Week 16 - Crap vs. Nature

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It was just an average week but two things stick out. Time to share!

On Monday night just after 9:00, I stuck my head out my slider and called in the cats. The TV was on behind me but I could vaguely hear my neighbor across the alley yelling something about my cats. I couldn’t make it all out but she was railing about my cats getting into her yard and that I should keep them inside. But when I turned the TV off and called back to her, I got no reply. I decided then and there that I’d head over there Tuesday after work to discuss this. One thing I should mention is that these people have lived behind me for 4 or 5 years and I don’t even k now their names. They moved in, put a ton of money into their little cracker box house (the whole neighborhood is full of them, my house included) and put up a huge fence that has no access except from their driveway. These people are not the neighborly type.

Fast forward to Tuesday night. I tried stopping on the way home but they were out so I headed over an hour later. I had to introduce myself to the husband when he answered the door and I said I wanted to talk to his wife. He left me on the step, shut the door in my face and came back a couple of minutes later to say that his wife wasn’t feeling well so wouldn’t talk to me. What a spineless wimp! She’ll yell over the fence in the dark but won’t look me in the eye and tell me what’s wrong. So, I explained that the cats were most likely the feral cats from the junkyard at the end of the street that the city had recently bull dozed. I left knowing for sure I have strange neighbors across the alley and that I’d done all I could to defuse the situation. Sheesh!

The only other thing of note happened on Friday. I’ve been sharing a temporary office for the past month with Nora, Dale and Grant (the work study student.) It’s been tight quarters and pretty noisy at times but actually kind of fun. Well, Friday was the end of it all. Nora’s new office was done so she moved upstairs. While the quiet might be OK, the bad part is that they needed to clear an office across the hall for a new employee who is starting Monday so all the crap ended up where Nora used to be - tables, chairs, computers, and assorted other crap from the training room. It looks awful! I was pretty bummed by the end of the day, knowing I’d have to look at the pile of crap for the next three weeks while waiting for our new cubie furniture to come in.

Since I was feeling pretty down, I decided to go see my campus cats after work. When I got over to Love, a cat I hadn’t seen but once since Christmas was there – Mama Kitty. Since she was back, I decided it would be worth looking for Silvio again (will I ever give up?) so I started another roam around campus calling him. The campus was aglow with blooms – crabapples, redbuds, bluebells – so I took out my camera and started taking pics.

Over by Sheldon, I came across a group of alumni women who were standing in front of a crabapple and getting ready to take some pics, with one woman volunteering to take them. I offered to take the pics so they could all be in it. So I started down the row of cameras and the granny grilling began. “What do you do when you’re not helping cats? What’s a data analyst do? Oh! That’s an important job honey.” It was like having a dozen grandmas doting on me. Between that and the beautiful flowers, my mood was completely turned around. Add that to a long phone call with Susan on the way home and I was starting the weekend happy.

I had plans to get a lot more done in the yard but that didn’t exactly pan out. I had foolishly offered to help at the library, which ate up most of Saturday afternoon, leaving some cooking as the only thing I got done at home that day. Then I slept badly that night and woke up feeling achy and tired. I did some more cooking, wrote an article and managed to prune a couple of roses but didn’t do much else. Oh well. I have 2.5 more weekends before I leave for England. I’ll get done what I can and life will go on.