Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth the Lord

Oh, but I want just a tiny teeny piece. Just a crumb. Please??

After two days of struggling to get even 5 hours of sleep, today's chopped up 4 hours really wasn't all that refreshing. Okay, I realize several things: part of this problem is my own damn fault. I fritter away time like nobody's business. I am the Queen of Wasting Time. So the logical thing is to put off the kitchen experiments, get off the internet, promise the cats I'll play with them another time, etc. etc. and just get my ass to bed before noon. Preferably 10am, but this isn't always possible. I also realize that nice dry weather this time of year means increasingly limited chances to do yard work. This is where neighbor Ralph enters the picture.

Why he didn't mow the lawn and use the f^%$ing leafblower at 11am this morning when Tim saw him working outside, I have no idea. It certainly would have been a better time than 430 in the afternoon, which was pretty much smack in the middle of my allotted sleep time. By the time I'd finished mumbling foul words and fallen asleep again and had a crazy dream about work, it was pretty much time for the alarm clock to go off.

Um, no. Giving up the hour exercise time in the evening is not an option.

Could I wear ear plugs? Sure. And I do on occasion. But have you tried to sleep with ear plugs? It's very irritating. And extended use resulted in Tim having lovely ear infections last year. And I can STILL hear that f@#&ing leaf blower with them in.

So in frustration, I took the signal poster I have been putting in the bedroom window for the last 2 or 3 years to let the neighbor know I am sleeping and tore it into pieces and threw it away. This idea was his wife's. A great idea. But like all great ideas, they don't mean shit if people don't, you know, actually stick by them. Ralph is quite simply oblivious to anything that doesn't have to do with his lawn looking good.

Like I've said before, hats off to ya, neighbor. Your yard looks great. But let me ask you how you feel about sleep-deprived people on the highways, or sleep-deprived people doing your lab work or setting up a cross match for blood on you. Quite literally, an inattentive mistake in the right place on my part could kill someone.

Coincidentally, this week, the neighbor on the other side of them has aroused their ire by parking their shrink-wrapped boat in their driveway, apparently for the whole winter. Okay, this is not the most curb-appealing thing, but there it is. Ralph's wife Kathy, whom I get along with quite well, chose Sunday to call me up and vent about the situation. Since I was lounging on the couch with a pint glass of stout, it wasn't too hard. This woman makes a hobby of getting pissed off at this or that neighbor for some infraction of THE RULES. I quite honestly sympathized with her about having to look at a shrink-wrapped boat right outside her bedroom window. And we're paying for storage of our camper so it isn't in our way or is an eyesore for the neighbors. So in a way, it does seem a bit unfair.

But you know something, that sympathy has pretty much evaporated as of today. As far as I know, a shrink-wrapped boat makes absolutely no noise at 4am, when most people are sleeping.

But I've got an idea. It's going to be a bit of cutting off our noses to spite our faces. And it's going to take a lot of electricity. But after I thought of it a while, and the coffee began to percolate through my brain, it took on a certain appeal.

It's going to have to get Tim's approval first, though. Wish me luck!!!