Some Things You Can’t Un-See

My dad reminded me again recently that I haven’t been blogging.  I often make the excuse that it’s because there is nothing I feel passionately enough about to blog it.  But that’s not true.  I have very strong opinions on the jerks that make up our Congress, certain workplace politics and goings-on, and a certain NFL fumbling running back by the name of David Wilson.  But I can’t talk about them here … even my right to free speech may not protect me in that case.  I also have happier (but equally passionate) feelings about Christmas and Tom Brady’s handsome face.  But no one wants to hear me rave about those things either.  But today, I was out running, and I saw something that you can’t un-see.  Something so disturbing, on so many levels, that I feel too passionately about NOT to share it with everyone that I know (and even those I don’t).

You may or may not recall our next door neighbors, affectionately dubbed “The Unfriendlies”.  I haven’t written about them in quite some time.  In the past year, they have become significantly friendlier.  I even started feeling guilty about calling them the Unfriendlies.  And their garage hasn’t caught on fire again.  So that’s good.  We think Mr. Once-Unfriendly-Turned-Friendly is training for a triathlon.  Instead of filling their garage back up with exotic animals, they just filled it up with bicycles.  Or so I thought ….

When their garage caught on fire a couple years ago, there was a news article about it.  It turned out that they had some rather exotic pets in their garage that had to be rescued – two alligators, a snapping turtle, and cat.  I realize that cats aren’t generally “exotic”, but it must have been a fairly intimidating feline if it could co-exist with those reptiles.  Anyway, a heat lamp for these animals was what started the fire. 

So, since the garage was repaired I have kind of kept an eye on the ever growing contents of their garage every time the door is open.  This isn’t snooping, if you were wondering.  It’s called good sense.  And being aware of your surroundings.  “Unagi”, if you will.  I haven’t seen any sign of the former or current pets.  Until today.

I was finishing up a run and stopped as I reached our block.  I was walking towards our driveway, and their garage door was open.  I happened to glance that direction.  They weren’t around, but two glass tanks against the back wall of the garage caught my eye.  That was new.  As I walked up my driveway, I was able to get a better look inside the garage at the tanks.  And their contents.  And that is when my insides froze.  Because one of those tanks holds a big, gigantic, long-tailed RAT.

That’s right, a RAT.  And not just your average outdoor rat (I saw one of those once while camping), but a big, fat, healthy indoor rat.  And before you get all “rats make lovely pets, why are you so narrow-minded” on me, let me just explain something.  I am immensely afraid of fire.  So much so that I can barely light a match.  And this is only because my high school chemistry teacher forced me to learn to light one.  This is why their adjoining garage catching on fire scared me so much.  But I have an even larger, and very real, fear of any and all four legged rodents.  I would gladly face fire any day if it meant I never had to see or deal with another rodent as long as I lived.

I have enough of a problem with mice.  Both places we’ve lived had mice when we moved in, and we had to deal with getting rid of them.  We were very successful in doing so, and were therefore able to enjoy several mouse-free years afterward.  But those experiences were rather traumatic for me, and I do not wish to repeat them ever again.  All those people who say, “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them,” – yeah, they don’t know what they are talking about.  I don’t think they can fathom my level of fear.  If the common cold doesn’t kill me first, don’t be surprised if I meet my maker by suffering a heart attack from the sight of mouse.  I’m always so grateful that I just don’t live in a city with a big rat problem.  

In our neighborhood, people’s animals never seem to stay where they should.  Cats, dogs, wild children – they all seem to wander freely.  So you can see why I might have a teensy weensy problem with our neighbors, who have already proven to not be the most responsible pet owners, keeping a gigantic pet rat in their garage, directly adjoining our garage, which directly adjoins my HOUSE.  I don’t even want to imagine it getting out.  Except that since I saw it, I can’t STOP imagining it breaking loose and going all Ratzilla on all of us.  I have a strong suspicion based on it’s size that it’s either on rat-steroids, or it’s pregnant.  Neither one of these scenarios are ideal.

As with every terrifying moment in life, there is a lesson to be learned here.  People may change on the surface, but they don’t change on the inside.  Even formerly unfriendly turned friendly people.  Congress will always be full of jerks who care more about playing power games with each other than doing the right thing.  Tom Brady will always be the most handsome player in the NFL (sorry, Colin Kaepernick, nice effort though).  David Wilson will always fumble when you need him most.  And neighbors with weird pets?  Will always be neighbors with weird pets.

Fourth Of July Fun

Yes, I know July 4th was nearly a week ago.  As you may have noticed by my lack of blogging, I am a little behind lately.  Besides, my neighbors are still shooting off fireworks.  So if they insist on doing that, I insist on sharing our 4th of July a few days late.

The past several years, the more ambitious members of my family have started a tradition of running a 10K called the Butte to Butte on the morning of July 4th (the less ambitious members of the family, aka my siblings, have always managed to find a reason to stay in bed).  First it was me and my parents, then Nathan joined in.  This year Nathan had to sit out due to all the broken toes, but my Uncle Rob joined the festivities.

For all you non-runners, a 10K is slightly over 6 miles.  The first mile of this race is all uphill, the second mile is downhill, and the last four are flat.

I love doing this run, but I am setting a disturbing pattern of being in worse and worse shape every year when it rolls around.  I don’t think I had run any farther than 4 miles since LAST July 4th!  This year, I ran the 10K in a little less than an hour, and only ten seconds slower than last year.  Not bad, except that I felt about ten times worse this year.  I felt great through four miles, but miles five and six kicked my butt.  As evidenced by this super flattering photo of my finish.

If it looks like I am running about two miles an hour at this point?  That’s because I probably am.  Nothing like pain to motivate me to actually attempt to be in shape next year.

Luckily for mom and dad, they photograph just as great as me.

The upside of this run is that it is a TON of fun, you totally get your money’s worth out of your entry fee (this year they even had barbecued hot dogs at the finish line!), and you get such a good workout that you feel no guilt whatsoever when you stuff your face later on in the day.  The downside is that you have to get up at the crack of dawn, and it hurts to move for several days after.  But that is a small price to pay for enjoying this later in the afternoon:

Ingredients: 3

Minutes to Prepare: 5

A Beautiful, Delicious Dessert: Priceless!

I would give you my secret recipe, but then I’d have to kill you.

The other great thing about July 4th was that summer finally arrived!  We had one glorious day of comfortable weather, and we enjoyed a fun, relaxing barbecue that afternoon with some great people.

Since then, the temperature has skyrocketed and I am contemplating a move to Alaska.  I am also contemplating using Nathan’s crutches to knock some sense into my apparently unemployed neighbors if they don’t stop setting off fireworks on a nightly basis.  Wish me luck!

When It Rains, It Drips. And Drips. And Drips Some More.

It’s never a good thing when it rains inside your house.

Particularly when it is raining inside your kitchen.

Seriously, I am not joking.  I really wish I was.

I first noticed the water on the kitchen counter a couple weeks ago.  I did not think a lot of it at the time.  I had just wiped down the counter a half an hour before, and thought that maybe the sponge that I used had been wetter than I realized. 

Two days later, the same thing happened.  Again, I had just wiped down the counter a half an hour before.  But it just seemed weird, since I have wiped down the counter a million times and not had this problem.  I started thinking about it, and realized that in both instances, Nathan had just taken a shower in the master bathroom.  The master bathroom directly above the kitchen.  I think you see where this is going.

So, I climbed up on a chair and felt the ceiling.  But it felt dry.  Then I noticed this weird spot on the ceiling.  It was about the size of a penny and the best way to describe it is that it looked like a dimple.  I touched it and thought it maybe felt a tiny bit damp, but before I could come to a conclusion, my finger went right through the ceiling.  Leaving me with a penny sized hole in the ceiling.  Hmmmm.

I was rather suspicious but did not want to jump to conclusions, so I put a container on the counter directly beneath the hole.  The next time that Nathan took a shower, I ran down to inspect the counter and container.   But they were bone dry.  Mysterious.

I began to think I must be hallucinating and the water must have been from wiping down the counter after all.  I almost forgot about it, until Sunday.  Nathan was taking a shower, and I was downstairs watching TV.  And then out of the blue, I heard a steady trickle of water.  I ran to the kitchen, and sure enough there was a stream of water running through the hole in the ceiling into the container on the counter.  Great.

You may be surprised to hear that the water leak is not my primary concern.  It’s highly inconvenient that Nathan can’t use that shower, because it has built in seats, and when you have four broken toes it certainly makes it a lot easier to shower.  Instead he is stuck with using the other, non-handicap friendly shower.  But that is not my primary concern either.  The contractor and plumber are coming tomorrow, and it sounds like a one day job.  So I am also not worried about having my house torn up or having to leave during repairs.

No, my primary concern is the answer I got from our townhouse management office when I informed them of the problem.  Because guess what?  The leak may have surprised me, but they weren’t surprised at all.  I believe their exact words were, “This is actually the third house this has happened in.  We think it must be because we’re at ten years, and now everything is starting to break!”

Well, that’s reassuring.  We already know these houses have a problem with psychotic, malfunctioning carbon monoxide detectors. (Don’t ask.  It’s a very long and traumatizing story that results in me living in constant fear of anything that sounds remotely like a smoke alarm).  Apparently now they have problems with leaky master showers.  Does this mean the sagging ceiling in the living room is next?

I guess we will find out when my treadmill falls through the ceiling.

What Happened To April?

It has been brought to my attention that I have been noticeably absent from my blog in April.  What happened, you ask?  For starters, the neighborhood has been rather quiet (except for the one genius around the corner who keeps setting off their car alarm on a daily basis).  Nothing MAJOR has happened, which was rather nice after the hectic-ness of this winter.  So really, what have we been keeping ourselves so busy with?  Let’s see . . .

I have been adjusting to (and rather enjoying) my new job.

I leave the house at 8:10 and am home by 5:30.  I can go two weeks or more without putting gas in my car (for $4/gallon, there should be diamonds in that gasoline).  I have been able to get regular treadmill workouts in on weeknights.  Everyone at the new job is super nice and I have my own office (!!!!), and most of all I enjoy my work and all the new things I am learning.

Erika came home for Easter.

And we had a lot of fun.  Have you ever seen I Don’t Know How She Does It with Sarah Jessica Parker?  Well, we did, and it was surprisingly hilarious.  (Also, I think I have developed a slight crush on Greg Kinnear.  Is that weird?)  We had fantastic time shopping, hanging out, and track-meeting.

You never realize how much you take your siblings for granted until you can’t see them whenever you want.  I miss my sister time.  Can’t wait for June, when both Erika AND Jessica will be back in town!

Nathan broke the coffee table.

Don’t ask me how.  Apparently the coffee table is poorly made, the top being composed of a bunch of small pieces of wood glued together, rather than one large block of wood.  I wasn’t there, but I wish I was, because the story was rather hilarious.  Nathan tells it well.  The best part is the part where the broken piece falls on his big toe.  I think this blurry cell phone picture speaks for itself.

Luckily, my husband is also talented at putting coffee tables back together.

I grew as a person . . .

One day, the good old mailman decided to put the Unfriendlys’ mail in our box.  Normally when I get someone else’s mail, I throw it back in the mailbox with a helpful note to the mailman telling them that they delivered mail to the wrong address.  Or I throw it away.  I was tempted to do one of these things (or both, since there were two envelopes).  But it was clearly not junk mail, and for reasons unknown I felt strangely compelled to be the bigger person. (We have our best scientists on the case, to make sure I didn’t temporarily lose my mind.)  So I returned their mail.  Politely.  And in person!  Growth, I tell you.

I cooked!

Actual meals!  With a grain, dairy, meat, and vegetable!  And also edible!  Two Sundays in a row!  If you don’t believe me, the finger I sliced open with the vegetable peeler will be your proof.

And I had no free time, because . .

I spent the vast majority of the month of April reading, after I got sucked into a book.  Not just any book, but the Game of Thrones series.  I checked it out in a four book e-book set from the library, which was a million times faster than waiting on hold for four separate books.  The problem was, the checkout time is 21 days maximum, and these books are ridiculously long.  And by ridiculously long, I mean longer than any book I have ever read except for perhaps Gone With the Wind.  Or the Bible.  My theory was to read as much as I could during my 21 days, and then I could check out the rest of the books individually.  I figured I would at least get through the first book, and maybe the second if I was lucky.  But then I started reading, and promptly became addicted to the storyline. 

I read breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I stayed up late reading.  I spent hours of free time on weekends and evenings reading.  I carried my Kindle with me everywhere, and pulled it out whenever I had a spare five minutes.  By some miracle, I finished the first two books with a week to spare.  Since I was averaging a book a week, I decided to move on the third.  What I didn’t know was that the third books is significantly longer than the first and second books.  In paperback form, books one and two are 720 & 784 pages, respectively.  Book three is 1216 pages long!

So the last day of my checkout period rolls around, and not realizing how much longer the third book is, I think I am almost finished.  I tell Nathan I will need to read for probably an hour to finish.  I didn’t want the book to vanish off my Kindle right before the end!  I have been reading forever, and the story seems like it is in a good ending spot.  But every time I think the book will end, I page forward and find yet another chapter.  This continues for FOUR HOURS.  Nathan kept laughing at me, because normally I would love a long book.  But not when I am tired and on a deadline!  FINALLY, I finished the book, well past my bedtime.

Of course now that my checkout period has expired, I have learned that as long as I don’t connect my Kindle to Wi-Fi, library e-books don’t get taken away.  How I wish I had known that before.  But on the plus side, I am getting to read the fourth book now, and at a leisurely pace!

* * *

So you can see, it was a rather busy month in the Realm of Queen Megan, even though none of it was being documented here.  But now that I no longer have to be a book-reading hermit, I fully expect to stop being such a procrastinator and give my blog, my husband, and the laundry a little more attention.  Hope you are enjoying a lovely spring, wherever you are!

Still Smoking

You may recall the little incident that I wrote about in February, in which our adjoining neighbors’ garage caught on fire, yet they never managed to tell us about. 

I was really mad at the time.  I wanted answers.  Since Mr. & Mrs. Unfriendly next door were never going to tell us what happened, I called our townhouse management office that Tuesday.  And called.  Left a polite voicemail.  Called some more. Left another polite voicemail.  Called some more.  Left a rather unfriendly voicemail demanding an answer by the end of the day Thursday.  All to no response.

I wanted to find out what happened, make sure the threat of fire had been eliminated, and verify that we did not have to worry about our shared garage wall (which includes our gas water heater and electrical panel, if you were wondering what I was so worried about).  Since management here is clearly useless, I finally decided to take matters into my own hands – I Googled our neighbors address.  And came up with this headline:

“Two Small Alligators, Snapping Turtle, and Cat Survive Fire”

 

At that point, I don’t know what disturbed me more – the fire, our slacker property managers, or the fact that my neighbors are housing ALLIGATORS and a SNAPPING TURTLE.  I wonder how the cat likes them?

 

So that Friday, I was off work, and stomped down to our rental office to give them a piece of my mind.  “Hello, I am the girl whose calls you aren’t returning,” I announced.  They gave me a big story about how they had been out of town at their corporate office dealing with ‘fire stuff’.  That’s fine and dandy, but put that on your answering machine!  (Or, novel concept – check your messages remotely.  What if there was another emergency?  Or worse, another fire?). 

 

They then told me that the fire had been “user error”.  Cue blank look from me.  They elaborated, and it turns out that “user error” is code for “heat lamp over magazines”.  They also said that the damage had mainly just been smoke damage, and assured me that we had absolutely nothing to worry about.  YEAH, RIGHT.  Had they not heard about the alligators?

 

We got renter’s insurance later that day.  And promptly started looking for a new place to live.

 

ANYWAY . . . the point of this blog was not to tell you that story.  That story was just to catch you up on everything, so that I could tell you THIS story:

 

So this Monday, we had a beautiful one day reprieve from the endless rain.  Nathan took advantage of the lovely weather by washing his car.  While he was outside, a random unknown neighbor approached him and said, “Don’t mind my dog, he’s really friendly, he just runs away from me.” 

 

Nathan looked around and realized the guy’s dog was over by the fence that leads from our front yard to the back yard.  The neighbor asked Nathan to help him get the dog back.  Apparently this dog really did not want anything to do with its owner (a fact that I find rather troubling, but there isn’t much we can do about it as we don’t know who the neighbor is or where he lives).  Again, why are all our neighbors so weird?

 

Nathan was finally able to reunite dog and owner.  The guy thanks him.  And then looks around and says, “Hey!  Aren’t you the guy whose house caught on fire?”

 

Nathan: “NO.”

 

NO, we are just the idiots who live NEXT to the idiots whose garage caught on fire.

 

And always will be, until we can escape the nut job neighbors on this street.

 

I think we would both be great hermits.

Hi-Di-Ho, Good Neighbor! Do You Smell Smoke?

Nathan and I have had our fair share of bad neighbors.  Back in the day, there were the neighbors fondly known as the “White Trash Neighbors” who held a garbage garage sale in their yard, and when the weekend was over pulled a tarp over everything and left it that way for the next three months (other offenses included a million yappy Pomeranians and common-sense challenged children who played in the street or OUR yard).  Then there were the “Melanoma Twins”, who had a penchant for sunbathing on their unfenced back patio (which faced our front door) in sixty degree weather in all their beer belly glory.  There was the kid down the street who played cards in our driveway one day and left one there – Nathan put them at the edge of the yard for him to pick up, and the next day the kid left him a threatening (for a five year old) note that said “Give Me Back My Card”.

These days we have the “Car Washers” across the street, who wash their car every other week, rain or shine, and stare at us the whole time without saying anything.  We have the large ethnic family next to them, who seem to have family reunions every other weekend that require them to take up every parking space on our street, and whose teenagers are fond of blasting ear-drum splitting music out of their garage.  Then there are the neighbors on the other side who insist on putting their trash cans in front of our house instead of their own, thereby blocking the mailbox and starting a war between my husband and the lazy (cranky) mailman.

But this weekend, our neighbors in the adjoining townhouse took the prize for “Worst Neighbor of the Year”.  Until now, their biggest offense was that the female half is Mrs. Unfriendly, and they let their children play in our yard.  That was before Friday night.

Nathan & I had gone out for dinner and to an Oregon State gymnastics meet (more on that later).  We had been gone since early afternoon and didn’t get home until after 10 pm.  As we drove up, Nathan commented that the neighbors must be going out of town, because they already had their trash cans out for Monday.  Mr. Unfriendly was in his driveway loading things into his car and (predictably) ignored us as we walked inside. 

So we walk inside, and immediately cringe because our living room STINKS.  It was this awful chemically smell that neither of us could identify.  We searched high and low, established that nothing was burning or leaking.  We aired out the house until we froze, but as soon as we shut the windows the smell settled back in.  We thought it might be coming from the garage but couldn’t really tell.  Since the smell seemed mostly isolated to the living room, and there was nothing we could do about it, we decided to go to bed (and hope that we weren’t poisoned by fumes in our sleep).

The next morning I was woken at the crack of dawn by doors slamming and banging outside.  It was so loud that I thought someone had come into our house.  No one was here, of course, and I assumed it was one of our rowdy neighbors.  They were noisy all morning, eventually waking Nathan up as well.  We had no idea what was going on and wrote it off as all the crazy people in our neighborhood.  Until we walked outside to the car and saw Mr. & Mrs. Unfriendly’s garage.

(Keep in mind that this picture was taken a day later, under the cover of night, so that it does not appear that we are stalking our neighbors.)

The first thing we noticed was the plywood.  It was weird, but certainly explained the noise.  Then we noticed that the trash bins at the edge of the driveway were black, and turning back towards the garage noticed that the fire extinguisher cabinet was broken open.  The plywood was propped out, leaving an opening into the garage, and no one was around so Nathan peeked in.  The garage was empty but the walls were completely covered in soot, and it smelled like the chemically smell in our house times ten.  They had a fire in their garage Friday evening!

We knew they were okay, since the house was still standing and we had seen them last night.  The bigger concern was that their house caught fire on the ONE adjoining wall that we share with them – our garage – yet Mr. Unfriendly did not think this little tidbit was worth sharing with us when we walked past him Friday night?  How hard is it to say, “Oh by the way, we had a fire today.  Almost burned your house down, but no worries.  Do you have renter’s insurance?”  Hellooo!!!!

The chemically smell has since faded from our house.  The Unfriendly’s had contractors over all day today, who blocked our driveway and gave us yet another reason not to like them.  They still haven’t said a word to Nathan or I, although they did manage to clean their trash cans.  The chemically smell is slowly fading from our garage, but the dislike of our neighbors is not.  We both feel that a fire in a garage that shares a wall with our house is something worth mentioning to your neighbor.  Just a thought.

Someday, we hope to live in a neighborhood with NORMAL neighbors.  We don’t even have very high standards for normal at this point, so it shouldn’t be that hard to find.  But for now, we’ll settle for a house with no shared walls.  Someday, we’ll find our Wilson.