Voyeur

Fall has swept summer out of the way for a while. Dark, scary-looking clouds are racing across the sky, riding on an incredibly fast wind today. It’s cool enough for me to wear a sweatshirt.

I’m having Asher and family over for dinner this evening. After wearing out the grill these past few months, it was fun to pull out pans and the crockpot and the bread machine that were gathering dust in the cupboards.

The oven roared to life when I baked brownies. There’s spaghetti sauce simmering in the crock pot, and cheese and onion bread is baking in the bread machine. There’s something about the transition to fall from summer that’s so comforting.

I love burying myself deep into my blankets instead of constantly flipping them off as I fight off another hot flash. Those hot flashes aren’t as plentiful when the weather is cool.

Another reason I’m glad the weather is cooling off is that it might prevent my next door neighbor from staring into my kitchen every evening.

Yes, this little behavior started about a month ago. He’s a nice guy, divorced, probably in his 70s, and he’s a hoarder. Two winters ago, he slipped and fell in his driveway and broke his hip. He was having a difficult time, so in the spring, I cut his grass a few times.

This year, I’ve cut the grass on his boulevard, just to save him a few steps, although he’s doing much better now.

His garage sits further back on his lot. If he opens his garage door and sits on a lawn chair in his garage, he can see into my kitchen. I have a patio door, with no curtains or blinds, that since he has his lawn chair facing my house, he can see me sitting at the counter in the back of my kitchen.

It’s so annoying, almost exactly at 6:30 pm every evening, he comes outside, opens up his garage door, and sits in the chair. And me.

Joe has noticed it, too. I’m not sure what to do about it. I suppose I could just ask him to turn his chair in a different direction other than looking at my house. Or I could ignore it, because pretty soon it will be too cold to sit outside.

I don’t do anything that interesting, except eat and clean-up. I’m never naked in my kitchen, and if he did see me naked, he probably wouldn’t want to watch me anymore. Maybe that’s what I should do! Ewwww!!!!

Speaking of weirdoes, when I was at the cemetery yesterday, I noticed a woman at the back of Ray’s section. It was like she was doing a dance, and then she stood on top of someone’s tombstone. She got down and went over to the section next to Ray.

Then I noticed she was wearing a T-shirt with sparkly angel wings on the back. She lit a cigarette and then began to pace and it looks like she was counting steps or something. Every so often, she would stop and point and make gestures with her hands.
She didn’t see me, as I was sitting on the ground, and probably hidden from her behind tombstones.

Finally, after pacing and gesturing several times, she walked out of the section and into another section. I didn’t see where she parked her car, so I had no idea where she was going.

I tried to get some photos of her from a distance, but none of them came out.

I told Ray that he probably sees some real wackadoos from time to time. You think that most people who visit a cemetery are just normal people visiting loved ones, but I guess there are a few that need to do other things and this woman was one of them.

When I left, I found I was behind the angel woman. Her car was older and kind of beat up. She’s younger, probably in her 30s, and she was smoking up a storm. I guess her angel duties were done and she was heading home.

When I was going to the gym this morning, I noticed this car stopped in the middle of the street, going the opposite direction from me. I was wondering what was going on, then when I was almost passing the car, the driver stuck his arm out the window, and pointed.

I looked to see where he was pointing, and there were two deer, a doe and a buck bumping each other on my side of the street, kind of half hidden in the trees.

If he wouldn’t have pointed, I wouldn’t have seen them.

I guess this is a sign that I should get my tattoo. I decided to get a Ray memorial tattoo. It will be his 80th birthday this year and also our five year wedding anniversary.

On the day Ray died, when Asher, Susan, boys, and I were driving home, we saw a doe, a buck, and two fawns standing in a clearing across the street from my home. We all knew it was a sign from Ray.

I think deer were like Ray’s animal guides. He loved deer and always got excited when he saw one.

I thought I would get a tattoo of a doe and a buck together along with a little butterfly flying next to them. I don’t have any tattoos, so this is a big deal for me.

I’ll print out some example photos and make an appointment.