Don’t bother to wake me up.

 

I'd hoped to have a fantastic blog entry for you on Monday, but you know what they say: Wife Happens. In this case my wife forbade me from getting on the computer on Sunday. Why? Because I normally do at least some work seven days a week, and I don't sleep well at night, and she thinks there's a connection. 

Besides, on Saturday (November 30th!) I had expressed my frustration with having no time to get any Christmas decorations up -- it seems like all my neighbors had theirs done by 12:01 on Thanksgiving afternoon -- and she suggested that rather than complaining I start doing. And stop judging the neighbors' outsides against my insides! 

(Feh. Like there's any other way I can judge them.)  

So, that's what happened to Sunday. 

We all know there are two types of insomniacs: those who can't get to sleep and those who can't stay asleep. I have become #1 of the #2 types, and I'm not referring to my bathroom breaks. I have zero trouble getting to sleep, but I am a champ at waking up at three and lying there like a lump, unable to return to sleep. Reading, prayer, meditation, nothing works. I'll give up around five, because if I get up the dog gets up, and he'll have to go out, and I imagine five is the earliest you can be out walking about the neighborhood and not look like a suspicious character. 

Can I use the extra time productively at least? Of course not, because by the time I get the dog back inside I am finally ready to sleep again, and so hit the sofa until eight... or nine... or... 

OTC sleeping aids don't help. Diphenhydramine and doxylamine can make me go to sleep even faster than I already do, but they're out of my system by three a.m. and HELLO I AM AWAKE AGAIN.

I'm not sure what's happening, but it's been going for a while. I'm going for a checkup in January so I will load it on the doctor's shoulders. I've tried everything, doc; now it's your turn. 

Have any of you out in Blog Land had experience with some of the new prescription sleep drugs? I neither drink nor take any Fun Drugs anymore, so I am not interested in anything that could be sold on a street corner. Do the prescription sleep aids really help you get to sleep and stay that way for the expected eight hours, without feeling like an extra on Dawn of the Dead?

My luck, I'll get a perfect solution to the problem, and then the dog will become insomniac, dragging me out in the dead of night. Maybe it would be my just desserts. 

Reports from the road.

We took a li'l road trip recently, which is why blogging has been even spottier than usual. Just a few days to visit family out of state. It was delightful, but that's not my topic today. Actually, I have two:

1) Dog-gone

We were not staying with family, but rather in a hotel in town, and we were bringing oversize puppy Izzy with us. This by far would be the longest road trip he's ever experienced, and since he's not one of those dog that loves car rides, I was worried about how he'd fare. Would he freak out? Get carsick? Whine to stop every ten miles? And what of the hotel? Sure, they claimed they were pet-friendly, but were they? Would Izzy test the bounds of their hospitality? Bark at random hours? Establish dominance by peeing all over the room? Anything could happen. 

Well, it all went off far better than I had hoped. Izzy was perfect -- the ride out was stressful for him, but he settled down and took it easy. We made one pit stop on the way (for me as much as him) and he was fine. He was beloved by the extended family and only barked exactly one (1) time on the whole trip -- the morning we were leaving, as we were packing, when some kids were running and shouting in the hotel hallway. Then he slept pretty much all the way home.

I'd like to thank Embassy Suites for being as good as their word about pets. They are very clear about the ground rules, which are hardly onerous -- use the rear lot for his trips out, clean up after him, don't bring the dog into the dining area, and so on. These requests came in a bag (with very 70's style art) that was full of dog treats -- a spoonful of sugar and all that, you know. 

2) Fire!

When I got home, loaded with bags and trailed by dog as I walked up the porch steps, I was disquieted to hear the fire alarms going off in the house. No smoke inside; no clouds of particulate matter. These are alarms wired into the ceiling, and there's a dozen all over the house, and when one goes off they all go off -- so no telling where it started. I ran from room to room, pulling them off the ceiling as I went, because it was obvious right away there was no real emergency. The next-to-last one was the culprit, in the ceiling of a storage room. My guess is that some bold spider, hearing the empty house, made his move to take over the joint; he knocked some dust into the detector, fried himself on the wire, and set the alarm off. It could have been peeping for days.

You could hear the sound from a couple of houses away. It must have annoyed the neighbors. Especially the lying sack of lies who lives next door. 

So, that's a plus, anyway. 

On the whole, a great trip, but it's nice to be home. I hope I'll be able to pass along more bloggy goodness this upcoming week. 

Keeping tabs, Christmas style.

People around here move a lot. What would you expect? It's New York, a state that actively hates its elderly. People retire, they flee. The kids move out, they flee. Or they just flee. This state is run by criminals, stupid heads, and criminal stupid heads. 

It's still a hot market here in the lower Hudson Valley, because as lousy as it is here it's worse the closer you get to the city. So it can be hard to tell from one month to the next if the occupants are the same as they were a month earlier. Sometimes there are indicators of a change. 

Way back in 2016, while walking the dog, I noticed the Christmas tree in one family's picture window. It was there through December, of course, and into January 2017. Way into January. ALL the way into January. Way into February. It became a topic of some conjecture on this blog. Was there a family member who has volunteered to take the tree down and was just lazy? Did someone die and the house just fell into chaos? Or was it a bone of contention between warring factions of children? ("I'll take the decorations down but BILLY has to help me." "No way! That's YOUR job!") I never knew. But one day as spring was peeping over winter's transom, we saw the tree was gone. 

Whatever caused the tree to stay up so long, the incident was not repeated in subsequent years.

But this year, the moment I saw the house decked out in lights, I knew it had new owners. 

Not that the previous owners did no outdoors decor -- they were just more reserved. Once your house lights require ladders, your reservations are out the window. The new people went game.

And indeed, I was right. I checked in Zillow, and the house had been sold over the summer. Fast, too -- I don't go that way every day, but I never saw a For Sale sign out front. 

So welcome to the new folks, and thanks for bringing some light into a darkened world. Especially in New York, where our governing class has dark hearts and occluded brains. We need all the hope we can get. 

🎄🎄🎄

Lingo-Fact! The phrase "keeping tabs" goes back to tabs as in bar and restaurant tabs, and is believed to have come from the tablets upon which one would write the debt. But that's not certain; in fact, the origin of tab as a noun is simply unknown, according to Merriam-Webster.

Turkey lights to keep them warm.

Well, the Halloween stuff has gone, and the Thanksgiving lights are coming out. 

But Fred, you say, didn't you complain once that there are no Thanksgiving lights?

Yes, yes I did, way back in 2014. Since then things have changed a bit. I see more inflatable decorations dedicated to America's first holiday now -- like our old friend Quisling the Cannibal Turkey, back again this year.

A friend of mine on the wealthy side of the mighty Hudson put out two inflatable decorations -- a non-cannibal turkey (Pilgrim hat but no silverware) and a cornucopia. Very nice. She said that, including her two inflatable decorations, that made a total of two on the block. Her neighbors do not seem to be showing the proper Thanksgiving spirit. I recommended she keep putting out more and more things until they felt compelled to either join in or call the cops. Why, she could go in for the 7.5-foot inflatable Pilgrims. This really brings Thanksgiving close to a person. 

One of the things I kvetched about nine years ago was the difficulty of Thanksgiving's seasonal colors, or rather color: "Thanksgiving is restricted to the colors of late fall, and by the end of November there are virtually no colors left. The leaves have fallen, been raked up, mulched, gone. Bare trees remain, and pinecones. Thanksgiving is brown. Who does brown lights?"

Well, maybe these people! Or close enough.

I noticed that early in the morning while walking Izzy. This family puts out quite a decorative spread for Halloween and Christmas, but with Halloween gone they'd changed out their front door lights for what look like dark orange lights. Perfect! I hope they'll follow through with some more Thanksgiving-themed stuff. 

As for me, I really never put up much outside. A door hanging and a few little scarecrows in the window. I'm too tired from Halloween and already preemptively tired from Christmas. It all takes a toll on a guy after a while. 

Fall, schmall.

Everyone says summer is great, but they can't seem to kick it out the door fast enough after Labor Day. 

Never mind the Halloween candy in July -- that's a lost cause, and I think lost because we just like excuses to buy sacks of little candies and eat them and then have to replace them. The stores would put them out in March if they thought they wouldn't look like they'd been left over since last Halloween. And it's not like little candies in big sacks aren't available year-round. It's just that the variety is better at Halloween, and we can convince ourselves we're being festive! and not gluttons. These are for the kids! Yeah, that bag will have been reduced to a pile of little wrappers and human waste before October even starts. 

Well, today is the first day of fall, and as usual, the stores have been all-out for Halloween for weeks, beyond the candy. Labor Day: School supplies out, Halloween crap in. Like this, at CVS:

I'm calling the exterminator

You're not even trying to not be
a Christmas tree, are you?

The weird thing, my neighbors started following the trend. Usually no one puts out Halloween stuff before October 1 -- maybe a generic scarecrow or something that could be just a general autumn decoration, but "Boo"? Foo.

But one product has already got a jump on Christmas, and it is not whom I'd have expected. Sure, my wife's craft catalogs start with Christmas in spring, but they know people need time to make serious projects. And yeah, I've seen ads for some Christmas events like the Rockefeller Center show in the city and the invitation to waste the holidays and your savings at Disney, but people always plan trips months ahead. But a Christmas-themed cereal box in September?

The answer of course is General Mills' sponsorship with Hallmark Channel, home of a million Christmas movies. My sources tell me that the channel is running 31 new movies this year, starting on October 20, so you'd better believe they're ready for autumn to be on its way and get us thinking Yuletide thoughts. 

As usual, I feel like I just took the tree down. Can we push Christmas off till April 2024? Is that too much to ask? I’m not ready.

Crate day in the mornin'!

Another trash day, another morning inspecting the neighbors' garbage. And what an interesting find we have here! 

Forty crates of wine grapes, emptied and waiting for the trash collectors. A veritable 6x8 wall of wine. It was a magnificent and imposing structure, like the ancient menhirs, Mesoamerican pyramids, or the monolith from 2001. What kind of wino lives here?

Actually, probably not a wino. For an active alcoholic, making your own wine is one of the worst ways to feed the disease. Takes too long. This is the kind of project the wine enthusiast engages in, and I have no problem with that (except it would have been nicer for the garbagemen for them to not put ALL FORTY crates out at once). 

This family is from Eastern Europe. I have a friend who grew up in Communist Yugoslavia, and his family made vast quantities of wine, as well as grappa and olive oil. In a Communist country you did as much off-the-books work as you could. Everyone did. The black market was probably twice as big as the legit market. He's been a proud American for a long time, but for years he still made his own wine because it was a family tradition. 

I personally also made alcohol -- I used to make beer at home, home being my apartment. I did get some really good results, and I enjoyed the process. I made mead, too. Like any great hobby, you can start with a small stake and escalate it to massive proportions -- the way with fishing, you can start with a rod and work your way up to a boat. But I gave it up after a few years. Too much work for too little booze. 

But back to these forty crates. Each was sold as containing 42 pounds of grapes. How much wine could you actually make from that? Well, I looked around at some winemaking sites, and found out that you could get as much as three gallons of wine from each crate. So this wall o' boxes would translate to as much as 120 gallons of wine. Federal law allows more than that per year for households with more than one adult, so they're not considered bootleggers. However, maybe for the alcoholic this could work out after all. 

I wish them well in their winey efforts. I used to do odd jobs for a family that made their own wine, and it was pretty weak, watery stuff. I hope this family gets it right. 

And I hope I don't awaken to an explosion one night, with bits of fermented grape raining over a four-block radius. That would be hard to hose off the roof.

Evil machinations vs. puppy.

So my neighbor, the one who will be led out of his house or place of business one day with a raincoat over his head -- not that I'm rooting for it; I just expect it -- added his latest entry into the dog-hating Olympics last week, and it really made a stink. 

No, seriously. 

He's always hated my dogs, even though we keep them on our property and always, and I mean always, clean up after them. I've even cleaned up after other dogs on the block in the hope of being neighborly -- and, it must be confessed, for fear of being blamed for something neither I nor my canine chums did. 

This guy has never liked me, actually, long before we had dogs. Looking way back, I think it may be because I didn't accept his invitation to a house party for the neighborhood and never explained why. I couldn't. The fact was I was putting down the drink, and couldn't risk being at a function like that. He never asked about it -- but he's said a thing to me since except to scream angry words about anything else. 

I can accept that. If that was the cause, I wish I'd handled it better, but who knows? It wasn't his business what I was doing. He never had another neighborhood party, so I think it wasn't a success anyway. Did he blame me, thinking I was giving him the high hat? I had nothing against him.

Now it's been so long it just seems impossible to ask. While I was going about my business, he was getting tied in his own private Gordian Knot. I just pray that he finds something better to do with his mind. 

But he oughtn't pick on my dogs. 

Last Saturday I had Izzy out first thing in the a.m. and was walking past his place when I was stunned by an exceptionally strong scent of garlic. I figured the crows had ripped up his trash bags again, but trash pickup was the day before. I turned my handy flashlight on (real dark in the mornings now) and lo and behold, he had sprinkled chopped garlic all the way up his property line on both sides of the sidewalk. 

Now, this is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is that this would be the second time he'd ever done anything on his lawn by his own labor in decades; he hires people to cut it and only once has ever been seen to fertilize it. For a guy who doesn't give a damn about the grass, he sure gets mad about the dogs. 

And that's the other thing. He yelled at me and the late Fazzy once, and all Fazz was doing was lying on his lawn for a moment as we passed by. Sure, my dogs have gone on the grass by the sidewalk, but that's what they do. It's not illegal. It's not even avoidable. They sometimes pick a spot fast as lightning. But none of my dogs has ever made it a habit to go on his grass, because they're just getting started when we set out or they are almost home, and they want to put a little distance between themselves and HQ when they go. I do know some other regulars whose dogs make his lawn a common spot (my lawn too), but I have to suspect the garlic ploy was directed at me after his hysterics. He always pretends to be a nice guy around others, inasmuch as he is able (which is: not much). 

So, okay, about that garlic. Garlic is bad for dogs, but not really dangerous in tiny amounts. Dogs dislike it. Onions too -- I've seen them rear back from all things Amaryllidaceae. I'm not sure he did it the best way (there's a method for garlic spray at this site that seems more economical), but whatever. He put enough down to repel me, personally. 

At first I was angry about this and wanted to do something to him. I thought about little signs along the grass saying Follow me for more recipes! Or a large sign that said DOG HATER LIVES HERE. I thought about adding some lettuce and tomato, too; really get the meal started. But finally I realized I was doing exactly what he does -- sitting in my house and seething at others -- and I started laughing. It's just stupid. If he'd ever asked me to avoid his grass, or put up a little friendly notice about it, I'd have taken my dogs into the street to stay away, but no -- that's not how he does things. He sulks and fumes until any slight becomes a monstrous injustice and must be avenged. 

Anyway, once I knew Izzy was not going ingest any of the garlic, we resumed walking past his place on the public sidewalk. 

There's a punchline to this. Repellent scent be damned: Izzy was very curious about this garlic thing, and finally decided what to do about it -- starting Sunday morning, he's been peeing on it regularly. He never did on their lawn before. Maybe he wants to kill the scent. But when I saw him doing that, I was torn between laughing out loud and breaking into song ("Did you ever know that you're my HEEEEEERRROOOO?"). Now he's made it a regular weeing ground. 

I'm not going to let this guy infect me with whatever he's got. He can have mental illness or something, but it's only contagious if I let it be.

However, if he escalates to rat poison, as some do, and my dog gets some of it, I may be blogging from the lockup. A man has to draw the line somewhere. 

Dog job description.

What we have with our dogs in a failure to communicate. 

One of the ignored features of the movie Up is that the evil Charles Muntz invented one of the most ridiculously important devices of all time -- a machine that not only allows dogs to communicate in English without even vocalization, but apparently helps them to understand us completely and without training. Not only that, but the dogs are able to express their own thoughts to one another that way. It's completely mind-boggling. Nothing else in the movie comes close to that level of crazy, not Kevin the magical-ish bird or using sails to steer balloons or the fact that Muntz has lived almost a century and is still pretty spry. The idea that animals have human-enough brains to communicate with us via a proper device would have made Muntz the greatest biologist and inventor in history. So it's better not to think about it while watching the movie. 

"Hi there!"

As things are in the real world, dogs hardly understand us and very often don't even try, because it would interfere with their own interests. I don't know if they're being stubborn or willful, or just didn't read the job description properly.

WANTED: DOG

JOB DESCRIPTION

One (1) dog sought to fulfill position of: Dog. No experience necessary; will train. Duties include:

Obedience: Will listen to and obey a short list of commands

Exercise: Will encourage humans to get exercise with play, walks, etc.

Affection: Will provide affection to humans occasionally, as inspired (not mandatory at all times)

Protection: Will provide canine protection against wild animals and human assailants as needed (not a common occurrence)  

Toys and food to be provided to match your preferences (to be determined over time) and health needs. Note: No chewing on walls, floors, furniture, or rugs permitted. 

That's what I would have written as the want ad. What the dogs would have read, however, seems to have been an entirely different ad. 

WANTED: DOG

JOB DESCRIPTION

One (1) dog sought to fulfill position of: Dog. No experience necessary. Duties include:

Listening: Optional, with obedience as you feel like it

Exercise: Lying on the grass or the porch when inconvenient. Best time for play is in the wee hours, or whenever humans want to sleep.

Affection: To be determined by dog

Protection: Go insane at UPS man, other dogs; responding to threats close to home optional

All things within home may be chewed as determined by dog; anything may be a toy or food as required. Optional self-assigned jobs may include: eating poop, chewing baseboards, eating inedible objects, digging miscellaneous holes.

Sometimes I think those Muntz collars might be helpful to prevent these little misunderstandings. Other times I think I'm happier not knowing what my dogs are thinking. I'm always glad that the neighbors don't know what my dogs are thinking. It would lead to fistfights or at least embarrassment. 

Limb from limb.

I want to go kiss the new neighbors up the street. 

They are the third family to live in that house in the last ten years, and the first family to notice that the three trees that border the sidewalk have limbs that stretch out and prevent average-size persons from walking along. When Tralfaz was a puppy I could crouch like a little old hunchbacked man and get under them, but the last few years, when laden with leaves, the branches were as low as my chest. I would go in the street and let the dog continue underneath.

ouch ouch ouch

But no more! Those veritable saints have cut the limbs that overhung the sidewalk and set the sidewalk free! No more wooden chop across the throat! No more sticks in my eye! No more bugs getting on my head! Free passage and safety! 

It may have been civic-mindedness, but I think what made the difference here is that the dad cuts the grass on a riding mower. Those branches were so low they would sweep a guy right out of his seat, beer and all. The previous family had a service to do it, and who cares how the employees deal with such issues? None of the families had a dog, so no one was out walking around like a zombie, like me in the mornings. But the threat of being clotheslined by a hundred pounds of wood will get a homeowner's attention.

Whatever their reason for doing it, I salute them. Thank you, family, for your gift to the neighborhood! May no branches fall on your roof, no leaves land in your gutter, no squirrels crawl down your chimney, and may God bless you with a happy home. 

So long, tree.

Well, the tree I tried to save almost three years ago died anyway. It was a fruitless task for my fruitless plum, a thundercloud, that looked magnificent in the spring and gorgeous in the summer. Last year it only sprouted a few leaves, and by autumn I knew it was dead. 

I brought that tree home myself, in the back of my car, barely more than a sapling, from a garden center that has since closed. It took root and grew where previous trees had failed. Alas, I didn't know that they only live for about twenty years, one of the shortest life spans of cultivated trees, and it had been growing a few years when I got it. In the end there was nothing I could do. The maples nearby continue to thrive, but for the plum, its time was up. 

I only have a hatchet and some saws, and this was no job for that. Time to call in the pros. They dispatched the branches first, then pulled the stump out with truck and chain, like popping a cork. 

Sad to see it go -- by far the most successful thing I've ever planted. What's got two brown thumbs and kills plants? This guy [points to self]. Every spring when it began to flower I'd think I planted that! But alas, no more. It is gone. 

Except for the stump. They said they had to come back for it. Well, I guess they will, since I haven't paid them yet.

Now I have to figure out what to do to fill the hole. I've already had a maple and a dogwood die in that spot, each within one year. 

Maybe I can get a redwood sapling. It would annoy the neighbors. It'd take a century, but it would annoy the neighbors! 

First Sunday of Advent.

I like this "Advent in Two Minutes" video from the Paulist Fathers at Busted Halo. "Faith shared joyfully" is their mission statement, and you get a little taste of it here.

 

I'm a fan of Advent. As the video stresses, it is a season of hope, unlike Lent, which is a season of repentance. People do give up things or take on good things during Advent, but that's not considered a necessity -- although it would certainly be nice to plan to be friendlier in this Advent, especially at a time when lockdowns and riots and politics have us at one another's throats. 

As for Loving Thy Neighbor, my Advent Eve Day got off to a poor start. (NB: There is no such thing as Advent Eve Day, although Advent started with the Vigil Mass yesterday.) My dog-hating neighbor, the cable thief destined to be led out of work with a raincoat over his head one day, was putting up wreaths on his illegal fence that divides our properties. He has not spoken to me in years except to yell at me once when his wife was not home to scold him. It just so happened that my dogs both had to water the lawn that afternoon -- I didn't even know Wicked Neighbor was there, but they spotted him right away. Probably the stink of wickedness on him. 

Anyway, Junior Varsity dog Nipper was on a leash with me, so he stayed by my side, but Senior Varsity dog Tralfaz, all 120 pounds of furry Fazzy fury, trotted up to the fence and unleashed a volley of barks. I didn't see the man's reaction, although it would have been satisfying to know he'd soiled his Fruit of the Looms. 

I called Fazzy away and got him focused on his task -- pee -- but gave him lots of praise and an extra-large treat for scaring the big jerk. 

So you see what I'm dealing with here, and I mean me, not that guy. Immanuel Kant famously said that "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made," and that's me down to my socks. 

Still, today is a day when hope starts again, and maybe I can hope and pray to turn the other cheek in the future. And not gloat when my huge dog frightens someone who really deserves it. 

Making a spooktacle.

When a major decorative holiday approaches, I like to canvass the area and see who's doing what. I have to say that my friends and neighbors have mostly not thrown in the towel, or the hole-covered sheet, on Halloween just because trick-or-treating may be cancelled and there's no Great Pumpkin special on TV for the first time in 54 years. 

So here's what I've seen in my jaunts about town, often accompanied by my Canine Praetorian Guard. We'll start with a music number: 

Leaning on a lamp

You think I look a tramp

Or maybe I'm just 'round to steal a soul

But no, I'm not a schnook

You think that's what I look

I'll tell you why I'm on this bloody pole

I'm leaning on a lamppost at the corner of the street 

In case a certain walking dead man comes by

My, oh my

I hope that walking dead man comes by

You see he's doomed

His death has loomed

And by the tomb he'll be consumed

So anyone can understand why

I'm leaning on a lamppost at the corner of the street

In case a certain walking dead man comes by

And here we have good old Jolly Jack. He's two-dimensional but full of cheer.

The maiden aunt of Death, above.

This family's home always seems quite proper. So, no fun decorations. I have no idea where they got the classy Halloween bow. Who does classy Halloween decorations?

Now, that's more like it! Big, fat, inflatable pumpkin fun. The brim is even up at a rakish angle.

The local kids painted the windows of our public library. Frankie and Drac are by far the best work. Unless these are decals. They are good enough to be decals. Now I think they're decals. 

Half upright with bloodshot eyes. This scarecrow is just missing a bottle of MD 20/20. Which would be perfect for this stupid Halloween, as I think about it. Sober up and get a job, scarecrow.

This is not a house that goes in for Halloween stuff, but this year they went game. Made a good job of the big web by the front door. That could actually deter little kids.

Okay, this is sad. Mistakes were made, clearly.

A common problem this year. People think putting out pumpkins is a nice, decorative touch. Sure, if you don't mind feeing the squirrels and chipmunks. So, these migrated from the home's porch to the curb to await the garbage man.

I dig this one. A haunted tree with a churning green light inside! Never seen that before. I even took the two-second video below so you could see it in action.

I was surprised to find out it's an inflatable. When I passed by later that day with the other dog, it was collapsed on the ground like a teenager's sock.

Aaaaand here are the pumpkins by the curb a couple of nights later, when the deer have gotten into the act. 

So that's what's going on around here. How are things where you are?

Workin' at the car wash, girl.

I was quite proud of myself for washing the salt off the cars.

This was no small feat, if you've followed the progress of my achin' back from physical therapy to hospitalization to the current day. I thought it was taking a chance, but all the local car washes are still closed due to Governor Corleone and the Chinese Virus of Death, and I couldn't bear to see the cars look like lumpy pretzels in May, so the time had come.

Sunday was a gorgeous day, so I got to work. I wanted to make a good job of it. First I vacuumed out all the dog hair, little rocks, etc. from the interiors and cleaned inside, getting all the windows. Then outside I splashed, soaped, splashed again, and wiped down in a frantic hurry, aiming to leave no streaks. Finally, I cleaned all the exterior windows again with glass cleaner to ensure clarity. Lookin' good!

I was stiff the next day, but that good kind of muscle stiffness that says "I accomplished something," not the bad kind of back pain that says, "Is the surgeon available?"

The worst thing about the job was the music. Every house around me has hooked up a sound system in the back deck. So far they have not started vying for supremacy but I think that'll happen this summer. As it was, I only had to hear the neighbor's choice and it sucked. I know it's common that once you reach thirty, then forty, and so on, to think that the kids today listen to crap, but it is absolutely crap these days.

Don't take my word for it; use any search engine and ask "Why does modern music suck?" and get enough results to read and watch for the rest of the day. The usual suspects are all there and all true -- musicians valued for looks over talent; Auto-Tune voices that make everyone sound like a computer singing through a kazoo; stunted and shriveled range of musical notes and song subjects; moronic and uninspired lyrics; sophisticated but unimaginative use of synthesized sounds. To me, it comes to this: Pop musicians used to want to write a song with a great hook that would get people to remember the song; now they just write the hook and nothing else. One snippet of melody, repeated eight hundred times. Loud rhythm that never varies, so one may presumably dance with one's arms in the air as if one simply did not care. This is music for Club Lobotomy, not a lazy Sunday afternoon, and yet there we were. Worse, the family all went inside and left me with their stupid music.

I guess there's probably only one song that really goes with car washing, though -- yes, the immortal Rose Royce and their megahit "Car Wash"!

Not really my kind of music either, but compared to modern pop it's Beethoven.

The song "Car Wash" was of course from the soundtrack to the 1976 comedy film Car Wash. I don't know if you've ever seen it. I don't know if I have, either. I mean, yes, but it was years after the release and I had to be talked into it. Of course, with a cast that included Ivan Dixon, Richard Pryor, Irwin Corey, George Carlin, Garrett Morris, and Danny DeVito, it probably wasn't too hard for me to be talked into it, but I know we were drunk at the time. I remember liking it but maybe it was the beer. That was a long time ago and I haven't seen it since.

Maybe it was actually D.C. Cab we saw, come to think of it. In fact, I know it was. I think I saw Car Wash some other time.

Kids, don't drink and watch movies. You forget what you saw.

Anyway, I'm very glad the cars are clean and winter salt is gone, even if we have nowhere to go. Oh, and P.S.: Friday night it's supposed to rain and the temperatures are supposed to drop to freezing, so there's a chance the town will be salting the roads again. In which case, I may have to put a car in drive, lie down in the driveway, and run myself over.

Where there's smoke, there's laundry.

Walking the dog around the side of the house one chilly, humid morning, I saw great billows of white smoke coming from the back. For a split second the primal alarm went off in my head -- FIRE! -- but by the time the second ended I realized that most fires don't smell like Snuggle.

Yes, and I had been the one who put the laundry in the dryer just before going outside.

Depending on the weather, the scent of dryer exhaust can really permeate the air, visibly or not. I do not complain about this. Everyone wants the clothes to smell nice. No one is washing the clothes in coal tar. So I'll be walking the dog and he's sniffing the grass and I'm like "Oh, the Johnsons are up early and doing today" or "The Smiths use Snuggle too."

Bears in the neighborhood.

Does it introduce a man-made perfume into nature's glory? Yes. Is that a problem? No. The dryer vent effusion is fleeting. And nature mostly smells like nothin', although sometimes it's very nice, and sometimes very bad.

Sherlock Holmes wrote a monograph on tobacco ash called Upon the Distinction Between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos. Since true tobacco connoisseurs are thin on the ground these days, I think a modern-day Holmes might instead write Upon the Distinction Between the Scents of the Various Laundry Products, focusing on their color, scents, effectiveness, and whatnot. He, or perhaps a chemical scientist for a soap company, might be passing down my block and announce, "Aha! Clearly the scent of Lirio detergent, tempered with a dash of Ensueño. We may conclude that the residents are not merely Latino, but likely Mexican!" Or, "Hinklemeyer claims to have been shopping for laundry soap at the Mega World at the day of the crime, but his clothes smell distinctly of Kroger's house brand." Or, "You detect that, Watson? A mix of Downy Unstopables with Snuggle Scent Booster. Fresh scent and Blue Iris Bliss, unless I miss my guess. The occupants clearly are using extraordinary means to cover odors in their laundry. Come to the dryer vent, Watson; the game's afoot!"

Mostly I find it amusing when a family's laundry announces itself as far as the sidewalk. And a little relieved. In this quarantine era some people are getting a punchy, and might be wearing the same sweats for a couple of weeks. Let's keep our focus, people!

Town and country.

Had a strange dog-related experience with someone in the neighborhood the other day.

There's a new lady in the area; she has a couple of young children and a tiny little dog. (No, she doesn't live in the Witness Security Program/FBI Safe House; I don't know where she lives but it's not there.)

I tried to keep away from her, I ought to let you know that. She was coming down the block with little dog but no little kids, and I was in the front yard with Senior Varsity Dog Tralfaz. Tralfaz is an enormous hairy beast, although the friendliest pup you know, and he sometimes scares children and other dogs with his enthusiastic greeting. That being: A few really loud barks, then he barrels at them like a locomotive. Who would be alarmed by that?

Typical action scene 

Anyone would be alarmed by that, I know, so I dragged and cajoled him against his will into the backyard until the lady went by. Well, he immediately pulled me to the farther end of the house to watch when she came out the other side, but he was quiet about it. Once she had gone, I took him back to the front to resume what we were aiming to do out there in the first place -- walking up the street, in the same direction from which she had come.

What I didn't realize was that as soon as she got to the end of the block, she and her dog turned around and started back up in our wake.

So now we had the world's slowest chase: me trying to keep my crazy bear from realizing the little dog was behind us, Tralfaz dawdling to sniff every molecule that the little dog had left behind, her and her dog strolling along, and me also trying to glance back to see if they were gaining on us (they were).

When the inevitable happened and we met, our greeting was quite friendly. Tralfaz immediately went nose-to-nose with the little dog, and at first all was fine; then the little dog did an aggressive growl and the lady had to pull him back. Which was no problem, as she is quite tall and presumably strong and her dog weighs maybe ten or fifteen pounds, maybe a tenth of Tralfaz's fighting weight.

We chatted a bit, complimenting each other's canine chums; she asking about dog groomers. I found out that she and the family just moved up to the Hudson Valley from the city and are just finding their way around. And then she said something that surprised me: that she'd cleaned up after her dog and didn't know what to do with it so she left it on the fire hydrant.

That sentence didn't compute for me, so I just let it fly by as we went on to the next topic. Soon we parted, and I took Mr. Friendly back down the hill.

Sure enough, hanging from the fire hydrant closest to my house was a plastic pet waste bag.

I realized suddenly that she really is from the city originally, and probably a neighborhood where there are municipal trash cans on every corner. Clean up after your pup there, drop it in with the Styrofoam coffee cups and chip bags and soda bottles in the corner can, and be on your way. This is something she didn't know about suburban life, that while we may have sidewalks in our neighborhoods, we don't have public trash cans.

We have to take care of our own trash. I use an outdoor bin in the backyard. Another family I know leaves the waste bags hidden behind the bushes until trash day. Another family keeps the garbage can outside all the time for that purpose.

Not to belabor a distasteful topic, but I had to think about how to deal with it. Of course if I speak with her again I'll suggest she follow my lead on this. Meanwhile, there was a dog waste bag hanging on a fire hydrant in front of the house of my despised neighbor, the dog hater, the one who I have mentioned will probably be led out of his house by the feds one day.

I told my wife about this situation. She thought that it was hilarious, but I knew we'd get blamed for this. And really, I don't want any confrontations with the unpleasant occupant next door. I don't want any contact with him at all.

So, while walking Nipper later, under cover of darkness, I took the bag off the fire hydrant and put it in my holding pen. The lady will probably think the garbage men picked it up, that it's part of whatt they do -- so if I'm not astute, the fire hydrant could turn into a veritable Christmas tree of dog poop.

The moral of the story is, I guess, comes from the old Town Mouse and Country Mouse tale by Aesop, or maybe the Town Mouse, Country Mouse, and Suburb Mouse by Roz Chast. Or something. The point is, moving from one kind of place to another is a culture shock. First thing to do is find out how to get rid of your garbage. It's not the same everywhere.

We're closed-garage people.

During my time here in outer suburbia, I have made a study of the natives, and I have come to realize that family tribes come in two varieties: open-garage people and closed-garage people.

Open-garage people are, as the name suggests, people who leave the garage door open all the time. Doesn't matter what the weather is; doesn't matter if the garage is neat as a pin or stuffed to the rafters like a hoarder's nightmare; doesn't matter if the garage is a tricked-out workshop or just a covered parking spot. That door stays open. It only gets closed at night -- maybe.

On the other hand, closed-garage people keep their garage doors shut as much as possible. Some may park in the driveway and never open the garage. Are there dead bodies stacked up in there? Who knows? Some of them will park in the garage and shut the door fast, like they're ashamed. Some are so ashamed they may try to back out of the garage without opening the door; this never ends well.

Are they afraid of having things stolen? An invasion of wild animals? Is this a survival instinct, indicating a stronger such instinct in these groups than in open-garage groups? Possibly. Maybe the remote opener is just busted.

Pictured: Closed-garage people.

It would be simple to make the deduction that open-garage people leave the door up for easy access to the house, if that's the primary way in and out. I have observed that that is not necessarily the case. Families that use their back decks constantly, park on the driveway, go in and out the front door to get to the car, and have a keypad entrance to open the garage if needed, still leave the garage door open all day. Why? Well, I have yet to penetrate the origins of this behavior.

Closed-garage people, in contrast, will leave that door shut as much as they can, even when it's a major inconvenience to have it closed. That's just how they roll... or don't, if they're parked inside.

Both types of people can annoy their neighbors, because being annoyed by each other is what neighbors do, but I suspect the open-garage people are more vexatious to closed-garage people than vice-versa. Open-garage people can pop out at any second like a Whac-a-Mole, usually when Mr. Closed is hoping for some peace and quiet or trying to get his dog to pee. Some of the open-doorers have garages so full of crap that leaving the door up lowers property values. Closed-garage people may seem unfriendly or standoffish, but that's passively rather than aggressively annoying.

My final observation is that, like morning people and night people marrying each other, open-garage people and closed-garage people invariably find themselves living next to each other. In the former case, I still follow my Saber-Tooth Tiger Survival Theory, which states that morning people and night people are evolutionarily suited to get married so that someone will always be alert in case a saber-tooth tiger wanders into camp. But I can't figure out why open/closed-garage people wind up in proximity.

I'm working on a Survival Theory of the Distribution of Annoyance, but I'm still gathering field data. If you have access to a huge pile of grant money, please get in touch c/o this blog. Thank you.

Get off your own lawn!

[Minor language warning below, but it's not my fault! Just reporting the facts.]

I turned into an old fogy this past weekend. It happened so fast it left me breathless. One day I was a (sort of) hip guy, (kind of) kickin' it with the youngsters, (maybe but not really) youthful in every aspect. The next, I was an old fart, wondering where the time went.

Here's what happened:

The town is full of graduation parties at the moment, and a family a few doors down was having theirs. I've seen a lot of house parties on this block, but none of them drew so many cars as this one -- there had to be thirty to forty cars parked up the street and around the corner at its height. They rented a tent and chairs, decorated with banners and balloons, and let loose the DJ.

Oooookay.

At first it was no big deal. You expect things like this to be loud. They were playing a lot of club music, which may have included a lot of swearing, but as much of it was not in English, I didn't know. When I was inside with the TV on, it wasn't so bad. Seemed pretty PG-13 to me. The fogyitis started to creep up, though, as I began to realize that most club music consists of a lot of screaming and songs that have a four-note progression repeated ad infinitum. All right, I never liked dance music much anyway, because I dance like a double-amputee rhinoceros, so I assumed that I was being picky and let it go at that.

As the sun went down, the music got louder, and the lyrics moved from PG-13 to R. Now, I am aware enough to know that "show ya titties!" is pretty tame for modern music, however many times it is shouted, but bear in mind that this is a neighborhood with lots of children under the age of ten, including at least one living in that house. By now it's nine o'clock. I'd had a busy Saturday that had started at five, and I was hoping to be in bed by ten.

At 9:30, the music was louder. People started shooting fireworks. I took junior dog Nipper out to pee at one point, and he was so startled and distracted that he couldn't focus enough to do so. It was like charging onto Normandy Beach and having to take a leak. (Fortunately he was able to go later.)

At about 10:30, I went up to try to go to sleep. My wife was staying up a bit watching the tube, and she recommended I use earplugs that I keep for situations like this (usually leaf blowers). In the second-floor bedroom, under the blankets, wearing earplugs, I could still hear the party going on.

And that's when I became a fogy.

I called the cops.

What else could I do? Walk alone into a party full of teenagers and act like Mean Mr. Wilson? I'd be lucky to find just a flaming sack of poop on the porch.

Funny thing about it: I thought the local ordinance said no loud party music after ten. I was informed that it actually says after nine. I can't tell you why none of my neighbors had called the police before then, or at least the dispatcher didn't tell me if they had, but I'll wager none of them wanted to be a buzzkill party-pooping killjoy, no matter how rude the party house was. Neither did I. But I also wanted me and the dogs to get some sleep. And it was making me angry that anyone would be so unconcerned with the feelings of the people they have to live near.

Within twenty minutes, the music shut off. It didn't go back on.

The next day a neighbor was complaining to me about the noise. I didn't ask why he didn't call the police. I didn't cop to it myself. Hey, maybe everyone was calling the police, who were shutting down parties all over town, and just needed my call to make it critical mass for them to visit our street. This is a town that has an eight o'clock curfew on trick-or-treating. We're not 24-hour party people.

So I hated to be That Guy, That Old Fogy, but you know what? To hell with it. When I was a kid, in the Paleolithic Era, parents would be humiliated for the police to be called on their house. They would have sent the DJ packing at nine on the dot. Now? People seem to be willing to get away with whatever they can.

Maybe your experiences in the Paleolithic Era were different, but bear in mind also that I grew up in New York City, a place not known for its kindness and consideration. And yet I would never have allowed that kind of noise to go on that late. Hell, one 120-decibel "show ya titties!" and the DJ and his equipment would be scattered all over the street.

If that makes me old, then pass the Metamucil and get off my lawn.

Laid to rest.

The people in my neighborhood are crazy.

At least that's what I was thinking a few days back. Not because of my immediate neighbors, the Hellbound Cable Thief on one side, the Dysfunctionals on the other. Nor was it the fact that every single one of us is constitutionally incapable of following simple rules for recycling. (Whether you believe it's legit or not, if you're gonna bother to do it, at least try to do it right.)

No, I was thinking this because someone seemed to think this was just fine to leave out for our garbage men.

This photo of the mountain of home furnishings does not begin to do it justice. There was a second, bigger TV and a huge iron frame and an entire sofa, for example. TV sets are not considered appropriate for trash pickup; grills, sofas, and bureaus probably cause consternation as well. I couldn't believe someone would just put this enormous pile out as is.

I should have known there was more to the story.

A few weeks after the stuff was carted off -- and it was, although it took the trash men a couple of different collections -- the people in the house disappeared. The driveway, which had had a boat and a plateless car rusting away for years, was suddenly empty. Closer examination a couple of days later showed a notice on the front door that appeared to indicate the property had been secured for nonpayment of debt (or possibly taxes). In which case the town may have arranged to have the stuff hauled away by the company that does our garbage collection.

None of this should have come as a surprise to me. I'm sure it didn't to people who live closer and are even nosier and more likely to notice than no one in the place ever seemed to go to work.

The house is in very sad shape. It needs paint, but that's like saying the Titanic needed to be patched up a little. God knows what the inside looks like. Whoever takes the property over may just flatten it and build anew. Although they ought to know that it may be haunted.

Yep -- no lie; a man was murdered in that house. That's 100% true. One night when we'd been here a couple of years, the police came stopped by to ask if we'd seen anything. We hadn't, but the killer was caught, so rest easy, citizens.

It's a sordid tale for another time.

I suspect most or maybe all of the stuff that was dumped had belonged to the dead man. It looked old enough.

As for the person who moved in, a distant heir of the victim, I guess he never had the dough to do upkeep, let alone pay his taxes. Or perhaps the ability. One of the things left behind when the rest of the trash was hauled away, along with some broken glass and bits of cardboard, were a couple of Tramadol in the blister packs that expired in 2013. Probably got lost in the sofa. I found them while walking one of the dogs and flushed them down to Davy Jones's locker. Glad I got them and not one of the local kids.

What does this have to do with me, aside from providing me with the plot for my next book (The Haunted Garbage Pile)? Nothing, except I have a mattress to dispose of, and if the garbage truck will take that giant pile, I guess I can leave my mattress out. Nothing in the town's notice on trash collection that prohibits mattresses, just the usual dangerous stuff like refrigerators. And TV sets.

I got a new mattress to replace the old one in the guest room, where I love to take naps because the dogs can't find me. Following the advice of Lewes and others from the comments section of the site of the Great Lileks, I got a bed-in-a-box type mattress from Amazon (I was at the tail end of a free Amazon Prime trial, so what the hell). If you've never gotten a mattress this way, I recommend it. It's amazing. The mattress comes in a box that's way too small for a queen-size mattress, rolled up and pressed as flat as a respectable potholder. As soon as it is unrolled and unfolded and the plastic cover is cut, it begins to inflate. It's like a slow-motion version of an emergency inflatable raft going off. Laura Petrie would be fascinated.

I haven't tried out the mattress yet, as you have to let it sit in place for 48 hours to recover from the smush-down it got in the factory. But it looks pretty good.

Trash day is tomorrow, so the old mattress leaves (I hope) in the morning. Do not worry, trash collectors: my garbage is free of all tormented spirits. I'm the only tormented spirit that ever laid on that mattress.

Insult to injury.

So Santa gave a pack of these bandages from novelty company Archie McPhee to my wife a Christmas or two ago as a gag. Santa was informed that it was not a great stocking stuffer.

I can't imagine why. First of all, for novelty bandages they are really quite good, hygienic and sticky. As I type this I am wearing the one show above on a finger that got bitten by a folding chair. It says, "Thou art a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave." How useful! If I get into a fight with my neighbor again -- not the insane dysfunctional ones, but rather the cable thief who is fated to die in prison -- I need just look down at my finger to see what I should call him. Which, since it is my middle finger, will be upraised already.

But that's not all you get with the pack of Shakespearean Insult Bandages! As the box says, "Thy Prize Awaits Inside!" So it's like a box of kids' cereal, except instead of having to eat all the Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs to get the prize, you just have to, uh, get hurt a lot.

Fortunately, I do! And look at this neato prize!

Yes, folks, a genuine fake tattoo of an eighties-style boom box. Put it on your wrist and swing it in the air outside your girlfriend's house while singing "In Your Eyes"! Draw questionable looks! Explain to the cops that it's a John Cusack tribute! Arrange for bail!

No one in jail will mess with a
guy who has ruff tats.

If these things don't entice you to get your Shakespeare bandages, note that their bandages also come in other varieties, like Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, bacon, and my personal favorite, rubber chicken.

So shop Archie McPhee for all your embarrassing and/or fistfight-provoking first-aid needs. Don't let someone tell you "Thy wit's as thick as Tewksbury mustard" (Henry IV, Part II). Wear the bandage and prove it! Or something.

Head of the class.

First, I want to thank everyone here, on the Great Lileks's site, and via email (frederick_key AT yahoo.com for those of you still communicating the stone age way, like me) for the kind thoughts following the injury that kept me out of action for a few weeks. Spoiler alert: It was a mild concussion, and thank God it wasn't worse.

Here's what happened:

It was Super Bowl Sunday, February 3. The weather was a bit warmer than it had been, causing some ice and snow to melt. That morning I was reading an important essay, "Ten Reasons to Have a Gravel Driveway," in the book pictured above by the indefatigable Red Green. Number 8 on the list:

8) Inertness. Gravel is rock in a manageable size, so it tends to be virtually impervious to chemicals, heat or impact. So don't worry about any gasoline spills or the resultant fireball--the driveway will be fine. Same thing when you fall off your roof; even if you land on something hard, like your head, the gravel will remain unscathed.

Ha-ha, I laugh hollowly, knowing what was to come. My driveway was paved years ago, and resurfaced during another medical mess last year. A perfect blacktop surface for nighttime accumulation of black ice.

Sunday night I was out there with older dog Tralfaz. As usual, he headed toward the neighbors' yard, and I knew why -- because of the ice melt there would be a delicious mud puddle between the properties, and he enjoys a little digestif. I was standing on the grass by the walkway as I saw his fuzzy butt go in that direction, and I said, "Hey, get back--"

When people get hit on the head in comic books the sound effect is usually Wham or Thud or maybe Pow. But when my head hit the asphalt it was like a Ponk, like a bowling ball bounced off concrete, and no wonder. I have had a lot of experience falling (more about that in a moment) and can usually fall pretty well, making those lovely balletic gyrations that may not prevent the fall but A) slow the effect of gravity, B) help ensure a soft landing spot, like my tush, and C) provide plenty of entertainment for onlookers. That didn't occur this time. My foot hit the invisible patch of ice and I went down so fast I didn't know what was happening until it had happened. Suddenly I was on my back with a terrible pain in my head.

Clutching the old melon, I rolled onto my front, feeling the world lurch around me. I had no idea what happened to Tralfaz, but I thought I heard barking. As it turned out, it was another dog. At that time on a winter's evening I would expect to see no one walking around our quiet neighborhood -- only people dumb enough to own a dog, maybe. Like the guy a few doors up from us, who was standing by me saying, "You okay? You need help?"

Knocked silly as I was, in pain, on the dirty ground, head spinning, in danger of puking, embarrassed, my first thought was along the lines of This reminds me of college. My second thought was Oh my God if he falls down he'll sue. So I said something like, "Slipped on black ice! Stay on the grass!"

He was kind enough to go fetch my wife; I couldn't see anything at that point and I think the dogs may have been barking at each other. While he was ringing my doorbell my pride took over and I made the effort to get up. If you've ever read a passage in a book where someone staggers to his feet, you can picture how I looked. Wobbling, still clutching the head, the whole world spinning around me. I knew it was a concussion immediately; I'd seen athletes do this enough times on TV. But I was determined that unless I was in agony or puking uncontrollably I was not going to go to the hospital. Not on Super Bowl night. There are seven nights you don't want to go to the hospital in America, and the others are Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving, Halloween, July Fourth, and St. Patrick's Day. Because you don't want to be in the ER surrounded by drunks. And that's the most unfair thing about the whole business -- I hadn't been drinking! I wasn't even watching the football game! I'd been watching the freaking Puppy Bowl earlier!

My wife, bless her, answered the neighbor's call and got me and Tralfaz inside. She planted me on the sofa, where I found that as long as I promised not to budge an inch, the world would agree not to spin like a top. I remembered that this once happened to Underdog, only in his case it was caused by an alien mastermind. In mine it was caused by winter and my own non-master mind.

So that's where we'll leave this thrilling medical drama for the moment: me on the sofa, gripped by fear and nausea, wife trying to get the dogs settled, the canines worked up, sensing that something is wrong. Will I be smart enough to go to the hospital on Monday? Will the dogs learn to walk themselves on icy nights? Will I suddenly be able to play the piano? Will I DIE from my injuries? Come back Wednesday for our next episode of As the World Turns and Turns and Turns!