Scary Crazy Woman

             I’ve got to get an entry out. Certain dates when important events occurred just seem to hang in my memory. Today 8-22-2013 is one of those dates. It was in 1996 on the 23rd I did the closing upon my Tuscaloosa house. On this date in 1996 I was driving south in my 1995 Dodge Dakota truck overloaded with bricks and personal items. I called James and Sherri from the rest stop just north of Birmingham to give them an estimated time of arrival which was about noon. Sherri answered the phone and was very evasive telling me to come directly to their house for lunch and we would take care of things. I could tell there was something wrong and made her fess up.

She told me the house was not ready for the closing. The owners never got the furnace fixed. I was livid! After we had lunch, James and I drove over to my future house. The place was in an uproar being cleaned for the closing. I immediately went to the basement to find the floor strewn with rusty furnace parts. My house inspection showed the furnace was not functional. The sellers were supposed to have the heating and cooling systems operational. This was written into the sales contract. I checked the upstairs apartment to find it very chilly showing the repaired air conditioner unit was still functioning. This living area/studio apt had been vacant, yet the refrigerator was full of food. Doing a check of the kitchen I discovered the refrigerator which was included with the house sale was missing!

James and I went right to the realtor’s office. I told this agent we had a problem. This poor lady was on the phone trying to iron out the furnace nightmare. She paused when I told her it was not the furnace, but I was missing a refrigerator!  She contacted the seller and informed him of this added problem. It was determined his daughter had sold it at the big moving sale they had the previous weekend. This seller went crazy. He told the agent to just cancel the sale and refund my deposit.

Oh, Brother….I told this agent that I signed a contract as did the seller. If he wanted to go to court it would be fine with me. I had UAW legal representation as a benefit so it would not cost me anything out of my pocket. I did not want to back anyone into a corner but I tactfully explained I would hold up the sale of that property for as long as it would take.

The house closing the next day was one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever witnessed. It is too much to go into here, but it was like my life: out of ordinary.

Now to get back to the present: I posted an abbreviated version of the drama that occurred here Sunday night onto my Facebook page. Let me get it recorded into detail here.

Sunday night at about 7:00 p.m. I was enjoying a glass of wine on the front porch with Daggy and Stumpy. A black late model car pulled into the parking lot across the street. This lady got out of the drivers side clenching a roll of paper towels. I watched as she opened the back door. It looked like she was changing a diaper or something. She took this handful of dirty towels and threw them onto the ground. I know she saw me watching her as she got into the car to drive away. She exited the parking lot so she had to loop around and again drive down my street. I was half way across the street when she drove by me. I was so pissed at the nerve of this person. I said to her as she passed, “Don’t worry; I’ll pick up the shit you left behind!”  She blared on her car horn for a block. Sure enough, there was shit in those paper towels.

This woman was neatly dressed and driving a late model expensive vehicle. My garbage cart was at the curb, how much extra effort would it have been to just drive by and deposit the towels into my cart?

A little while after this all transpired, I was washing up dishes. A car screeches into Michelle’s driveway next door and the car horn blares. I look out the side window from the kitchen and see this same black car. My God this woman is crazy…..she keeps blaring on her horn. When she gets no reaction she backs out screaming at the top of her lungs, “EAT SHIT AND DIE!” driving down the street again with her horn blaring.  The world has gone mad. It was after the fact I pondered the fact this creature could have had a gun or who knows what. People have been murdered for a lot less……too much excitement for this boy!!!

Weather wise it has been cooler than normal. I still have not turned on the central air. Having it off for pretty much the entire month of August is unheard of for these parts. The nights are cool enough I need to sleep under my wool b

lanket with my almost 50 year old box fan blowing the cool night outside air in through the open window.

With all the rain we have been experiencing my yard is so green and lush. However, that means the grass needs mowing pretty much every week. I need to get the blades on my old lawnmower sharpened. It has been decades since they were done last…..

When I moved south I transplanted a bunch of hostas which flourished around my old house. My elderly neighbor told me those plants had been growing around the house for as long as he could remember. He was born in that house! I’m certain the climate here is just borderline for these northern plants. I always called them “August lilies” as they would bloom every August without fail. Through the years I shared these August lilies with any friends who desired them. They would really spread. The leaves would get get huge. Joe would called his , "Lost in Space plants" as they resembled something from a Lost in Space TV show. My little plant is pretty puny compared to it’s "northern stock" but it keeps trying! It must have been the cool wet summer we have experienced as this is the first time in years these poor plants have had flowers. A little bit of my hometown in Alabama…