Dear Guy Behind The Deli Counter,

Those plastic gloves you wear are meant to keep your germs off the food. So holding your cell phone to your head while wearing the gloves (I appreciate you switching the phone to your other gloved hand while you worked the slicer...I'm sure you noticed me gaping in horror staring) sort of defeats the purpose. What else do you do while wearing the gloves, I wonder?

Shake hands with the customers?

Oh my.

I'm...sorry I saw all that.

Dear Guy Behind The Deli Counter,

There Aren't Enough Special Characters to Encompass My Profanity.

So I will merely point you all to this story about my grocery store closing, and let you imagine my reaction to this.

They close in a month. July. Hottest time of the year. Not very easy to get home while unconcious from the other stores in the borough.

Billy, Sal, Debbie, Dolores, Frankie, they'll be missed. Murray Applebaum...he needs to be incapacitated and have no one to bring him milk and bread. Just for a week...per person who shopped at the store that only meant a check to him.

What's come as an even stranger shock is that the North East Bronx Association president Vinny Prezioso (he's named in the article I linked to) once had me transfer his 16mm movie film to video. I think I've told that story before, though. Suffice to say I do believe the man is out to get me.

There Aren't Enough Special Characters to Encompass My Profanity.

Dear "Safe" Neighbor,

I appreciate that you've taken the precautions to keep disease and children from spreading. I do, believe me, you're a hero in that respect.

But when you're done with that, can you not leave it on my sidewalk?

I'm...impressed, really. But it's not the right way to brag, man.

There is, of course, the possibility that the dog who poops up and down the street is now trafficking drugs, and in that case I'm not impressed by the used condom on the sidewalk in any way. Don't swallow drug-filled condoms, kids.

Kids.

Really little kids walk up this street.

Eh. It's a deceased balloon animal, kids, just leave it rest in peace. That's what I'd tell them, if they'd asked. Or not. I wouldn't want to upset anyone.

Dear "Safe" Neighbor,

Pining for the little birds.

Halfway through my puppy's walkies, I heard the squawking of many crows. I haven't heard that in a while, lack of trees and loads of West Nile Virus have made my neighborhood vulture-less for quite some time. I happened to look up to see if they were heading right for me, and they weren't...they were busy having a fight with a red-tailed hawk.

I think I have noted every time I've seen a hawk on the Internet, so it never gets old. The fact that this hawk was involved in a noisy smackdown in my pine tree just made it that much more interesting to me.

I did not get a good picture of the hawk, as it flew away while this one of its butt was saving. Behind those pinecones, I assure you there is a bird that was so big, I could see it a block away.

I...can't say I'm sorry it left, but it was nice to see.

Pining for the little birds.

Things I Learned Tuesday.

The first thing I learned today is that I no longer speak Spanish. I am ashamed. I had a conversation with one of our neighbors, and as he was leaving he said, "Hasta La Vista."

I will demonstrate, in handy emoticons, what my reaction to this was:

:D "Okay, you too!" :D

There is a point when brain auto-pilot just doesn't hack it, and I now feel like more of a mindless hick than I did that time the eye doctor asked me my address. Because, you know, eye doctors don't usually ask where you live unless they want to come to your house and remove your corneas.

The next thing I learned is that grass will grow better in areas where it is not needed or wanted. My driveway, for example, had grass high enough to hide a Snapple bottle full of urine (I know what urine looks like, trust me) and when grass gets that high, it's time for fire.

I learned that I don't own a flamethrower. I don't even know a fire eater who I could aske to come blow on the junk growing in the cracks.

I learned that boiling water or vinegar and salt works great to kill leaves, but not always roots.

I learned that everybody misses Alexander's.

I also learned that my puppy loves our neighbor up on the corner more than me. The little furry hussy.

But the best thing I didn't really learn today was that my neighbors are frikkin' lovely people. No one had to tell me my crappy stubs of dead grass looked better than the bamboo field we had there, but they did. I mean, yes, slighly improved crap does look better than utter crap, and it's nice that they see that.

I earned my pizza.

:D Okay, you too, everyone! :D

Things I Learned Tuesday.

Sounds and Smells of Saturday.

This week the neighbors around the corner got their roof done. For three days, we took guesses how long it would be until the huge palettes of shingles would slide off the roof and kill someone. As far as I know, they never did. It could be the roofers used some of the extra flashing cement they bragged about having to tack the palettes down.

I really did consider yelling over to the roofers that they might like to come over here if that extra flashing cement was really burning a hole in their truck. But I did not.

I did discover a ridiculous amount of pokeweed growing behind my shed, however (THREE!), and I listened to the cacophony known as the neighbor's kid as I was pulling the pokeweed (not an easy thing to do considering poke has the defense mechanism of falling apart if you tug on it once it grows higher than three inches).

For an hour, he kept telling someone that something was, "RIGHT THERE!" like his ass was chained to the ground and he couldn't go fetch it himself. I later presumed that he meant his soccer ball, because a little while later, he asked someone to get his soccer ball fifty-three times.

The child was then allowed near the lawn mower. My dog, who is terrified of everything from the electric cake mixer to the Shop-Vac, paid no mind to this. This doesn't surprise me.

"I'm on the roof!" he screamed roughly twenty times before someone (other than me and everyone else in the Tri-State area) noticed him.

"I like it here!" he argued when anyone would tell him to get down.

"I can see the church from here!" he screamed as I thought to myself that might be where he'll be buried out of when he smashes his fool melon head on the ground.

"I'm falling!" he screamed twice when I guess no one was paying any attention to his antics anymore.

He then sounded as if he was being murdered, and kept saying, "Let go of me!" so all I can hope is that the creature from the blackest lagoon of rain gutter build-up ate the damn noisy fool.

I do believe this is the child that yelled, "Ma!" non-stop for four years. I'm not kidding.

I will say this: I enjoyed killin' stuff growing out of the ground while that kid was screaming. I pretended it was his vocal cords. Are vocal cords actual cords? I'm thinking no. Then again, my eyes are not water fountains, yet try telling that to the mosquito that landed in my eye.

I think the moral of this story is that if there are small noisy humans around, lock up your ladders. If not, respond to the stupid kid on the roof within the first ten times they make a noise, preferably by removing the ladder and saying goodbye. It works faster than, "Getta down-a here!" If you are the kid on the roof and you like it there, keep your mouth shut, and you can stay forever!

Happy weekend, everybody.

Handy gardening tip: vinegar, salt, and dishwashing liquid makes a better vegetation killer than Round-Up. So what if the back of my shed smells like (I say) salad dressing or (Nan says) douche? It's environmentally friendly to whatever it's not killing! And it kills. It kills well. Boiling water also works, but for stuff that is above your head, it's probably not wise to fling boiling water around.

I've worked it out to a tablespoon of salt and a half-teaspoon of dishwashing liquid per cup of vinegar, like 2 cups of vinegar, 2 tablespoons of sait, 1 teaspoon of dish liquid. I only used half of that, because that's all I have in the house until next month.

Homemade weedkiller impresses me. Next spring no unwanted things will grow in my cracks. That's a nice thought.

Now if only I could find something that makes Waffles the dog not poop in our driveway. Aside from a cannon aimed at his owners, who deliberately walk him to our house. I have video.

Sounds and Smells of Saturday.

Dear Neighbor with the Weedwhacker,

It's a really hot day. For summer, I guess it's about average but I have to say that for the three hours you've been going over that same 10x10 area with that weedwhacker, you must be beat. Why don't you put down the weedwhacker for a little while, sit down, stop making so damn much noise you psycho, what the hell kind of enchanted acreage do you have in that little lot? THREE HOURS?! Buy a mower! Your arms will thank you, and I will thank you, because it makes me a little nervous to know I'm living near someone crazier than me!

Sincerely, that girl with the squeaky swing rope.

Dear Neighbor with the Weedwhacker,

A friendly reminder.

It's time to change out your storm windows to screens for the summer.

Or else.

Sincerely,
The Homeowners Association from Hell.







(Yes, that's my front door. No, I have no idea who did it or why. And no, that door hasn't had a screen in years. As far as I know, there is no homeowner's association in this area, either, but there are some kids who let their dog poop everywhere, and an over-eager trash ticketer who doesn't notice poop, but made a killing on our late next-door neighbor's bags of clothes.)

A friendly reminder.

Yo-yo-yo...yo.

I keep hearing this commercial for an Oreo jingle contest, and Randy Jackson (the American Idol judge, not one of the Jackson 5) comes on and says he loves that jingle. I'm thinking it's because of the food element, because Randy never seems to like songs on American Idol. Anyway, the commercial's on a lot, and I feel bad because there's about to be very many homeless cookies and cakes down the road.

(Not really, but I wanted to think of a way to go from "Randy Jackson's freakin' me out, man!" to, well, this:)

They're closing the supermarket we shop at, along with the Dunkin' Donuts and Radio Shack in the same small strip. I don't know why, no one does, and it's just tragic. I'm not sure what is going to become of the property, the stores have a huge parking lot, so I guess anything could be built there, but I hope it'll be something useful. I will now need to drive a whole extra mile up another street to get my veggie patties, and I don't want to have to be bitter about that if another storage facility goes up where the old store used to be. We already lost one supermarket to a storage facility, but I didn't mind that so much because the store used to smell like sewer gas.

I mowed the bejeebers out of my lawn yesterday, I even got down with the hand clippers to clip grass out from between the flowers and everything, so I'm sort of dead at the moment.

Yo-yo-yo...yo.