The day off

Ummm, nice start to the day. I woke up at the regular time but then fell asleep for another two hours! After that my son and I hung out for a couple of hours until he had to go to bed, he’s working later. V-Man and I are going to the movie “Chicken Little” this afternoon. He is still rather disgruntled about the blog thing but is a bit happier now because somebody E-mailed him about his blog.

I decided to take the advice of the wise and sophisticated Ms. Vile File) (and others) to remove the link to V-man’s blog. Nobody has commented on it yet (which is kinda sad because that’s one of the reasons he was jealous) but he could be using a tracker and could still follow links back to me. Oh well. He has a clever blog but it only has two entries so far and it’s not a journal type blog but more philosophical. I like those type of blogs OK, and political blogs, but get tired of a steady diet of them. I like the personal-journal type ones the best. I find it fascinating to read about other people’s lives, but each to their own.

My jeep brakes are working fine now. It’s great to stop firmly without all that gnashing and grinding going on! It’s supposed to be a beautiful, glorious day today. What a prime day to have off, even though part of it will be spent inside a movie theater. V-Man doesn’t want to do anything together after the movie, so I know he’s still a bit mad at me even though he insists that he’s not.

I tried called SLA yesterday but her cell phone is disconnected. I’ll have to stop at her house some time today to see her and her houseguest. If they’re still there. Despite the fact she had an offer on her home and it sold, the sheriff sold it at auction and a local bank has bought it. I don’t know what that means for her and she didn’t either when I talked to her on Sunday, the last time I’ve seen or spoken with her. That’s worrisome. Maybe she’s at her sister’s apartment. I know where that is and the phone number too. Her belongings are pretty much all in a storage shed that her kids helped her with last week. I wish there would be a breakthrough of good news for her soon.

Today I ran into my neighbor and she (again) offered to help move our “storage car” up on to our lawn. I don’t want the car on our lawn, which I’ve told her many times. But she says her husband can’t snowplow around it in the winter, and yes, they’ve been very great neighbors about doing that and I really really appreciate it! It’s backbreaking to shovel our driveway. But the old car is not the problem, it’s already tucked away on the edge of the driveway. Plus I don’t much care if he accidentally hit THAT car or not.

So far he’s demolished our mailbox, the fire number sign and smashed into my son’s car causing a lot of damage that he said he’d have a friend fix but never did. The storage car is well out of the way already and should be a heck of a lot easier to avoid than the mailbox, fire number sign and my son’s car! I don’t understand why they are so adamant about moving that car. I kind of like it right where it is—it looks like someone is home even when we both are gone. Plus I don’t like how she doesn’t seem to think it much matters if we put an old car on our lawn! It does matter to me, it would look like crap and be totally in the way, and in our view, right outside the front door. She’d never think of doing something like that at her own house but because our house is non-conventional she seems to think I have no standards whatsoever. I’m tempted to just say “no thanks” to the snowplowing but don’t want to antagonize any of our (all very good) neighbors. What would YOU do about that?

I talked to my son about it and he got irritated with me and called me "wimpy" I've been called that so much lately that I'm developing a complex about it! In fact if one more person calls me wimpy I'll deck them! Not really. I'd probably just walk away muttering to myself like usual. Is is bad or wrong to want to live in peace and harmony? Guess so. It doesn't make other people respect you, I've noticed.

But I can't help how I feel about it: I sort of feel like we owe the neighbors somewhat. They've plowed our driveway, saved us lots of trouble and I've not done anything in return (nothing comes to mind, they pretty much have everything and a slew of strong young sons to help them, housesit and other chores). It's true that I've never ASKED them to plow, but it's been very welcome nevertheless. I just don't know. It's easy to give advice. And easy to act all big and tough when it's not your problem and you won't suffer from the fallout.

I once worked with a woman who pooh-poohed scraping snow off the windows or brushing off her car. She would brag, with a toss of her head, "I just get into the car and drive away!" and everyone thought her such a tough, dashing figure. Well, out in the parking lot after the first snow, there she was, brushing and scraping with the rest of us. Nobody said a word to her about it, in fact they didn't even seem to notice that her words certainly didn't match her actions! She still was considered a striking, forceful figure by everyone else but I didn't look at her the same after that!

So, what am I saying here? I don't really know. I'm talking defensively, like usual. Guess I need to throw out some brave BS and hope nobody notices whether I actually live like that, or not.