspected brothel and the demented Disney princess I realized I have WAY too much for a single post. Therefore, let me introduce a new unofficial-but-true section in my blog: the JOYFUL neighbors in my townhome complex.

Anyone who poo-poos country living or small-town living as too intrusive (everybody knows EVERYBODY'S business in small towns!) has clearly never lived in a townhome complex. Seriously, take the worst possible attributes of nosiness and snarky-neighbor bitching, add sharing walls, communal yards, and stir with vigor for dramatic results.

I grew up on a 40 acre farm...we had PRIVACY out there. Townhomes are worse than apartment buildings...because everyone thinks they "own" everything, and have no issues telling you all about it. Anyway, we've had some fabulous characters come and go in the eight years we've been here, and since I'm stupid civic minded unwilling to bitch about increases in dues without making decisions about them, I spent six years on the homeowners' association board.

Did I mention I'm stupid?

I DID get to know most of my neighbors during that punishment time served, though. I like dessert first, so let's begin with the most entertaining fool, shall we?

The CIA's Sneaky Peeping Tom
That title seems unfair to men named "Tom." And cats.

The CIA's Sneaky Peeping Dude
Our complex is a large square surrounding a flat-topped hill. I suspect the mafia buried bodies in that hill (that's why there's only trees up there; no pool, no tennis courts, no amenities at all...just grass and the occasional skeletal hand poking through rock). The rest of the board assumes it's basically a giant mound of construction trash covered with dirt by the original builders.

Anyway, the back of our house faces the hill, which is FABULOUS. It's like we have a giant back yard without anyone being able to look in our windows, so it's almost private. The front faces the row of houses on the other side of the drive. The master bedroom is, of course, on the front of the house. Facing the bedroom window of the unit directly across the driveway.

That particular owner, as it turns out, is a dirty peeping peeper. His next door neighbor (Eeyore, who will be discussed in another post), was friendly with Peeper's ex-girlfriend and shared most of the scoop with us (under the guise of being helpful...of COURSE she'd never gossip about her neighbors!).

Apparently he had his ex convinced he's CIA agent. I wasn't aware CIA agents were chronically late paying homeowners' dues and liked to start ALL CAPS EMAIL fights with the association over silly things, but I guess that's one way to blend into the hotbed of suburban activities? Anyway, she said he had regular nighttime "drills" involving night-vision goggles and scopes and the windows (seriously, any nighttime drills in MY house involve significantly different maneuvers). He has cameras set up around his house, and has telephoto lenses set up to look into other townhomes.

HOWEVER, this dude's been caught looking in the patio doors and back windows of other townhomes in the complex. When caught he always says he knocked on the door and no one was home so he was "concerned." He stole the President's girlfriend's panties out of their dryer. In their house. When they were home. (That'd be the president of the homeowners' association, not the POTUS...I'm pretty sure nobody could steal anything from that house without several bullet holes, real or fake CIA)*

Did I mention my bedroom is directly across the driveway from the dude's bedroom? Sigh. We have REALLY good curtains. Husband has mentioned on a few occasions that he'd happily open the curtains and look back through HIS scope...with a rifle attached. I suggested anyone who's loony enough to SAY he's a CIA agent likely 1) isn't and 2) is unstable enough that we should probably leave him alone.**

If Peeper ever has tried to look in our windows from the backyard, I sort of wish I could've been a fly on the living room wall...because I bet he pooped his pants. My dogs are giant fluffballs who love kids (um, maybe not birds...) and visitors and everyone (except birds). But they're not fans of people looking in the backyard windows...and 250 pounds of dogs is a lot of canine barking at you. Honestly, they're why I find this particular neighbor more amusing than disturbing. That, and I'm pretty sure Farrah from Teen Moms (and Vivid Entertainment) is a better trained CIA agent than this guy.

*Dear Secret Service and/or Homeland Security: This is a humor post devoted to making fun of an idiot neighbor. Said neighbor is neither currently nor formerly a government employee (although if his ex girlfriend is accurate, he's on disability and runs a panty-porn internet site, if that helps), and nothing here actually has anything to do with any presidents other than the one who used to run our townhome association. Seriously though...if you're reading this feel free to reassure me that you'd never let a sneaky peeping tom type in the CIA, ok? Wait...sigh. Maybe that's a job requirement.

People, this is just one of the many reasons why I'd fail as a spy.

**Disclaimer: sneaky peeping peeper HAS been reported to the cops, who very helpfully said all we can do is continue to report if/when incidents happen until they have enough to justify an actual investigation. Which essentially means "yeah, dude isn't doing anything we can catch him doing, so there's not a damn thing to be done about it." So indeed, I love my dogs.