Stuff and stuff

Here's a post about a little bit of everything... from neighbors to birthdays to amazing eyes:

As you know, we went to St. George last weekend and my brother Matt agreed to sit the animals while we were gone. That means spending the night. Since we seem to have an overabundance of critters (4 cats, 1 fish, 1 dog - a tiny group for US), it's just easier to have someone stay over. Kida is still relatively skittish around strangers and totally devoted to us. Unfortunately, when Matt arrived the power was out so Kida couldn't see who was in her house - she just knew it wasn't one of us. Matt tried to coax her in, but she was having none of it. Instead, she tried to alert the neighborhood sporadically that there was a stranger in her house and someone needed to do something about it.

Matt fed her and the rest of the animals in the morning and headed off to church. When he got back, he found this on the door:

He gave me a call on the cell to alert me to this, but there's not a whole lot we can do about someone else's perception. I've only heard this dog bark three times in the naer-year we've had her, and really can't imagine her keeping someone up all night.

When we got home, Darling Man went next door because even though the note wasn't signed, we were pretty sure we knew who wrote it.

Our neighborhood is one that turns over slowly. The people who live there have lived there for decades, including our next door neighbor. He's set in his ways, has a lovely garden, and pines for the lady who used to live in our house. And he doesn't like us. It's nothing personal. He doesn't like our cats, the way we mow the lawn, the fact that I pulled out the boxwood hedge next to the sidewalk (that was overgrowing it). We may not be ideal, but we are good neighbors. We keep the lawn mowed, we're quiet, we're friendly. But we're not Laura and never will be. And he has a problem with that.

Monday night, the drunk across the street staggered over to talk to us about Neighbor Man. He said that he wasn't always like this. That he used to be friendly and happy. Drunk Neighbor and Neighbor Man spend a lot of time together. They talk. The other day, I saw Neighbor Man mowing and blowing Drunk Neighbor's yard and wondered if something was wrong with Drunk Neighbor.

Apparently, there is something wrong with Neighbor Man. He's running his blower for hours everyday. In fact, he's running it so much that he's killing the grass in his yard. Then he blows Drunk Neighbor's drive and the street. Every day. I watched when I stayed home on my birthday. He blows the street in front of every house that touches his property and the houses across the street from them.

Proof.

I don't know what to think, honestly. Drunk Neighbor is pretty sure that Alzheimer's is setting in. He may be right.

On another subject, the azaleas and wisteria are amazing right now. My back yard:

We had a family dinner at the farm for my birthday on Monday evening. Dad cooked out barbecue chicken while Mom pulled together coleslaw, potato salad, rolls and salad. For dessert we had sugar-free angelfood cake, sugar-free strawberry ice cream topping and sliced strawberries. Delicious!!!

There was lots of visiting. Brother Andy came down from Atlanta for a few days. The dogs played with ZBoy and ran around like crazy - getting so thirsty that they wound up emptying the birdbath.

Brother Jerry also arrived, but late. Being a towtruck driver, he's at the mercy of the phone that's clipped to his overalls. He was half way out to the farm when he got a call, had to turn around and go back to town for a tow, then drove out again. I'm glad he made it, even if our visit was short. The next day was a school day, so ZBoy had to get home and go to bed.

The picture I took with my new camera of ZBoy's eyes inspired me to take pictures of some of my family's eyes. Note that EVERYONE has blue eyes in my family!!!!

Matt

Andy

Darling Man

Mom

Jerry

Me

ZBoy

John

James

Dad

That's a lot of blue eyes!!!!