December 3rd, 2011 at 3:54 pm
(Nature, Rants)
Yanno, I really wish my animal-abusing neighbor would fscking grow up and stop cutting on any saplings we plant on the south end of our yard because of whichever reason he is butthurt at us this go around. It’s getting very old.
It all started 10 years ago when the bastard decided to cut off our golden chain tree nearly to the ground. Then, some time after that, he cut off our two privet hedges (about 16 inches), our two euonymus bushes (ditto) , and the golden chain tree again. And then the golden chain tree for a third time perhaps months to a year later. This time he decided to take not one but two whacks at the Pin Oak we transplanted from the fence row to the yard because the first whack evidently did not cut it short enough for him to get his point across. Whatever the point may be. I think the point is “I’m a an impotent eunuch with the psychological age of a 13 year old meth-head and I hate youse guys for everything ever so I’m going to take it out on your saplings because that will really show you horrible doody-heads”.
Last week in the tail-end of the good weather Eloric and I went out to see how the Blackthorns, the Pin Oak, and the Hawthorn were all doing. We noticed that the wind had blown over two of the heavy steel markers we were using to make sure the Blackthorns were not trampled and re-set them. Then as we were crossing to look at the Hawthorn (Eloric’s terribly proud of the fabulous job he did with it, as he should be) when we saw that not only was the oak half the size it was previously but that the one of the pieces of the lopped off top was on the ground next to it and that the diagonal cut on the remaining sapling was not fresh at all. The top of the severed piece was ragged, suggesting that some dickbag was not happy with one cut but had a second go at it.
Eloric says he doesn’t have any idea who it could possibly be but adding up the length of time this has been going on, taking into account anyone who could have a grudge on us, who lives near us with ready access to the south part of our yard- I totally believe it’s the male half of the couple who live behind us, the couple who, until this late spring let their caged dogs live in about 4″ of their own feces and pee despite my repeated calls to Animal Control. According to the town Crazy Lady, she had called the authorities on them a couple of times, as did the electric company when they came out to trim one of the animal abusers’ trees away from the power lines. I think the animal abusers believe we had everything to do with this and this is their way of taking vengeance. Further circumstantial evidence (for me anyway) was had on a not horrible day last week when I saw him walking out to feed his dogs in the dark with a flashlight, huge sack of dog food and… oh look! A pair of scissors. Yeah. It seems very likely to me that this dickbag was the one who did this.
One of the oddest things about this is that this coward does not touch established trees. The Hawthorn? Untouched. Neither will he cross over into the yard to the Elm Tree and he has left the Golden Chain Tree alone ever since the three past prunings.
Now I admit that I chastise his kids whenever they come in the yard but this is because on two separate occasions, I have caught them in the trees and bushes just ripping them apart, grabbing handfuls of leaves and tearing them off the trees, trampling flowers, etc. I’ve caught other kids stealing flowers out of our yard and even adults too, mind, so I’m an egalitarian “Get off my lawn!” sort of person. If this has caused his arboreal tantrum, well so be it. It’s not as if the Pin Oak (though I hate seeing trees damaged) took any amount of time or money to transfer to the yard. Eloric is already talking about taking a picnic and making a day of getting a more established oak out of the fence row anyway. But still- who the hell does that? Does it make them feel like a big man to cut off… a sapling… something that takes nothing to destroy and can’t fight back regardless?
Someone has some serious issues.
November 2nd, 2011 at 3:51 pm
(Writing)
Though I might regret it later, I have decided against doing NaNoWriMo this year, at least in the month of November along with everyone else. There is a lot going on with me both in mundane terms and spiritually and I don’t want to discount any of that in order to write a novella that I have in no way prepared for this time around.
I would like to get writing at some point but it seems that all or at least most of the parts of my mind that used to be taken up with stories are instead full of spirits and ancestors and deities and they are taking the place of the stories for me at this time.
So- Sorry to be a stick in the mud this year or a bore but I just can’t do it this go around.
October 24th, 2011 at 4:43 pm
(Metaphysical, Thoughts, Writing)
As I’ve hinted upon in my spiritual blog, we’ve had a sort of disaster here and though it did not happen to me, it’s really affecting me. Some days I believe it has happened and am very, very, very, VERY mad at the perpetrator, how the disaster was hidden, and the likelihood of the rat bastard never having to own all of it and the likelihood of temporal justice being slim to nil. I cannot elaborate on it and I hope I have not already said too much. But there it is and it’s why I’m not so keen to write. Some days it seems like something I dreamt on cough syrup.
Speaking of writing, I don’t know whether I will be up to NaNoWriMo this year, given the circumstances. In years past, I have woven situations into my NaNo novels to help get over them but this year I simply don’t know if I can do it.
Speaking of other things… While this should go over in the other blog, I don’t feel comfortable putting it there yet. I am beginning to think that I did not dodge the shaman bullet after all. Things are happening. I’ve met so many new spirits this month that I’m having a bit of a time keeping track of them all. And I’m being poked. First, it was to get a belt pouch to make a corrbolg. I’m wearing that now. Then (and still, since the spirits are loving spending my money) a drop spindle and roving. I have little clue about hand-spinning. Today, I rendered a pound of suet into tallow for a request and I also burnt some wood for ash… and it’s not for soap. They keep mentioning a drum. I failed percussion hardcore in school. But no, poke, get a drum. Drum. Poke. Drum. Hello? Drum. I’m going to have to set aside my book money for that. I’ve got a job to do, I’m being told. It is one I can’t weasel my way out of.
This is where I am. It’s like being caught up in a tornado of emotion and experiences. Don’t get me wrong- some of it is awe-inspiringly great. Some of it is balls.
September 26th, 2011 at 9:31 pm
(Rants)
Its been a while since I’ve complained. It’s that time again.
I’m watching my Aunt and Uncle’s dog… let’s call the dog Butterscotch or Butter for short. I watched Butter last year for a week and believe me, it was the most thankless week of the year that was only marginally made up for with my payment. Last year I had to stay at the house with the dog 24/7 or she would drop a deuce on the carpet and attempt to track it around. This made grocery shopping difficult, since we shop 45 minutes away to be able go get food I can actually eat. The dog would stand out in the yard for hours if you let her but you couldn’t leave her outside by herself, lest she Darwinize herself somehow. Now this year is shaping up to be a real treat.
Aunt decided I am dumber than a box of hammers and left me a page of instructions regarding such things as the absolute time frame during which Butter eats lunch (11am to 11:30am), the amount of time I am to microwave her food (14 seconds exactly). She told me about the dog’s joint supplement… which “is a joint supplement”, which I already knew due to living above ground and not under a stone. This year I ought to get double hazard pay for taking care of Butter as not only do I have to break up a lactose-laden pill over her precisely-microwaved food, but I have to wrap her new pill up in cheese so she will eat it. It’s sort of a slap in the face from the Aunt who poisoned me with butter and breadcrumbs last year after being told numerous times how allergic I am to milk. So I have a pair of medical gloves I use to handle the stupid pills and cheese.
The dog, for all intents and purposes is blind and deaf and half lame. This is not her fault but it makes caring for her an adventure and a half. She’s not as decrepit as it sounds nor is she as decrepit as my Aunt and Uncle seem to think she is either. Butter can get into a chair by herself and is often in one when I go to let her out (every 2 hours). Aunt and Uncle insist that she can’t get into a chair and lift her up. I will lift her down from the chair to take her out because I don’t want to see her bust herself but I think she should be allowed to do all she is capable of. Supposedly, Butter doesn’t need let out at night but I found, to my detriment, that this was not the case yesterday morning when I came in to see that she had watered the carpet. So I put her out and had a glorious time cleaning carpet.
The TV must be left on for the dog and I also must spend at least 3 hours a day in her company. No. I am not joking. At least she is not crapping everywhere out of spite this year.
I suppose the Internet is wondering why on Earth I would volunteer to look after Butter given the work involved and my Aunt’s clear batshittery. Well, it’s a number of things. First off- No one else around here will look after her. I’m the only one with the time to do it. Secondly, the dog has to be in a quiet place, so she can’t stay with my youngest cousin, who also has a dog of the same breed. The dog bothers Butter. Butter can’t travel with Aunt because they go out all day to historical monuments and graveyards looking up ancestors for the family genealogy project. And then there’s the money… or there ought to be money. There had better be some monetary compensation for letting a blind, deaf, lame, ancient dog rule my life for a week. I’d like to pretend I do it simply out of duty but it’s more involved than that and I can’t pretend I’m a saint of a martyr or anything like that.
I made smudge sticks out of some of my mother’s golden yarrow today while I waited for Butter to do her business. I have them hanging up on a tree trunk to dry but I’ll take them down before it gets dark to avoid getting them wet with dew. I only made three of them so hopefully they last me the whole winter.
September 14th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
(Grieving)
Mother’s little dog Zane (who was once my dog) died in her sleep this morning.
I’ll just think of her as going to be with Dad.
September 12th, 2011 at 1:08 pm
(Metaphysical, WoW)
Just stopping by to talk WoW.
I believe I’m done with raiding for a while, possibly permanently. In the past two months we have had so much guild drama- over the Orange Pixel Stick, with people whose egos are so big that they believe they have the right to say anything and that no one can argue with them because that equals repression, over people who repeatedly break guild rules and expect to be given free passes because they believe they are so much better than everyone else. I believe that Oscar Wilde said that Hell is other people. I rather hold with his opinion right now.
It’s not as if I have not already been having problems with the game. It’s incredibly stale. I get that we are supposed to be writing lore now as we game but, having exhausted the old lore, the game has become a pointless grindfest to me. Back in the day, I could farm for hours, do daily quests for hours- Now it just seems like a ploy to suck my life away and keep me paying. I used to feel good about raiding. Raiding used to seem to have other benefits such as feelings of accomplishment, having risen to a challenge and conquered it. This is gone. We can’t go a week now without some asshat throwing a wrench in something and causing stupid problems that they would probably be ashamed of causing if Warcraft were real life. Almost every night, when Eloric is getting ready to log to do something with me, some guild member will whisper him right at the last second with a demand on his time. Usually it’s one of those things he can’t ignore, so he takes care of it and I have to wait. We’ve had some talks about this. See, Warcraft is horning in on our marriage more than I care for and something will be done and it won’t be me becoming copacetic about the time running a guild demands of him, I tell you, Internet.
read the rest of Out of Raiding Hell and into Reading
August 30th, 2011 at 12:34 pm
(Nature, News)
I woke up this morning to the dulcet beep beep beep of something large and ungainly backing up… over and over. My first thought was that they were paving the last gravel alley in town and I thought nothing of it. But the sound got louder and louder until it was practically under my window. Hot diggity! They are finally smoothing out the mess they made last year. They’re flattening The Scar.
I can already tell that they’re not going to make the heaped up dirt level with the rest of the yard. And they’ve managed to tear out a couple more roots of the cherry tree- as if it can really spare any. The cherry tree has been sickly for going on 4 years now and I think these constriction people are planning its demise. Eloric wants to start another tree to put in its place, which is a good idea but I just can’t give up on the cherry tree. Perhaps we’ll have an arborist out next spring to cut it and see if we can’t nurse it back to health.
But you know what this means- I can go ahead and order the Blackthorn trees I found and have been saving the rest of my dog-sitting money for. I shall have them! Rar! Also, unfortunately, we shall have to replace several lilacs, one variegated, the whitebud, the redbud, at least one blue spruce, and probably a maple and perhaps the copper beech- although I should go out and check on him to see how he is. He was coming back the last time I looked, though he ought to be put in the ground as soon as possible for him to have any chance at all. I wish we could submit a bill to the county for all the damage they caused. If they hadn’t been cheap and tried replacing a ceramic tile with a sad plastic one, if they hadn’t used some fly-by-night company, we’d still have our trees. But I guess this means I get to look up some replacements… if we have the money for them. I dislike being able to see our neighbors’ houses and that dog kennel.
Speaking of trees- Eloric went a-pruning a couple of days ago. I suppose this wasn’t the best time to prune but prune he did. Half of the almond tree had died, so he took that off. The weeping willow is a vigorous soul, so in order to have some back yard to ourselves, he gave her a manicure. I have my eye on the leavings of that manicure- some day it will be time to work with Willow and the branchlets he took off are of a nice diameter. I wonder where he put the Fiskars…
August 22nd, 2011 at 6:14 pm
(Thoughts)
I finally gave up and set aside a blog for my spiritual work. This way my muddled first blog isn’t clouded further by my attempts at making up for about 4 years of near-atheism. It’s my goal to post possibly useful stuff twice a week. I just figure since hardly anyone reads this blog anyway, I could make another blog hardly anyone would read but the blog would be more focused.
I’ll keep this one -obviously- and use it for the usual complaining, crying about food, detailing guild drama that I can no longer bear to keep secret, recipes, and other bits of shiny things I pick up along the way. NaNoWriMo will still be obsessed about here and bad poetry may make a comeback.
Anyway.
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