Tag: neighbors

Things Do Not Improve.
June 9, 2008

Apparently I was right on multiple fronts. WS’ MS is the remitting/relapsing kind. So is our relationship, again, after his extreme steroid treatments. Things are rough right now. His walking and speech are nearly back to normal. Our talking might resume next week. Uncomfortable silence and avoidance is the rule right now. Outside developments this evening didn’t make things any smoother.

Over the past month, I’ve had the very, very strong feeling that my mere existence is irritating to most everyone I come into contact with, friends, acquaintances, and neighbors alike. It’s an awful feeling and though I want to believe it’s just some kind of paranoia brought on by gawd knows what, the feeling is nearly overwhelming. It doesn’t make sense but it exists regardless.

About a month ago, I attended a function in which everyone was required to RSVP publicly via email the same morning of the event. I was the last to respond, and within an hour of doing so, all but one person cancelled. I wrote it off as coincidence. I went to the event anyway and that one person didn’t show up either. No problems. Things, like life, come up.

A couple of weeks ago, I apparently pissed a few people off and made another one cry. I suspect it was because I wouldn’t lie nor could I bring myself to do so. WS says I have an over-sense of responsibility, something he now says isn’t a bad thing (although that wasn’t what was expressed the first time it was said.) I’m still not sure how that’s a bad thing.

Over the weekend I went to a gathering at which I met someone who previously professed to have wanted to meet me for some time. Once we met however, they were sorely disappointed. They couldn’t seem to want to get away from me fast enough. They thought I was something else entirely, someone who could help their career. I don’t know how they might have come up with that idea because I’ve never represented myself as anything but what I am.

This evening, WS and I were told to move away by a highly irate Mr. Dimmer over the latest ball his kids hit over our back fence. WS handled the incident with the kids who came to the door asking for their ball back. He reminded them of our widely known rule: The next time it happens, you don’t get the ball back. It’s the same rule we tell all the kids who have ever lived alongside us and the rule we told The Dimmer kids some five years ago. And yes, because I know what most of you are thinking: Yes, we are assholes. Yes, we are those people who yell at your kids to stay out of our yard. Yes, we’d hope you teach your kids to have respect for others and their property but that’s not the case with The Dimmers. It is us who must bend to their wills.

WS went and fetched the ball. If I know WS, he glared at the kids when he gave it back to them. I know I would and have done just this myself. Little Screamer Dimmer, the young daughter who cries if you look at her longer than five seconds, went home and cried for her father who marched, literally marched to our door and called WS an asshole to his face. Then he called us both liars for telling him that a ball comes over the fence from their backyard at least once a week when weather permits kids to play out back. I routinely toss balls back over the fence on a weekly basis during my daily garden stroll. But nope. Mr. Dimmer didn’t want to hear it.

Then he told us to move if we don’t like it.

Then he marched around the neighborhood and appeared to be trying to drum up support for his cause, whatever that might be (perhaps he’d like everyone to sign a “Happy Asshole Card”) amid wild gesturing and sudden movements. I suspect he also went over to The Renters, the family everyone but he is having problems with and since then, we’ve spent the evening being flipped off by numerous neighborhood kids left and right. I’m honestly expecting our house to be vandalized, if not overnight then sometime soon.

Let’s see, I wouldn’t lie yet been called a liar twice in the past couple of months, WS once. WS was called an asshole loud enough for neighbors up and down the street to overhear (not that we care about that – the kids on this street could drown out a low approaching 747; what’s more swearing and shouting?). I disappointed a few people including one who thought I was something I’m not. Even with living here four years longer than The Dimmers, we’re told, nay, screamed at on our own doorstep, to move “if we don’t like it.”

What’s the world coming to when someone trying his hardest to get over an MS exacerbation has to go through this kind of crap? What’s the future hold for me when I’m feeling that I can no longer speak my mind? I’m trying to keep in mind that Mr. Dimmer, out of yet another job for a few months and probably not taking his medication, both things he tells the world at the drop of a hat, is under a lot of stress and things probably caught him on a bad day. But other people have bad days too. When do people stop thinking of just themselves? When do people start taking responsibility for their own actions and the actions of their kids? When do people start owning up? It used to be common sense. We’ve bred this very thing out of our offspring.

That’s all I’m going to say about any of this. Unless police and lawyers get involved and maybe even then, I’m signing off for a while and giving everyone a rest.

Tag: neighbors

End of May Update.
26 May 2008

We had summer here for one long, hot weekend but it's been back to cool, rainy days and nights here in the Pacific Northwest and nothing could please me more. Sure, our tomato plant isn't going to like it but then again, I think we knew this would be a 'green tomato' summer and only bought two. Fine by me.

I've spent the last month working long hours in the backyard, laying retaining block and slowly, ever so painfully slowly working on that 6x6 patio area that absolutely MUST be done by this coming Friday because a 51 inch wide storage locker WS bought is being delivered here then. The locker is to hold the pressure washer he also bought, something he's wanted for almost a decade. Since we don't have room in our garage (remember, we park cars in there; how novel!), thus the need for an outdoor storage cabinet.

Silly me to insist I'd be able to lay that cobblestone patio by then. Who knew we'd go from rain, rain, rain, to one hundred degree temperatures for three days and back to rain? Truth be told, I've got half of that brick patio finished, just not the half that we need done the most...and we've had nothing but buckets of rain ever since.

But that's not why I'm whining. I feel terrible for WS who wanted that pressure washer and wanted to finish scrubbing the backyard walkways using something other than hard labor. Now he won't be able to touch either for a month or more. His MS is back with a vengence. We lucked out and he didn't have an exacerbation this past February when it usually shows something. Sure, he had a day or two of feeling wobbly but nothing like this time around.

Official WS MS icon.

Last Thursday his balance was off fairly badly I thought. By Friday morning, it was way off and his speech was slurred. Saturday, he couldn't walk without careening into tables, walls, and doors. By Sunday, he couldn't stand for long at all without bobbing and weaving severely and is barely able to walk for more than a few steps before exhaustion takes over.

His speech is slurred and for whatever reason, his brain and mouth seems to want to use extra long, difficult-to-pronouce words which his tongue and lips won't cooperate long enough for him to begin to say. It must be his engineer/writer mind trying to push overly intelligent language out. It's terrible to listen to because you know he's frustrated with the difficulty he's having. I want him to save his breath and in my hard, but caring way, have to tell him to try not to speak because I know the more frustrated he gets, the worse things will get, the longer it will last, the angerier he will get, the more depressed he will become.

So I have to 'remove' an emotional part of myself from him, as I have to do everytime we go through one of these in order to take on the caregiver mentality, the one who says, "NO, you will not keep trying to walk around, NO, you are not going to the store for groceries, NO, you will not spend fifteen minutes trying to explain the subtleties of the latest South Park episode. What you will do is rest and let this thing run it's course because there isn't anything else anyone can do but that except to make sure you don't fall down."

Gawd, this sucks.

The house clean, our bedroom has been changed around. We've switched sides of the bed so he has better access to the bathroom and a better view of outside. Numerous loads of bedding were washed, dressers switched and cleaned, floors cleaned and scrubbed. I did grocery shopping earlier today and the fridge and cupboards are stocked for the time being. We've both eaten. The car has a half tank of gas. I've cleaned up and organized everything I can think of doing (except finishing that stupid patio). I've cancelled appointments. This evening, I'll be taking over the cat feeding/litter scooping duties usually performed exclusively by WS. My mind is preparing again to deal with the stress of doing everything alone while taking care of a grown, 260 pound man with MS who cannot walk/talk/see/whatever else MS throws at us.

This will also have to do in regards to the removal of the Blogeois webcam. We've been having lots of problems with it lately, as you all know because I've whined about it enough. Because I knew a time would come when WS would be unable to fix it, or convey to me how to fix it (something we've had long, long discussions over in the past), I've been left with no choice but to take it down. Today, on the day when we should honor and memorialize those who have served our country, if you can see fit, please share with me a tiny moment of silence for our webcam. While it hasn't served our country, it did bring joy to myself and others during it's eight long years of service.

Thank you.

Tag: misc

Slow Snow Leaks and Noise.
20th April 2008

This has been a fun weekend. If it weren’t for the weather that I’m enjoying so much, I might have something to complain about. I don’t, but I’ll tell you about it all anyway.

Snow was forecasted for our area and sure enough, we got some! Got some hail too and ice and a bit of freezing rain. Okay, in all fairness, I’m not terribly happy about buying that flat of spring geraniums or those two tomato plants or half a dozen petunias last week and now needing to keep them in the slightly warmer garage where they are getting all thin and spindly and yellow but if they can hold out just one more week, I think they’ll pull through.

Yesterday morning, we woke to a leaking toilet in the master bedroom. Our flooring can handle water sitting on it up to a point. We’re now changing towels twice a day under the tank where a bolt rusted itself through the bottom. We’re now waiting for Lowe’s to call us next week to deliver and install a new bigger and improved toilet, one that WS has probably been pining over since reaching maturity. Normal sized commodes are barely big enough for normal sized people. WS has never been normal sized. Since we have to replace the thing anyway, my thinking is if he can afford it, why the heck can’t the man have a little comfort when sitting on the pot?

Yesterday I also discovered another reason not to like the renters next door. Oh, I haven’t mentioned much about them, have I? Trust me, that post is coming. Boy, is it ever coming.

Official Neighborhood Renters icon.

I predict a miserable summer for both us and them. I’ll also say a new sound can be heard on our street. No, it isn’t the constant whacking, thudding, crashing sound of the renter’s kids skateboards while their oldest works for hours, day and night, trying to learn how to flip the thing. Nor is it listening to the youngest take a metal-ended bungee cord and beat the living crap out of the property’s trees and shrubs. Nor is it the drums the oldest whacks and crashes every day for an hour between three and four p.m. out of their open garage twelve feet away from our house (‘played’ with extra enthusiasm whenever someone passes on the street).

Nope, it’s the sound of a clock ticking. Tick, tick, tick, the sound of the minutes before I call the rental company and lay into them for 1) being so irresponsible for renting a home in a densely-packed neighborhood to a family with a teenager learning to play the drums, 2) for renting a two vehicle home to a two-driver family with three cars who rents a room out to another driver with two cars and has between them five, sometimes six vehicles jockeying for parking out on the narrow street that was built with the intention of no one ever parking on the street, and perhaps most importantly, 3) renting to a family who’s kid draws crude images on the community mailbox with a permanent black marker and invites over pre-teen boys who scream such endearing things to each other like, “Two, four, six, eight. Let’s go home and masterbate!” and “Suck my boobies!”

I scrubbed the penis off the mailbox yesterday. I did it while it was snowing. Had to use scouring powder.

After finding it thrown up into our yard twice, I finally took the big block of wood the skateboarder uses to jump with and tossed it in the trash. I’ve replaced the large river rocks we use in our landscaping twice, from their driveway. I’ve pulled the blooming weeds from their ignored, dead side yard (even though they have weekly lawn service that should be doing this) in hopes of preventing our yard from bursting out in mass dandelions. We’ve listened to hours of loud drum playing and noticed the kid only plays them when trying to impress his friends or anyone passing by, or when he spies one of his parents turning onto the street, returning home from work. We’re on to his little game.