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Silence, Leaf Blowers, & Sunday Dinner

2015-11-082015-11-09 Miss Poison Migraines, Musings, Noise, November, Petty Garbage, Pieces Of Me, Poison In Lethal Doses, Things That Enrage Me, Thoughts, Toxic People, Writing Cooking, Migraines, Musings, November, Pieces Of Me, Poison In Lethal Doses, Psychotic Behavior, Silence, Sundays, Vile Neighbors, Who Does That?!, Writing

Waking up this morning, I had a plan. Thus far, that plan is at a standstill as I am still dealing with yesterday’s migraine. In turn, all I wanted was silence, in all its perfect glory. This, of course, is where the leaf blowers come in, and threaten to make me sicker.

After doing some mundane things earlier on in the day, the sound of three (I wish I were joking) leaf blowers on my property became unbearable. I was in the kitchen at the time doing some early prep for Sunday dinner, otherwise I might not have heard them in the back of the house, which is where I do most of my work.

I glanced out a window after a while because the noise was getting louder and closer, and there were no less than six people on my front lawn, three of whom had leaf blowers. I cannot tell you how annoyed I was, but I decided to let it go. If you can’t shoot people for being idiots, you might as well let them look like the idiots they truly are as they mind someone else’s business on a suburban street for all to see.

Yesterday my vile next door neighbor took it upon herself, as she does every Fall, to break out the leaf blower and blow every leaf off of her property onto mine. She blew them halfway to the middle of the front lawn, as if they magically got there on their own. Who does that, you ask? Someone not entirely sane.

She pretended she didn’t see me go to the mailbox before she started this nonsense, that I hadn’t answered a question when her husband stopped me to ask about my brother’s surgery, as he visited him in the hospital last week, and that she had not seen me Friday night when I came home from running errands. She was too busy gossiping, but believe me when I say her eyes are always on me and my business. As my brother would say “Don’t watch me, watch TV.”

Today, she did the same thing with the leaves, except this time she, her husband, and several other members of her family bagged the leaves up, because apparently they have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning. There are eighteen bags of leaves sitting at the end of my driveway, as if she did a good, neighborly thing out of some semblance of goodness that I can attest, does not exist. She put three bags in front of her driveway and the rest in front of mine, as if I am blind. She wants it to be obvious that she did it, but I’m smart enough to know her motives.

Don’t get me wrong, if this was a genuine move, I would be quite appreciative. I cannot afford to be an ungrateful bitch, and I’m not. However, she knew I was home. There were two cars in the driveway before she started and after she finished. There are several other houses on this street that could have used her brand of “assistance”. The neighbor next door lost her husband in April and is having a difficult time. I would think it would make a hell of a lot more sense to help her as she’s visibly struggling with such a severe loss, so believe me when I say this was far from genuine. If I were going to help someone, I would be doing the yard work for the other neighbor whose husband used to do to it for her and their family. That, at least, makes sense.

Here’s the issue, apart from my desperately needing quiet; This isn’t her house. If the leaves from my trees bother her, tough shit. They aren’t hurting anything or anyone, and there is no mandate in this township that says when or if you must bag up leaves or not. It is November, and it’s early November at that. The leaves can be bagged up for pick-up, if one chooses, well into mid-December. Generally the majority of mine get removed in early Spring because I’m not so OCD that it needs to be perfect. In fact, I’d prefer the chipmunks have leaves lying around in case they need them. Moreover, I have more important things to think about at the moment, and raking leaves is extremely low on the totem pole of thought. But hey, if she wants to waste over two hours, have at it. It will get colder, the wind will continue to blow, because hurricane season is not yet finished, and she’ll be back at it in a week or two weeks from now because both trees out front are FULL of leaves. They’re going to keep falling. It makes no sense to bag leaves up more than once, if one is going to do it at all.

Instead of treating me like a human-being that exists, she does this because the leaves bother her (God forbid a leaf get on her new car! The woman, I kid you not, threw a party to show her new car off to anyone and everyone, as if she hadn’t been driving a relatively new car before this. Did you just shake your head at the craziness of such a stunt? It’s very similar to driving around with the sale’s sticker on your car for months.), and what’s more, it bothers her that I do not say a word to her, not in English any way. I lack the ability to be polite to people once I’ve seen their true colors. I’m contemplating slipping a note under her husband’s windshield wiper when I go out tomorrow morning to thank him for bagging up the leaves, despite the fact that I know he wouldn’t do all that work on his own since he’s due for knee replacement surgery any day now. She thinks she’s being cute, but she has no idea who she’s screwing with. I should have taken video or photos, because if you’d seen the behavior as she barked orders at her minions, I mean family, you’d understand my reaction. I strongly suggest she see a doctor and get her medication adjusted.

Now that it is quieter, I am still hearing leaf blowers (and lawn mowers) throughout the neighborhood. It’s kind of like dogs that all bark in sync the second the mailman is on the street. If I knew where my ear plugs were, I might be able to quell some of the nausea the noise is inducing.

On the flip side, I LOVE preparing Sunday dinner, but since it’s just me (my brother won’t be eating solid food for quite some time and Case Study #2 is on his way to the airport.), I broke it up into three meals to prolong the culinary delights. I still have mushrooms to saute, some additional veggies to chop, and the centerpiece of it all to throw together. If I can get my stomach to settle down, dinner will be awesome and continue to be awesome for a few nights. 🙂

I have so many friends who don’t understand my love for cooking (My cousin once asked me how to make corn on the cob. I tried hard not to laugh as I explained the simplicity of it.), or who don’t cook at all, which is why I’m the one that feeds them when they visit, or when I visit them. Cooking is merely another art form I enjoy, it’s a skill set that not all people have. That doesn’t mean I don’t scoff when a friend of over 20 years happens to let me know that she’s learning how to cook for her husband. I had to explain that when cooking, you need to cleanse the palate in order to be able to taste what it is you are making and gauge the seasoning accordingly. When I received a giggly, moronic response, I rolled my eyes and have tried my level best to keep my mouth shut since. If you’re public with your stupidity, or you advertise it via social media, don’t expect me to pretend I didn’t just hear what you said. Don’t hand-feed the writer material!

And on that note my loves, I am off to the kitchen once more to put all of the finishing touches on one of my favorite meals. Buon appetito! 🙂

Pass The Hammer

2015-09-02 Miss Poison Musings, Noise, Pieces Of Me, Poison In Lethal Doses, Writing Being Real, Honesty, Migraines, Musings, Noise, Pieces Of Me, Poison In Lethal Doses, Rudeness, Writing

In the suburbs, it seems that people are always trying to “top” one another by adding on to their homes. In this particular area we all have about the same amount of physical land, but the houses range in size ever so slightly. Most of the homes are pretty standard 1-3 bedrooms with one bathroom, some also have a half bath. Those that have been remodeled within the last 1-15 years are larger internally and/or externally, depending on who did the design.

For several years I had to listen to the racket of two neighbors having work done on their homes. If their contractors were on a deadline, there never appeared to be one based on the daily influx of noise that made me want to hurl hammers at the workers up on the roof. It didn’t matter what the temperature was outside, they were always making noise the second there was a glimmer of light in the sky.

A month or so ago, a house a few doors down began an add-on. I honestly thought it was on the opposite street behind me because the noise felt THAT close to my head. Every morning the banging, drilling, etc., would begin and it doesn’t seem to cease until about 4:00 PM, sometimes later. There are days they’re done at 2:00 and those are the days I praise God for the silence because sometimes, a woman needs to think in peace, ya know?

Last week I noticed that this add-on is seemingly an entirely new wing to the house. I hadn’t noticed before because I don’t go up that side of the street often enough. I have NO IDEA how they intend to actually achieve this before I murder someone.

This morning, on a viciously cloudy day, I had hoped the weather might keep them away. Nope. At 7:15, the nail guns and hammers started. I wasn’t asleep, but it is taking every last ounce of self-control to not go two houses down and tell them to get the fuck down before I go up there myself and thrown them down.

The noise drove me utterly insane yesterday. I was in so much pain that I did what I promised myself I would not do after working until after 9:00 a.m.; go back to bed. However, it took about three hours for the Aleve and the herbs to kick in to the point where I was able to fall asleep comfortably (I took them before I stopped working because, again, the pain was brutal.). When I woke up, they’d stopped working and I was THRILLED. I also prayed they weren’t screwing with me and didn’t plan on returning to work until it got dark. With some people, you never know.

The noise made me want to die during that horrible migraine period, every second of it is like a train going through your skull, but now with less headaches, I am still auditorily sensitive. The noise physically makes me ill. My body is still in “migraine mode”, ready to protect my head at the first sign of attack. I still expect bright lights and loud noises to cause me pain. And at any given moment, they can. I still have to be careful and aware of my triggers.

Call me crazy, but I find it rude to take over the entire neighborhood with noise and not say a word to anyone about the fact that all of this is going to occur. Let people know in advance. It’s called common decency!

Do you want to listen to a drill-saw at 10:00 a.m. when you’ve got a screaming newborn and haven’t had any sleep yourself? No. Do you want to listen to this shit all day long when you worked the entire night and have to sleep during the day so you can get up and go back to work each night? No fucking way. I find this type of behavior unbelievably rude and inconsiderate. It shows me, once again, how many people have their heads up their own ass.

I once had neighbors who would make noise 24 hours a day. Their TV’s were always on, blasting. Between video games in one room, music in another, and movies in a third, I was half a step away from committing murder. No matter how many times I asked them to take it down a notch or lower it all, that would only last a day or so before they’d go back to their usual behavior. They were never NOT at home, so I never got a reprieve from the noise.

No one should have to willingly leave their domicile for silence unless the work is being done inside their own home, and won’t take months. If something needed to be done, I’d respectfully let my neighbors know exactly how long it would take and I’d apologize for any inconvenience in advance, because I was raised with manners and decency. I’m not perfect, but I know how to be respectful.

Yes, I could be at Starbucks (how obnoxiously cliche’), the library, or a plethora of alternative places with free WiFi, but that would require an entirely different wardrobe than what I had in mind for today. It would also require patience, which I do not have, and dealing with people, which isn’t on my agenda on a good day, leave alone today.

It seems like every other person is “writing a book” and quite frankly, I’m sick of hearing about it. When you write in public, you leave yourself wide open to criticism. The few times I do write in public, it’s in a private room at the library where no one can see the screen and no one can ask me insipid questions.

At Starbucks, where every other person has a laptop open to their ‘book’, the idiots are also present. “So, you’re writing a book, eh?” “What’s that you’re working on there?” Every other question feels like the cast of the Pirates of the Caribbean have walked in and are nosing in everyone’s business. And naturally, I have no desire to sit there for eight hours listening to this shit and even less interest listening to people ramble on and on about “their novel”. You’re not eavesdropping, people are just that loud when it comes to bragging. Which, in turn, makes me want to scream: “Come to me when it’s finished, because then it’s “written”. Come back when it’s completely edited, cohesive in the storytelling, error-free, and sold, then it’s more than a pipe-dream. Until then, shush.” That’s not a slap or a jab at anyone, it’s simply how I feel.

I have three portfolios that are larger than you are tall and they are full of my work. I get to call myself a writer because I have systematically completed more work than I’ve started . There are many different types of writers. Not everyone writes a book, some people choose to, but I think it’s crucial to write and complete something before bragging yourself to death.

But hey, what do I know?