Life Is Always Surprising

It seems there are lessons everywhere.

Last night, it snowed. Not a big deal for December. So this morning I got up to fix my Dad breakfast, then went back to bed. I usually get about an hour of sleep between then and when he leaves on his bus, and boy howdy, that hour is divine. It's so relaxing, because Dad is eating and reading his paper and I don't have to worry about him. Even the mice have stopped their darn scratching, and it's quiet. That hour is the best sleep of the "night," often full of strange dreams.

But today I couldn't sleep, because I kept thinking of that snow. Sometimes the mailman gets mad and stops delivering if there's snow on the steps, and even though the morning after a snowfall is way to early for anybody to get upset, I was still a bit worried. And more importantly, there was guilt to consider. When it snowed on Saturday somebody cleaned off our front walk (along with four other houses) before I even got outside. I felt bad that one of our neighbours did my job, and now here I was in bed. If I didn't get up soon, they might do it again.

So I got up, put on the winter clothes, grabbed a broom and shovel, and went outside. I shoveled our interior walks, then the neighbour's walk, and half of our walk, and then... I found a five dollar bill, buried in the snow. Right there in front of the house.

Made my day. :)

Good Fences?

Did something stupid again. Notice how often that happens? My frequency of idiocy is definitely increasing as time goes on.

So here's the thing. Our old neighbour died year or two ago, and a young couple moved in. Since then they've ripped everything out of that house and renovated it to within an inch of its life. New tiles, new roof, renovated garage, new roof, new insulation... Everything new, except for the crappy old white picket fence between our lots. The husband comes up to me one day and says "Can we replace your fence?" I say "Sure. Your predecessor put up that fence and it's yours anyway. Do what you want with it." He asks if we can split the cost of new one with him and I say sure. I don't want a new fence, but he's a nice guy and why not? We don't want to offend them.

So they take about a week to rip out the old fence, and right then we have a plumbing disaster in our home. For three days or so I'm preoccupied with plumbing and handymen and the tremendous cost of replacing pipes, and while this is happening, at the fringes of my attention our neighbour has a giant construction project going on. He pulls out the old fence and has a half dozen guys in there (I think they're friends or relatives), he's pulling out the sidewalk on his side and pouring a new concrete deck, and there's this motorized cat putting in the fence posts, ripping up the fringe of our lawn (and his) and pounding a little of our garden flat with its tracks. I hate it, but... well, we've got plumbing problems to deal with, and I just don't want to antagonize the neighbours. They know what they're doing, right? Finally they get my Dad's permission to put this giant dumpster on our lawn and I can't take it so I approach one of the workers and ask them to move it. He says that they're already moving the dumpster because the ground is too sloped here, so no problem. Except that the lawn *collapsed* under the weight of that thing. It's a small, shallow crater, but still a crater. I ask them about it and they assure me that they'll fill it with dirt. The grass will grow back through.

So the handyman finally gets the pipes replaced and our plumbing crisis is over. I go outside to take a look at the new fence. It's huge, much bigger than old fence, and frankly it's ugly as heck. They've got the other side (facing their other neighbour) completely finished and about 30% of our side done, and I notice a problem. A BIG problem. This new fence is (I think) about three inches to the right of the old fence, way over on our side of the property line. You can still see one of the old post holes (the only one they haven't filled in yet, and it's pretty clear, at least to me.

I can't take it. They park their cars in front of our house all the time. They wrecked a small bit of our yard to build that ugly fence that we'll have to pay half the costs for, and I've said nothing about any of that. I tried to forget it, but this is too much. I HAVE to say something, but I don't want to cause trouble with them. Their predecessor was a mean old man and I vividly remember how awful it could be when he went on a tear about something. I don't want to be him, and I want to be friends with these people, but the fence is not on the property line where a fence should be. It's three inches or so on our side, making our lot smaller and their lot bigger. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that this dillema tearms me apart inside. I spend half the day and all the night going back and forth agonizing over the possibilities. The weekend is ruined. No sleep until about four in the morning. Finally I'm exhausted and fall asleep. The next morning I wake up, make Dad breakfast, and fall asleep again.

I wake later to the sound of my Dad and the neighbour's voices. (I have very good hearing and can usually hear people talking through the window.) My Dad, who listened to me go on and on like a crazy man the previous day, has decided to take the metaphorical bull by the horns. So he goes out while I'm asleep and talks to the neighbour about the fence. I can't tell make out what they're saying, but I'm imagining all kinds of awful possibilities as I jump into my clothes and hurry outside.

And they're having a nice conversation, very reasonable and friendly. I remember (sheepishly) that the neighbour is a nice guy who doesn't understand how he's hurting us, and I join my Dad. We talk for ten minutes or so, and I show the neighbour the old post hole. We go to the front of the yard and peer back along the old fence line, and he reluctantly admits that the fence does seem to be on our side. I leave him with that, suggesting nothing and hoping he'll do the right thing.

About an hour later he shows up at our door with his Real Property Report showing where the fence lines should be. (We don't have any such reports because our family has been living on our lot since the 60's, and they didn't have stuff like that then.) We have another reasonable, calm conversation where he makes it clear that it would be a lot of trouble and expense to pull the fence out and put it back, and look here, he's measured it with a tape measure and it's only about an inch on our side. Could we please leave it at that? My Dad agrees and I (coward that I am), leave it to my Dad.

So I spend about three hours stewing and it's like last night all over again. Well intentioned as he is, and accidental as it might be, I can't get past the idea that this guy is pushing us around and we're just taking it. I just can't get past it. I can't!

So I go back outside and ask the neighbour if we can call a surveyor. He's reluctant because he want to get the fence in before winter and this create a big delay, but he agrees. He even says he'll call the surveyor.

I thank him and go back inside, and it's SUCH A HUGE RELIEF. I feel like this tremendous weight has fallen off my shoulders and now I'm light as can be. That lasts for most of the day, but now I'm getting anxious again. I don't want to cause trouble, and I know that that's what this is, but I HAVE to do it. I have to know where that fence line is supposed to be.

And that's where we are right now. It's stupid and I'm a bastard for doing this, but I have to do it. It's like a compulsion that I can't control. So we'll see what happens.

Dilemma

I did something stupid, and now I'm stuck. Or rather, it's stuck and I don't know what to do.

This will probably sound dumb to most people - because it is, I guess. But when it comes to animals I'm just a huge dope. About ten years ago one of our neighbours brought mice to the area, and ever since we've periodically had the damn things get inside the house. They cause all kinds of destruction, shredding paper and getting into our food, and they leave their little pellets everywhere. They're horrible, so whenever they show up we bait some traps and wait. It takes days sometimes, but eventually the trap will go "Crack!" and there'll be a little body in there ready for disposal. It's never bothered me, because the stupid things don't have to go for the bait. It's not like I'm personally killing them. (And yes, I know how dumb that is - but I'm a dope, remember? The rationalization helps me sleep at night.)

So anyway, the current mouse actually broke one of our old, rusting traps. He went for the bait and managed to get out before the trap swung shut, breaking off the little platform the peanut butter was smeared on in the process. So we needed a new trap. I went to the Dollar Store and they had these glue traps, four for a dollar. Cheap! I bought some and set one out, never really thinking about the consequences.

And tonight it worked. I found a little grey mouse stuck to the trap, hopelessly smeared into the glue. But he was still alive! When he heard me he started to frantically thrash about, in an effort to pull free (to no avail), and when I picked up the trap he squeaked! I left him there.

Now I don't know what to do. It's easy when they're dead, but I can't kill this mouse. I woke up my Dad to ask him for advice. He got out of bed and filled up a bottle full of water, intending to drown it, but I wouldn't let him. That made him mad, and he asked me why I woke him up at all if I wasn't going to deal with it, and I didn't know what to say. I can't kill this little thing, the instinct to do so just isn't in me. And I can't let someone else kill it either, because I bought the stupid trap and it's my responsibility.

Right now I left it oustside in the back yard, still stuck in the trap, but covered by a tin can. In the morning I'll have to deal with this, but I don't know what to do.

EDIT: Dilemma over
I'm never going to use glue traps again. The other three traps in that package are going straight into the garbage.

But it seems my dilemma has been solved, though not by me. This morning I woke up and went outside to check on the mouse - and it was gone!

The tin can was still there, and still in the same upside-down position I left it in. But when I lifted the can, there was no mouse and no trap underneath. Something happened last night, most likely a cat or dog came by, and the only clue to the possible violence was the mouse's severed tail, which was lying beside the can. So that's the end of that, I suppose.

I know I shouldn't feel relieved, but I do.

EDIT 2: A little background on our mouse problem:

We never had mice in our neighbourhood until this old lady across the alley brought in a bunch of junk. She dumped it in her backyard, and it must have been infested with mice, because suddenly there were five or six of the things in our house. They must have been starving, because they ran around everywhere, day and night. One of them even tried to run up my Dad's pant leg when he was watching TV! Downstairs they chewed up all the newspaper they could find, and even scratched the paper labels off the tin cans in our pantry. Awful creatures.

We got rid of 'em eventually, though. Sometimes they stay clear of the traps for awhile (especially if the traps have been used before and they can smell other mice on them), but they eventually go for the bait and get caught. Never fails.

EDIT 3: The Death Toll Rises

We just caught another one! We set a couple of the old fashioned snap traps by the heating vent (aka: the mouse transit system) just in case, because you never know if more of them are hanging around. But I really didn't think they'd be back for a while. So I'm watching a movie and ... snap! A stupid mouse got caught and died right in front of me.

Stupid mouse creatures. I hate this. Why can't they stay outside?

Night of Discordia

This is just a quick entry to record something strange that happened yesterday. There's no substantive value to this post whatsoever, so skip over it if you're looking for something good to read. ;)

So, okay. Last night I'm watching this movie called "The Number 23," starring Jim Carrey and Virginia Madsen. It's a really, really strange picture about this guy who starts to see the number twenty-three everywhere, on clocks and in people's names and addresses and so on, and the more he sees it the more he becomes convinced that the number is controlling his destiny. And what makes it even weirder is that other people in the movie believe it too. Like I said, it's a very strange picture. Not a particularly good one, but really unusual in its subject matter. And it introduced me to this Twenty-Three business, which I'd never heard of before, which is kind of interesting.

Anyway, after the movie finished I shut down my computer and go to the bathroom to do some... thinking. (Yeah, that's what I'll call it.) So I'm in there....thinking.... about the weirdness of the movie when the lights suddenly shut off. The house is in total darkness. I finish thinking as best I can without light, wash my hands and go to a window to look outside. Apparently it's a blackout, because the street lights are off and it's just black on black out there, dark sky, dark silhouettes of trees and houses, dark like you never see it in the city. Then I hear the sound of a helicopter and a spotlight travels down the length of the street. I guess it's a police copter. They patrol the city at night, and maybe the blackout attracted their attention. But knowing what it is doesn't make that wandering spotlight any less eerie.

Then I decide to see what time it is, and go look for my watch. It takes a few minutes to locate it in the dark, so all told it's been ten minutes or so since the lights went out. Want to know what time it was?

Two forty-one AM, which means that the blackout occured at about 2:30.

Freaked me the heck out.

The Kindness Of Strangers

Something really nice happened to my family yesterday, and if you don't mind I'd like to tell you about it.

It's time to plant the garden, and with yesterday being a holiday I got Dad to come with me to the garden centre. It was pretty hard for him, because this was a small place full of plants and people, and poor Dad has to haul around this huge walker which tends to bang into things. And on top of that, he hasn't been out of the house much (except to go to his day hospital program) in the past five years, so he was kind of disoriented at first, and had to rely on me to scout out the shelves for him. Then I'd come get him and we'd work our way through the green, crowded aisles to wherever the best seedlings happened to be stashed. At first he was kind of mad at the crowd for, well, crowding him, but after a little while he started to get into the experience and was more like his old self, telling me which plants were better than the others (a lot of them were wilting from lack of water, poor things), and which ones he'd like to find.

So we gathered together a nice collection of seven plastic pots full of little vegetable plants (my dad's not a flower guy, except for Geraniums and roses, and we didn't need any of those), and we stand in line to pay. I'm in front with a cardboard box full of the seedlings and he's behind me. I keep shooting glances back at him to see if he's getting tired, but he seems fine at this point, much better than we arrived. We decide to buy some onion bulbs.

So I get to the cashier, and by this time I've figured out the total in my head, so I tell her "it's probably just under seventeen dollars." And she says, "You're going to be pleasantly surprised when we get to the end." Dad asks for the onions, then she totals everything up and it's actually a couple of bucks less than I thought it would be.

Then she turns to my Dad and says. "I told you you'd be pleasantly surprised. A lady about eleven or twelve people ahead of you gave me this..." And she shows us a twenty dollar bill. "She said that you reminded her of her father who recently passed away, and she wanted to pay for your purchases." And my Dad is just stunned, and so am I. At first Dad doesn't seem to understand, since he reached into his pocket and put his own twenty on the table. But she ignored it, rang everything up on the till and gave Dad six dollars, saying "And she said that you were to keep the change, for a nice coffee or something."

Then Dad and I are both saying "Thank you!" and I ask the cashier if the lady is still here, because I'd like to thank her in person. But she keeps saying that no, the woman was long gone.

So my Dad got free plants for his garden, and we both got a lesson on how kind strangers can be. Dad was a little ambivalent about starting a garden this year, since he wasn't sure he could eat all the vegetables, but that anonymous woman seems to have gotten him all fired up about growing things again. He said that he thought about what she did all last night, and today he's full of ideas on where he wants to put the plants. (And he wants me to write a letter to the newspaper thanking her, so maybe this is draft one of that.) And I'd really like to thank her, whoever she was, because her impulsive, unrequitable act of kindness really changed my Dad's mood that day, and may have made his whole summer.