It's a grey, rainy day today and I'd like nothing better than to be at home in my jammies snuggling with a couple of furry creatures. Instead, I am at work, but with the door closed and have just finished a chicken club wrap and a gigantic serving of fries and am now looking at my blouse and admiring the stretch-satin across my belly---pulled to it's maximus maxim. Add to that a hot flash that is causing sweat to pool above and below my lips and at the nape of my neck, and you've got one hot lady. Not. Oh well....one of these years I will pull myself together. Maybe.
What's new here? Not much. Just the benign day to day stuff. One of our neighbours, who we called Chatty Cathy behind her back, has moved. And, I'm glad. Sometimes I think I'm not really as nice as I think I am, or other people might think I am. Chatty is the kind of woman who talks non-stop, and it's all about her and her job. What's gone on in her day, what one student said to the other student, how one of her boy needs to wear deodorant, blah blah blah. If ever I dared to mention something about my job, she'd immediately interrupt me and say "Oh ya, it's just like today when one of my kids...." About a year ago I stopped going for the evening dog walk with the ladies because I couldn't stand to listen to her. She has a Sheppard that would run up to people barking and snarling and then instead of disciplining her dog, she'd tell the person it was their fault because of their body language. Like...I think I'd be afraid if a big German Sheppard came running at me and my body language wouldn't exactly be warm and welcoming. One time we were in the middle of dinner, with guests over, so walking the dogs at the usual time was not on our agenda. She marched through the house with her dog and kid and hung out in the backyard while we ate. It was the middle of winter and pitch black outside. 10 minutes later she let herself back in, sat down on the couch and waited for us to finish eating, the whole while monopolizing the conversation. What kind of person does this?
Every evening I'd be thinking in my head : "shut up...just shut the F up!" I secretly wished that she would move....And my wish came true! The only thing, is now we have no more stories to tell about them, and there were sooooo many of them. It isn't just her who is annoying, but she is married to the ultimate Dufus who I'm sure can't even tie his own shoes. I'm pretty sure I noticed Velcro straps on his sneakers.

One of our other neighbours, J is an ex-Biker dude. They had a dog named Farley, a beautiful golden retriever and J would walk the dog up and down the street about 10 times a day. The whole neighbourhood knew him, and talked about him. See, J is a big guy and never, ever, and I mean NEVER! picked up after Farley. When the snow started melting a month ago, it was really noticeable, and you know...big dogs have big poos. I was ticked off too, but at the same time I knew that some of the littler poos might have belonged to my dogs because, lets face it, when you have 4 feet of snow you can't always find what the pups left behind. I took it upon myself to clean up all the street poo that I could see, and it filled an entire grocery bag. Just as I was finishing up, J's son-in-law came out of the house with Farley. Great timing! Very nicely I walked over to him and explained the situation, including that the neighbours were upset. I was told put the bag by J's door and that they would have a talk with him. Later that day, J's daughter came knocking at my door, very apologetic and embarrassed. I assured her that no one had a problem with J or Farley, but that it wasn't right that he wasn't cleaning up the mess. She then went on to tell me that she knew that it had been a problem and had spoken to him before, but that they were having so many issues with J's own cleanliness and behaviour in the house that she can't handle it anymore. She then told me that J had signed the house over to them with the agreement that he would live in the basement, rent-free. He has no other place to go. The things people I don't even know tell me!
Fast forward a few weeks and J is seen walking up and down the street 10 times a day, but with no Farley. He's also lost about 30 pounds. Turns out that his daughter decided the best thing to do would be do give Farley up for adoption, so she took him to a shelter. Luckily, the dog is fairly young and was adopted quickly. Initially I felt really, really guilty about this and thought it was my fault. I should have just kept my mouth shut and J would still have his dog. When I asked J what happened, he only said that his daughter thought it was the best thing to do.
Greg spoke to the daughter a few days ago. Turns out that there were a few reasons why they had to get rid of the dog. J wasn't taking proper care of him, but also Farley had bitten their young son a few times and they didn't trust the dog anymore.

My neighbour to the right of my house recently brought her 93 year old husband home from the hospital. He is a man who believes in naturopathy and up until this year, has never taken prescribed medication in his life. Now he is taking medication for atrial fibrillation and is convinced it will be the death of him! The other night, V knocked at our door and asked if I could come over to witness the signing of some legal documents. Turns out, that he never had a Power of Attorney nor a Will! Now that's positive thinking!
Poor V has had a hard time of it lately. She is a collector of anything and everything. She finds a use for it all. She collects clothing and arranges for it to be sent to Third World countries. She collects household wares, books, children's toys and saves it all for the Church Bazaar. Every time I had something to go to the Goodwill, all I had to do was bring it over to her carport. Needless to say, her house was chock a block full! Over the past few weeks, her children have been over and emptying out her house of all of this stuff they consider garbage. I have to admit, it was pretty hard talking to V (who is 81) while she had tears running down her face, thinking of all this good stuff going to waste. The truth was, her house was so full, that when the ambulance team came to get her husband to go to the hospital, they had to be careful to stay on the path between the living room and bedroom. It was pretty bad. I had only ever been over there once before, but it did look like hoarders lived there.
I hadn't intended for this to be all about my neighbours, and truthfully, maybe I'm even being a bit like Chatty....just going on and on.
But it has been nice hiding out in my office. I might even sneak out early today!