Bitching and Moaning

Egoddess, what a week!  I am so fricking tired, I can barely keep my eyes open.  But I've been neglecting posting here, and the natives are restless.  Our stats have taken a DIVE - but mysteriously, actually.  One day we're getting like 800 visitors a day, the next day we drop down to 200 and it doesn't change?  Yeah, right.  Something happened with the stats long before I stopped frenetically posting here five times a day!   

Speaking of days, the last TEN have been a ceaseless round of hot and mega-humid weather followed by fierce storms with non-stop lightning (of which I have a morbid fear), loud house-shaking thunder, and torrential downpours of up to 4 inches at a time, depending upon which part of the city you are located.  This week I had not one uninvited swimming pools in my backyard -- the usual one along the north lot line where the yard slopes to a low spot -- there was also one formed along the south lot line, and I could just visualize it's insidious waves of water rotting out my fence posts, one by one!  The fence posts that I had Kevin the Handiman reinforce with metal rods last November when I was attempting to get the house into shape to sell (don't get me started on THAT topic). 

No rain yesterday or today, but it's been unrelentingly hot and so humid, I just cannot stand it.  It was 85 degrees downtown at 5 p.m. when I walked out of the office building I work in, and that's within spitting distance of Lake Michigan, a natural air-conditioner.  It was much worse when I got off the bus 50 minutes later and seven or so miles inland (about due west).  It felt like it was about 200 degrees F.   I am breaking a sweat sitting here in my air-conditioned home just thinking about how AWFUL it is outside.  I mean, come on people, who breaks a sweat while standing still and under no stress just by exiting her front door?  Yours truly does! 

This climate has, I think, driven me mad.  Yep, I'm officially over the bend.  More storms are forecast for after midnight tonight, and I can already see the clouds starting to pile up on the western horizon, a sure sign we are in for yet another blow.  Tomorrow, more of the same, except the action is forecast to be "scattered" - whatever the hell that means.  One cannot cut the grass if it gets drenched in a 30 minute downpour.

So I rushed home from work tonight, even though totally out of any get-up-and-go whatsoever.  One freezes on the air-conditioned buses which are set to one temperature only - ARCTIC COLD.  I had enough of a coccoon of gcld air about me when I exited the bus to get me through the first block and a half - the hardest part of my non-stop climb up hill toward home.  I didn't even break a sweat until I turned onto 81st street, just 3 more blocks and I'm home!  That's how frozen I was from that damn bus ride.

I trudged upstairs, changed into junk clothes, drenched myself in bug spray (I HATE the stuff as much as the bugs LOVE me.  I have high octane carbon dixoide emissions, it seems, and the bus just cannot get enough of me,  so bug spray is a necessary evil).  Since I did not have enough steam last weekend to cut the front lawn, it is doubly tall this week - six inches and even more in some spots.  I'm tired, I'm bitchy, I hate the bug spray I'm drenched in.  I just want to play on the internet researching yet another family tree I am researching, but duty calls -- with the weather forecast, I MUST cut tonight, or invest in a couple of sheep and keep them permanently chained in the front yard from now on to chomp on the grass.  I don't think the neighbors or the City of Greenfield would approve.

Yechy.  That's what I am now.  Yechy and funky after spending a good hour shoving that damn lawnmower around through that tall grass.  I think I lost 10 pounds in sweat.  I am attempting to replace those 10 pounds with 10 pounds of wine.  I cut the grass extra tall but even so, the sod web worm damage is now quite apparent.  I would very happily murder each of those sod web worm larvae with my bare hands, if I could find them!  To make matters even worse now, my stupid neighbors to the south - I REALLY HATE THOSE PEOPLE, I REALLY REALLY HATE THEM - had the only serious shade tree in the front of both of our lawns cut down.  It was a well developed Norway maple and there wasn't a thing wrong with it, but earlier in the week it did lose a branch because it was too heavy.  The tree hasn't been pruned in years, duh!  A branch broke off and fell on and smashed the hell out of a honeysuckle bush I have bordering the front lot line very near the curb.  I came home and went EEK, figured out what happened, and cleaned up my smashed shrub.  It was easy to figure out what had happened, I could see the "wound" on the maple where the branch had broken away.  I didn't bitch and I didn't complain to my neighbors (ha, an abuse of the word!).  Such things do happen when one has trees.  Anyway, the next day I get home from work and the rest of that nice maple tree is gone!  Now my front lawn will get even MORE sun exposure from the south, the kind those little bugger sod web worms just LOVE to breed in.

I really, really HATE my neighbors to the south. 

Great, just great, now the sod web worms will have even MORE FRICKING SUN to breed and grow in and eat up yet more of my lawn in the sunny summer time.  Where can I rent a cannon - I want to blow up their house - with them in it.

I am plotting my revenge.  I am checking out local tree growers and will bid out a project.  Preferably two large trees are going to go into my front yard as close to that fricking south lot line as I can get them, allowing for future tree growth.  And then I'm going to get myself one of those electric leaf blower thingies, and in the fall I will get busy and make sure I blow all of my leaves just over the south lot line right on to their front lawn - like they used to do with their maple tree leaves, depositing them on my lawn. 

I am also going to firebomb their mailbox.  Tonight - during the middle of the storm (I can't sleep during these storms anyway). They may just think it was struck by lightning, tee hee hee...