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Entry tags:
Annoyances
Like half the world, judging by FB, I went to bed at 1 yesterday, eventually fell asleep, and was awake at 4 for no reason at all. I refused to get up after less than three hours sleep so lay awake, completely and utterly, for half an hour before giving in. Got up and read a little Dick Francis, one-eyed because I couldn't believe I wouldn't go back to sleep some time. I don't reread Francis that much, which makes it more annoying that I can always remember the plot of whatever book I'm reading. And then, around 7:30, my eyes started to close and I went back to bed and slept for four hours.
So as I was making my slow way downstairs for breakfast/ lunch, the doorbell rings and then Whoever bangs on the screen door. I hate people who do that and next time it happens I'm just going to turn around and go back upstairs and leave them to bang their arrogant little hearts out. Should have done that today, because it turned out to be a city tree inspector demanding to know if I'd planted a new tree to replace the plum. When I said mildly that we'd been told we had two years to do that, he said No it's one year or else pay $580 to waive the planting. But there's no room for another tree, I said. Go have a look. So he did, and allowed as the cherry did take up most of the yard, but couldn't the next doors plant one on their half? No, why should they? The plum was growing on my side and anyway, look, there's this something growing near the house that looks like a tree. It's a mulberry, he said, and it doesn't count because a) I didn't plant it, it seeded itself and b) the city doesn't like you planting mulberries. (Which I understand- they're messy and stain the sidewalk.) But *anyway*, I said, we were definitely told two years, probably because like there's this pandemic on had-you-noticed? Yeah, he said, funny, you're the second person who's told me that, and yeah, back in March when I started checking nobody could get an arborist in, there were no trees to plant, but then why are they sending me out to check? Because your bosses are assholes, I didn't say, and your bureaucrats don't talk to each other. But send me your bill or whatever because I'm not planting another tree that will die in the shade of the cherry. Twit.
So, being in a steaming snit about that, I walked over to my local cafe and had an iced latte and two strawberry Danishes and then walked back and got Dave of Dave Fix My Bike to fix my wobbly rollator. Dave doesn't believe in coddling cripples. He looked at it and said You need a Phillips screwdriver, do you have one? And I said no, because I can never find my screwdrivers when I need them, so he gets his Phillips out and hands it to me and it's the screwdriver I have but the head's too large. So he watches me trying to fit it into the screws and not succeeding and does it himself, then says No you need an allen key, goes and gets that, gives me up as a bad job and tightens the screw himself. Then asks why I'm not on my bike and lectures me on the need to keep flexing my knees by doing knee bends which is ha ha ha, and how I need to take hydrochloric acid with my collagen because stomach acid blah blah blah, and finally I'm allowed to walk back home with my now sturdy Rollator.
Men, said Jessica.
But on the up side, I'm less crippled today than usual so in the cool of the evening I took the clippers and trimmed maybe a third of the hedge, filling a large rubber garbage pail. Then my new property taxes came, and it's only $15 a month more this year, and my Hydro bill, which had a positive balance even though I used more electricity this month compared to last year. Next month will be the true summer horror, but next month can look after itself.
So as I was making my slow way downstairs for breakfast/ lunch, the doorbell rings and then Whoever bangs on the screen door. I hate people who do that and next time it happens I'm just going to turn around and go back upstairs and leave them to bang their arrogant little hearts out. Should have done that today, because it turned out to be a city tree inspector demanding to know if I'd planted a new tree to replace the plum. When I said mildly that we'd been told we had two years to do that, he said No it's one year or else pay $580 to waive the planting. But there's no room for another tree, I said. Go have a look. So he did, and allowed as the cherry did take up most of the yard, but couldn't the next doors plant one on their half? No, why should they? The plum was growing on my side and anyway, look, there's this something growing near the house that looks like a tree. It's a mulberry, he said, and it doesn't count because a) I didn't plant it, it seeded itself and b) the city doesn't like you planting mulberries. (Which I understand- they're messy and stain the sidewalk.) But *anyway*, I said, we were definitely told two years, probably because like there's this pandemic on had-you-noticed? Yeah, he said, funny, you're the second person who's told me that, and yeah, back in March when I started checking nobody could get an arborist in, there were no trees to plant, but then why are they sending me out to check? Because your bosses are assholes, I didn't say, and your bureaucrats don't talk to each other. But send me your bill or whatever because I'm not planting another tree that will die in the shade of the cherry. Twit.
So, being in a steaming snit about that, I walked over to my local cafe and had an iced latte and two strawberry Danishes and then walked back and got Dave of Dave Fix My Bike to fix my wobbly rollator. Dave doesn't believe in coddling cripples. He looked at it and said You need a Phillips screwdriver, do you have one? And I said no, because I can never find my screwdrivers when I need them, so he gets his Phillips out and hands it to me and it's the screwdriver I have but the head's too large. So he watches me trying to fit it into the screws and not succeeding and does it himself, then says No you need an allen key, goes and gets that, gives me up as a bad job and tightens the screw himself. Then asks why I'm not on my bike and lectures me on the need to keep flexing my knees by doing knee bends which is ha ha ha, and how I need to take hydrochloric acid with my collagen because stomach acid blah blah blah, and finally I'm allowed to walk back home with my now sturdy Rollator.
Men, said Jessica.
But on the up side, I'm less crippled today than usual so in the cool of the evening I took the clippers and trimmed maybe a third of the hedge, filling a large rubber garbage pail. Then my new property taxes came, and it's only $15 a month more this year, and my Hydro bill, which had a positive balance even though I used more electricity this month compared to last year. Next month will be the true summer horror, but next month can look after itself.
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Sigh.
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I could feel for the dogsbody slave of the bureaucracy if dogsbody hadn't been waving the Awe-thor-i-tee of his position around like that. My father used to shake his head at such types and say, sadly, 'Man, proud man', leaving them to finish the quotation themselves.
(I begin to realize what a facility for Snide my father possessed, and it's probably hereditary. Oh dear.)
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(My parents and I recognise each other's quotations, but not so much other people I know . . .)
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Hug one's cleverness to oneself, I suppose? Family can usually be counted on but these days there's sore decline in Adam's line when it comes to common reading experiences. It's all lines from Cheers or Seinfeld or Pulp Fiction, or at best Monty Python.
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(We have threshed a stook of print and book and winnowed a chattering wind,
And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find...)
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Generational, she says sadly. Of our time and our time has passed.
(And thus I quote, what another man wrote, of a parrot from Norroway.)
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Then again, I remember when the Flowers in the Attic books by Virginia Andrews were new and shocking and being read by everyone, and where are they now?
What was that bit . . .
The knell of the bells at the temple of Gion
echoes the impermanence of all things,
The colour of the flowers on the double-trunked tree
proclaims alike that to flourish is to fall.
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I wouldn't have classified Andrews under mono no aware myself. I believe she gets turned into tv dramas. Had to google one once and felt grubby for days. Can't be at all sad if she's gone the way of all flesh.
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AFAIK it's a Trawna thing. They go around counting the trees here and, very occasionally, take out the dead ones so the wires are safe, and encourage people to plant on their front yards (front yards city property by fiat) to try to keep the air cleaner than it's likely to be in a city. And feud with people who want to take trees down and build monster houses to the lotline.