Okay, yeah, I'm skipping the light curse words for some reasonable curse words, so, Megan, turn Mirabelle's eyes away. Mirabelle, if you come across this entry in a couple years when you're reading and your dad left his browser open on the computer, and you googled your name and found this page, please know that I try very hard not to curse, so that your parents will still be friends with me. It's a struggle. Now click somewhere else.

I took the dogs for a walk today. After Saturday's long hike at Lockwood, I didn't feel a need to take them yesterday. Today, though, I needed a walk, so off we went.

We didn't go very far, down three blocks, around the corner and back up the street behind our house. The walk is maybe a mile, if that. Oh wait, I can use google to figure that out.... hey what do you know: 1.02 miles, so yeah, a short mile walk. Takes us maybe 20 minutes to walk, 7 of them spent sniffing, pooping and, for my part, picking up said poop.

That part is important: Kris and I NEVER leave our dogs' poop ANYWHERE. We clean up after our dogs, and often after some other people's dogs, too (often muttering how THOSE people will ruin dog privileges for everyone, not that they care, they'd probably take their dogs to non-dog parks illegally anyway). I've been known to carry Bella's poop rolled in leaves in order to avoid leaving it. So, yeah, poop always cleaned up.

Another rule the dogs have is that they are NOT allowed in anyone's yard. "What?" you ask. "Not allowed in anyone's yard? Where do they poop? The sidewalk?"

No, our dogs poop in the parkway: the strip of land between the sidewalk and the street. That particular strip of land is actually public property: you're allowed to landscape it, but you can't plant trees on it. The city does that.

So, this walk today.

We had walked the three blocks and were coming around the home stretch. As we came to the property that sits directly behind us, and old man, sorry, an old fuck, approached us with a shovel.

Now, this neighbor and I don't get along. It's a short story, but pre-blog, so, here you go.

Back in 2002, a particularly bad wind storm knocked down the fence between our house and a different neighbor, the one to the south:

Now, that neighbor I adore. She keeps to herself, but tolerates much of my gardening, uh, experiments with the front yard. Heart of an angel that one.

When our fence fell, she came over the next morning and offered to pay her share, no problem, just let her know how much it was. She was very prompt and very nice about the whole thing.

Now, when the neighbor behind us looked over the fence and saw we were repairing and replacing our side fence, he asked if we wanted to replace the fence between our properties. My thoughts were something like, "Are you stupid? We're about to shell out $700 for that fence. We've been living here for a year and a half, do you KNOW how much our mortgage payments are? Do you REALIZE we pay more a MONTH in taxes than you do in a YEAR? No fucking way do I want to spend another $2000 for another fence."

My words were something like, "No, thanks. This fence is fine."

The next day, THAT fence had fallen over, too. Oddly enough, with no wind.

The timing was strange, sure. Since we now had an unobstructed view into those neighbor's living room, and they into ours, I went out to stand the fence back up.

And discovered that the only way I could put the fence back into its original position was to lift it over the lower post and push it back. In other words, there was no way that fence fell by accident. Our neighbor had immediately called his insurance company to have them pay for the fence repair, and sent us a quote of $1500 for our part of the fence. I called our fence guy and received a quote for $1500, making our share $700, since we didn't share the full back fence, having an offset to the north. I told the neighbor we would pay $700 from our quote, even if he chooses to pay the fence contractor $3000.

In retrospect, I think the neighbor probably had the insurance company pay for the entire fence, and we paid $700 into his pocket. Of course, it was insurance fraud, since he pushed the fence down in the first place.

The fence was our first encounter with this neighbor. The second involved watching him hack a couple trees, topping them into some gross disfiguration. If nothing else, the gardener in me hates this man for every tree abuse he inflicts.

So, this insurance fraud, shovel wielding neighbor approaches us as we're walking by his house. He gestures with the shovel. "Is this yours?"

I looked over at the guy, then at his shovel, which he was waving around.

It had dog poop on it.

"No," I answered, continuing to walk by. "I always bag their poop." I held up the bio-bag (yay! It decomposes!) full of not one dog poop, not two, but THREE dog poops.

"And what about the piss?"

What? What the hell? Okay, he had me there. I was momentarily stymied, then answered, "I leave it, it doesn't hurt anything." I kept walking.

"It ruins the lawn!"

I took a few more steps, thinking, geez, I don't even let them in his yard. They're always on the parkway. Just as I got to the point where I thought, "I should have said that," I hear him actually yelling at me from 2 houses away.

I couldn't stand it any more. I turned and started yelling back. "They don't pee in your yard. They have never BEEN in your yard. They pee on the parkway! You know, PUBLIC land! And they don't ruin the lawn!"

I (somehow) resisted calling him a moron. Or retarded. Or a fucker, like I wanted to call him. I have no idea how I managed that. Maybe the desire to be able to play with Mirabelle is stronger than I realized.

When I arrived home, I immediately relayed the conversation to Kris, mostly in disbelief. He told me, sheesh, mop up the piss already, what kind of slacker dog owner was I?

He also rationally conjectured the neighbor probably just wanted to be pissed at a dog owner, and I was the closest target at the time. As I was stomping off, after my yelling back at the guy, three dogs were barking at the noise: two were at the old fuck's neighbor, and another was two houses down from that. Why the hell would he think a random person walking dogs CARRYING A POOP BAG would have left her dogs' poop in his yard, over HIS NEIGHBOR's dogs?

Okay, now I can't resist. The guy is a FUCKING MORON.

I am so throwing snails over the fence from now on.

So, apparently my request for help hit a nerve of some sort. Lots of people gave me advice, all (as in, each and every one) told me to contact my high school classmate. What surprised me was the incredible variance in the reasons why every said yes, and the surrounding advice. All of the advice was good, but none of it duplicated.

The common thread through all of the reasons was, as Lori put it better than I ever could, "that EVERYONE was a jerkhole in high school." Some of us were the recipient of someone else's meanness. And some of us were the meanness, which surprised me, as all my friends are good people. How could they be mean?

Oh, yeah, years later. Time. Maturity.

Andy and I went to his land in Lockwood today. We drove down, hiked around a lot, tried to put up a zip line, failed at putting up the zip line, and gathered up the dogs. I took tons of pictures. Bella ran off. Andy found. Andy got sick. I drove us home. A fun day. Wish Kris could have come.

What can you build with 8 pieces of pipe, 8 connectors and one pulley?

Well, starting with such pieces, you can push them together, twist, cajole, untwist, retwist and tighten to get a T! Whoo! A T! Fabulous!

So, what can you do with such a pipe + pulley T?

Well....

You could hang it on the wall and call it art.

Or, you could connect up a zip line and go flying down said zip line.

Which is the plan for tomorrow. Andy and I are heading down to his place in Lockwood to check out the land, somewhat in preparation for the birthday campout, but more because he wants to go down and I want to see the place.

Update: we went

Sucks to be so short.