Of Absolute boredom.

I never thought I’d say it but damn it, I kinda miss the high scroll drama, he said she said they said we said…. whatever. Today was absolutely boring. Well I got some work on my games done, some stuff I can’t even talk about, which drives me insane. After that I realized that I have this character named Howe.

I made this whole history for this character, and worked on this imaginary person for ages, and really… nothing to show for it. It is frustrating and I have lost near all desire to play the very game I work for. I wonder if that is a good, or bad thing. Either way I keep chugging along. Perhaps because I have absolutely nothing else in my life aside diapers that smell vaguely like chicken and peas, and a cat that is loud.

I was watching the Olympics, and all these other shows, and wondered if these people knew, remotely, how fucking lucky they are. Seriously. They get to be PAID to make believe as an actor, they have such a ‘hard life’ but get to accomplish something great. Me? I sit on my ass and eat twizzlers. Actually though, Twizzlers, the pull and peel aren’t SO bad. I kinda like them in a ‘tastes like plastic and Cloraseptic’ type way. I mean… if you like that sort of thing.

My point is, if I ever had one, I feel I could do so much more with my life than telling my children not to put cheerios up their nose, and stop biting the cat. (Which, trust me, you never though you’d hear yourself say to another human being.) Like I need to become and be something grand. I can’t have my greatest achievement be squeezing two kids out of my crotch (which even rats can do) and teach them to try not to kill each other and themselves. Why can’t I like, win a Nobel Prize. I have so many great ideas.

Firstly,  get this, a spoon that you can push a button on and it makes the spoon cool. So you don’t have to blow on your soup! Oh oh! Or a knife that warms so you can cut butter and not have the butter skid marks on your now crumpled beyond repair toast. OH! Or best of all a fork that twirls itself for pasta.

I stopped blogging after my first son was born, well because I had no time. Now I have son number two also and felt this would be a GREAT way to relieve stress, even if it is to an non-existant audience!

I really hope to start my blogging again, except I am afraid I am a touch more cynical about a lot of things. I hope you all don’t mind that! Thus I leave you with a mantnra from a song my husband has :

I have seen a lot of stupid people in my life. I firmly agree with whatever comedian who stated something to the effect of :

“Stupid people should wear signs. That way, when you see them, you wouldn’t ask them anything. You would just look and know they were stupid. Furthermore, if you did ask them for directions or something, you could catch yourself -Whoops, sorry didn’t see your sign.-”

I have known people dumber than hair. Dumber than rocks. Dumber than air… you name it. We all have. I used to think that stupid people were just… ignorant of the way things were. They just did not learn. No one sat them down and said “This is why this happens”. They somehow missed simple things like “Don’t drink and drive”, or “Coffee is HOT”. But no, I believe now people are LAZY, too lazy to better their minds to want to become more than ‘mediocre’. No one wants to know how or why anymore. People are content in their ignorance. They take what other people tell them for granted. Most people believe they are above average, when indeed they are JUST average or below. Anyone who needs a warning on a blow drier that says “Do not use in the shower” is below average.

This is how they should do IQ tests. “So, would you plug anything in, and leave it next to water, where you could get electrocuted and die?” First question, right off. If they answer yes, you know they have a few fries short of a happy meal. “Would you be likely to believe that as long as you have checks in your checkbook, you have money in the bank?” If they answer yes, put them on the little yellow bus. “Would you be likely to smoke a cigarette, while your engine is running, and you are pumping gasoline, while on a cell phone?” If they answer yes, they should not be allowed near gas stations. But the world does not think this way, instead we constantly cater to the lowest common denominator.

Stupid people are like chicks in a nest, they gripe with their mouth open, because they know eventually someone will shove a worm in there. They are the ones who complain about traffic, while causing it because they are gabbing on the phone. “Where are you? I am in traffic…” They are the people who whine about not having enough money, but continue to buy shit they don’t need. “I saw it on T.V.!”. They are the people who think everything that happens on Television, the news, or movies are real. They are the ones content in their ignorance, and will defend it to their dying breath.

You cannot reason with a stupid person.

We all do stupid things, we all have our moments… but those who constantly live in that stupid moment, and expect the world to cater around their stupidity need to be stopped. My intelligent brothers and sisters, do not sit complacently by! If you notice stupid activity, say something. Question it… and most of all learn from their mistakes.

Anyway, there is a small rant on stupid people. This begins my next installment APTLY titled “Stupid People” I will let you guess what these stories will be about.

We moved into our new home about four months ago. We have WONDERFUL neighbors to the left of us and behind us. We are on a corner lot so they are our only adjoining neighbors. We got a warning from both of them about the neighbor diagonally from us. . . which we are finally taking SERIOUSLY. (Yes warnings from neighbors are good things.) So this is all HEAR SAY.

Well the guy that owns the Paint Shed of DOOM, apparently sprays paint on cars. It is a home run business that paints cars. Thus the apparent spray painting of cars. (Duh) Anyway, the fumes got so bad that the people in the neighborhood started getting ill. He was asked to stop, but said he had a license to paint. The former owners of our house would complain often. The school a block away finally called the fire department about the smells. They came out and told him to stop painting cars in a residential area.

Seems like all is taken care of? NO, he would instead paint cars after the children would be out of that school. He got many more complaints about the smell. Finally when our neighbors to the left of us had their kids getting very ill, they went over and told him to stop. That they would call the police, fire department, department of health, everything. He refused, so they did. He threatened to sue them, fake things, etc…

After this his license to run a business was revoked. He continued to spray his ‘own’ cars then after that. He sprayed on the side of his Shed of DOOM “Bite Me” or something equivalent. He then claimed he fell on our neighbor’s property hurting himself. He said he wants to be compensated for his injury, and loss of work because of them. They are going through a lawsuit with this man right now. He is suing them for some unimaginable amount of money, trying to ‘drive them away’.

Other than that, we haven’t heard much about the neighbor except he’s an ass, and don’t mess with him. We have heard the paint compressors at night, but have not smelled anything. I have to say, I smell ONE DROP of paint from his sorry ass shed, I will call the health people.

The new apartment we lived in was awesome. It cost a little bit more, but no freaks. The people were nice. Everything seemed dandy until we got our dog Cooper.

We fell in love INSTANTLY. He captured our hearts, and wallet the moment we laid our eyes on him. We couldn’t help it. He was too frikkin’ cute. He still is, but doesn’t get away with everything he did when we first got him. We were told that his breed (Miniature Schnauzer) would be very attached to his new family. That this dog would want to go everywhere with us, and keep tabs on us all the time. They are right, right to the point of near panic for the dog. When we leave he would bark, whine, cry, sniffle, and scratch at the door.

Us being gone, we did not know about this. We were….. GONE. The neighbor upstairs finally left a nasty little note on our door saying that our dog barked a lot when we were gone. I was perplexed and went to all the neighbors I could think of and apologized about the dog’s noise. They said that they did not even know we had a dog. When speaking to the upstairs neighbor, he said that it was alright, and try to fix it. So we crate trained the dog, which helped curb his barking.

It was a month or so later that we got another complaint, at least it was from him and not the office. It said our dog was barking again. This was odd, as he had been fine. We took him to the vet, who suggested a few ways to get him to stop barking. They seemed to work. Still the neighbor complained. It got to one point we got home and there was a note from the management about our dog, because he had called the police. He told the police, I kid you not, that we beat our dog. They had contacted animal control, who contacted management, and we all had to have a meeting about the dog.

I WAS PISSED. One meeting, and one UNBEATEN dog later, they realized our puppy was a puppy, and would bark occasionally. We apologized, and looked into getting the collar on the dog that would spray his face when he barked. But again, the barking stopped. We even waited after we left to see if the barking stopped. It had. Perplexed we told management this, but the noise complaints kept coming. It got to a point where we were going to give our three month old dog away, because we felt SO TERRIBLE about keeping this man up at night, or when we left.

We decided to go on vacation to the Mid West (Where the second meetings of Alo and Phi took place.) AGAIN when we came back we had noise complaints. The dog and bird were boarded at my mother’s house for that time. I couldn’t understand it. I spoke with the man upstairs, and he said he heard the dog the entire time we were gone. My husband and I mused that somehow when we went on vacation our apartments would make noise. It was THEN we discovered what made the noise that drove the neighbor insane. We left Cooper at my mother’s an extra week, as we were planning to go to North to look at houses to buy. (At that point I was pregnant.)

Next door to him, behind his apartment, the people had gotten a new dog. This dog barked all the time. They got this dog around the time the police were called that we were ‘beating’ our dog. This dog would bark continually. How we discovered this? We got yet another complaint while we were gone. We went to management and they decided to work with us in solving the issue, as it was not our dog making the noise. No one else heard our dog after we had crate trained him. They looked at other noise complaints in the area, and they all stemmed from the apartment behind the man upstairs. The complaint? “Dog barking.”

We explained that it was not our dog barking to the man, it was the neighbor behind him, but he refused to believe us. The management told him it was not our dog. He refused to believe them. Instead we would get complaints, if our dog was there or not, that our dog was barking. When we told management he got a warning about harassment. (YAY) We moved before the situation escalated. We wound up in OUR OWN home, but even to this day, when the dog barks, we wince and expect either a paranoid woman to peer through our window, or an old man to complain from down the street.

I would like to think I had enough intelligence to move out of the apartment after Alice called the cops, after the porno man, after the viagra man, after Paige WARNED me, after Alice went through my mail, etc… but I didn’t. Instead I had the optimistic hope that somehow the living situation would ‘get better’. It never did. In the last nine entries I have tried to tell you how BIZARRE Alice was, but I do not think I did it justice. I do not think I could do it justice unless you were all there beside me when it happened. Honestly, it was that bad.

What made us decide to move was a sign. A sign that reads :
Warning! This Area Contains Chemicals Known to the State of California to Cause Cancer and Birth Defects Or Other Reproductive Harm. We asked about why this sign was there. The landlord’s answer?

“It’s my gut feeling that it’s nothing. Just something they have to put up.”

Well, we wanted to have children, and actually now are pregnant. (5 more days until I am due.) Were we supposed to go on someone’s GUT feeling that ‘nothing’ would happen? We packed up and moved within a month of the sign going up. I think it was God’s way of saying “MOVE ALREADY!”. Well… needless today the sign worked. We moved into a nice apartment a town away. It had a pool, spa, gym, lounge, playset, was bigger than our old apartment, though a bit more priced. The BEST advantage of living there? PRIVATE BALCONY! We could also have a dog, which was one of my husband’s big desires. They welcomed us, loved us, and were actually in the office.

We moved in one day, we did not bother telling Alice. I am sure she figured it out, but I did not see her that day at all. I like to think she did not notice, and one day came home and found us gone… only adding to her paranoia. We had good neighbors now… except one which I will talk about next time. He is not as fun as Alice, but caused almost as much trouble. He simply DID NOT LIKE us.

With that, I close the chapter on ‘Alice’. Leave her to her opium, deluded, paranoid, and crazed ‘Wonderland’.

I have to begin this part by telling everyone what career goals I had in mind at the time of the Bad Neighbor stories. I really had no major direction. My school that I was attending just… closed. Upped and closed one day. I was a month away from getting an AA, then to go onto a BA for Computer Sciences. This was put on hold for obvious reasons. When I went to visit a friend in Spokane, I spoke with her mother who suggested becoming a Nurse. I thought this would be a good idea. I also talked to my mom who noted I always loved mystery, and discovery, maybe Forensic Science was a way to go. (It was still Medical, where I decided to focus my attention.) So I was torn. Become a RN of Geriatrics (elderly people), or become a Forensic Scientist. I EVENTUALLY opted to become a nurse after getting a B.A. in Business Administration to help run the UPS Store my husband and I just purchased. There… you know a little bit more about me!

Well during this decision making process, I signed up for classes online to see how deeply I could love forensics. I had to order a but load of books, with such flattering titles as “Why Men Rape”, “Hidden Evidence”, “Policing Sexual Assault”, “Criminology”, etc… The courses covered general forensics, and every aspect. When I ordered these books I had not thought anything of it really. Yeah they look odd sitting on my book shelf now, but they were incredibly interesting.

The odd thing happened when they started arriving at my house. The UPS man would not leave them in the mailbox of course, it was UPS, so he would leave them at my door. I would eagerly pop them inside when I got home from work and flip through the course material. It was only the 5th book I noticed the box was all funky. Well shipping and handling aren’t perfect. The book itself was fine. I would have dismissed this completely except LATER that VERY SAME DAY Alice was outside while I was again smoking. (I did that a lot!) She came over, looking into our side of the Patio, and cleared her throat.

“Why are you so interested in criminals?”

I blinked, and was not sure what she was talking about. I had not put two and two together. I shrugged.

“Sorry?”

“Why are you so interested in rape, and murder, and criminals? What are you trying to hide this time?”

I was stunned, I really did not think I was inclined or interested in those things. AT FIRST I thought she was accusing me of raping, murdering, and criminal activity. I stood up, VERY offended and started defending myself. She looked at me with a grin like ‘I know something you don’t know…’ I was FURIOUS. Then it dawned on me, she did not think I was a rapist or murderer… she was going through my packages while I WAS AT WORK! This did not make me as mad as her thinking I was a felon, but I was pissed.

“What are you trying to set up here?”

She asked me. I had not figured out everything at the time, I figured she had just been going through my mail. Thanks to *cough*mylovelytypingskills*cough* I had inadvertently put her apartment number down to receive my packages from Amazon.com. She had opened every single package, and gone through the contents, even though my name was clearly stated on them. AT THE TIME, I was UNAWARE that this was illegal for her to do. The address may have been wrong, but the mail was not hers, and she legally cannot open it. I actually threatened her.

“If you ever touch one of my possessions again, I will have you arrested, after I kick your ass.”

That seemed to shake her up and make her leave. It was later she came over and put a note on the door saying :

“You should change the address on the packages. Threaten me again and I will have you arrested.”

I was shaking furious. After that I refused to speak to her. I caught her once, just once, coming to our porch for no reason after that when there was a package there. I saw it in her fat grubby hands. When she saw me approach, she put it down and told me.

“I just came over here to tell you, your bird is too loud.”

There was no bird noise. He was contently napping in the sunshine through our window.

My husband and I did not have to work for a few days. Instead of vegging watching the Travel Channel’s VEGAS WEEK, we decided… ‘Hey… let’s go to VEGAS!’ So we did. We drove most of that day, part of the night, and arrived at the lovely VEGAS STRIP! Tell you, if you have never been go! I really enjoyed the Luxor and Venecian. (sp?) Anyway… we enjoyed 3 nights, 4 glorious days of smoking, whores, gambling, rollercoaster’s, and other things. We got to watch jousting, we hit the jackpot on the nickel machine! ($147 dollars baby!) We learned to play Baccarat. We had a blast.

When we returned home we were exhausted. We got to our door, brought in our things. (We had let my mother ‘bird sit’ Widget, and did not have him back yet.) We then crashed. It was the next day that we noticed a pile of formal complaints on our patio furniture. They had all been opened from their envelopes. Figuring they were more noise complaints, I again was prepared to throw them away, but instead my husband took to looking through them. The neighbor next door to us, our beloved Alice, had lodged formal complaints with management and the police about how loud we were. I laughed as I pointed out the dates. We were in VEGAS. Unless the freak had super hearing, and could hear us from Nevada, OR someone broke into our house, partied, and cleaned it before we returned, there was no way we made the noise. But here were the complaints… all opened, and left in a pile on our patio table.

I got another cigarette, got my phone, called my mother about what we should do. The other complaints had been ‘warnings’. These were ’serious’ The answer was simple, and my mom pointed it out. We went to the office, we showed them our tickets to all the events in Vegas. We explained we were in Nevada, and the woman was insane. She explained Alice was not the only one who complained about noise the night we were gone. The new tenants upstairs complained. People had moved in while we were gone. We explained when we left, and this perplexed everyone. They eventually figured out it was the people across the courtyard who had a massive BBQ, though Alice ADAMANTLY claimed we made the noise.

We called the police, and explained that the complaint (which they received the next day, not while the ‘noise’ was happening) was invalid. They could care less. Apparently Alice had called them so many times about so many things… her calls were becoming a joke. The new upstairs neighbors apologized, and came down to meet us. Immediately Alice was peeking through the wooden partition.

They asked to come inside and explained she had told them we were responsible for the noise, we were awful neighbors, we harassed her constantly, and the cops had been out to our apartment several times. We explained that was not true, and that Alice was just odd. We explained we were indeed in Vegas, and they apologized several times. We showed them out, and Alice was standing at our Patio, staring, watching their every move. She watched them go upstairs, not saying A WORD. It was after they closed the door we got a snide.

“So you got to them too.”

We had not said anything about Alice except she was odd. They would soon discover on their own how odd. They would soon deal with her leaving nasty notes on their door, writing down when they left for work, writing down the license plates of their cars, speaking to their child about what they did for a living, and getting noise complaints. We learned of this after they brought a pile of the complaints to us asking if we dealt with similar things. We only could nod, and suggest talking to the landlord.

It was becoming clear that perhaps we should move. Move, and move quickly.