chipmunkernie's Blog

Spent weeks using my little battery-powered chain saw to clean off the small stuff from bracnhes of trees felled in the storms, planning to use them to our wood stove. Today the professional tree people came to take down the big stuff, were told to leave the branches we could use for the fire, and not only did they woodchip 75% of what we wanted saved off the trees they took down, but they ground up all my carefully cut piles for the stove!!!!

I can't imagine how a parents deals with something like this. We just got a call from our next-door neighbor--after battling a year or more, her teenage son died of cancer last night. It's hard to take in. So hard to imagine that kind of loss.

Soooo tired of thinking of people as friends, supporting them, and getting nothing back unless it fits their mood. Then there are people who I don't really know that I don't talk to that often, but if I say I'm down or whatever, they are there with a hug or a gift. Starting to cull my circle to get to the people who actually seem to notice me.

Just got a call from our insurance broker, the new company they deal with won't renew our home insurance because one of our dogs is a shepherd mix. What the hell? It's not like the dogs run loose or anything.

Watched the movie this afternoon and in a way it left me feeling sick. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, but our home was filled with black students, teachers, and coaches, so I never dealt with any white people like the ones portrayed in the film. I don't believe in distinguishing by race, but it still made me a bit ashamed to be white.

Drainage guy says move everything into the middle of the basement so he can put in drainage and sump pumps. The electrician just gave the estimate for running new circuits for the sump pumps (another $1,000.00) but for him to do the work nothing can be in the middle of the basement because he has to have access to the major beams for running the new wires. Don't know whether to scream or simply whimper and curl up in bed.

Trying to clean up the flooded basement, moving stuff, and picking up PA speaker cabinets and it reminded me of the old days when i played out in bands. In my life I've looked skinny, I've looked fat, but I've never looked muscular/cut/whatever. But moving the speakers reminded me of the old days when we had roadies and people to help and two guys would be straining and having trouble moving my bass speaker cabinets (about 3'x5' with 8 speakers) or PA cabinets and I'd just get frustrated and pick them up by myself and carry them. But it's frustrating because I never looked like I had muscles. Even in my deteriorating old age, I can still pick stuff up and move it -- though I admit I can't carry things as far as i used to without a break.

Made a comment on a story because it sounded interesting -- got a PM from the poster telling me my comment was being deleted because it had several "like" votes so obviously I have some kind of clique that runs around EP voting for whatever I say.

Great. Now some neighbor (we think we know who, a bastard who calls the police on everybody for everything from leaves in a yard to mailboxes on "his" property) called animal control and claimed our yard was over-run with ferals cats that we feed. The animal control officer came to the door and was shocked when my wife pointed to two small boxes on the front porch where the two feral cats we do feed live. From the complaint, he was expecting at least a dozen -- and then went into shock when he wanted to know if we had "all" or dogs licensed and found out we only have two dogs. Bastard neighbor.

The officer is putting us at the "bottom of the list", but some day he's going to come and trap the cats and have them killed unless we want to pay to have them spayed (my wife broke the news that they're already spayed through a local program that catches feral cats, spays them, and releases them back into the wild and we paid for several ferals in the neighborhood to have this done over the years, even the ones we don't feed), given rabies shots, and licensed -- otherwise he'll trap them and have them killed because they're to wild to be adopted.

Cat-killing bastard neighbor.