Even More Sh*t My Brother Has Been Dragging Home On a Semi-Regular Basis

I don't know where he's been finding this supply, but my brother, in his continuing kleptomania, has now brought home, in several loads over the course of the summer, a couple dozen or so large wood frames. I didn't realize how many he had until we spent Labor Day clearing the underbrush out of a corner of the yard and uncovered a stash.

They're rectangular, about 2.5 x 4 feet, built of rough 2 x 8 boards held together by a metal band. Stacked three or four high they look as if they could be made into raised beds for container gardening except who knows what the wood may have been treated with. They are now strategically hidden in piles in various obscure corners of the property where city code enforcement is unlikely to spot them.

There are another half dozen in the bed of his pickup truck.

My brother says he's holding them for a friend to burn sometime this fall. Makes as much sense as anything else.

Ours are redder and darker than these.

Last week he showed up with two bunches of red bananas, still on the stalks, which he left in the driveway. No idea where he found/stole/was given them.

One bunch is still out there, the squirrels having claimed it. The smaller bunch, with a half dozen bananas, made it inside. They're dark red, the color of old blood, thick and stubby with a tough skin. And delicious. Dense and chewy and very sweet with a slight citrusy taste, exactly how bananas tasted when I was a child and don't anymore.

Now I wonder if we could plant the survivors from the squirrels' bunch.

Flag(pole) of Our Father

My brother recently bought a flag pole to replace the one our Dad installed when he and Mom bought the house.

What Dad installed could be called a flag pole only in the technical sense that it was indeed a pole and it often had a flag attached to it. It was a plain metal tube sticking ten feet out of the ground with holes drilled into it through which lines could be run and tied to the flag's grommets. The one my brother bought is anodized metal, extensible to about 25 feet, with a goldish finial on top and two preset snap hooks for attaching the flag.

Of course the snap hooks turned out to be one inch too far apart to mount the nice new flag my brother bought to replace the worn one that started this whole project so he'll use the cheap, lightweight, printed flag that came with the pole (and fits) until it fades and then drill a new hole for the lower snap hook.

Yesterday, despite 95F temperatures, 95% humidity and almost 100% cloud cover and thunder rumbling on the horizon, we went out to install the new pole.

Dad was a firm believer in over-engineering projects. In his opinion, the pyramids were done a bit slapdash. And so, of course, the old pole turned out not to be ten feet long but rather fifteen with five buried firmly in the ground. We finally wrestled it out with much cursing and sweating and dug a new hole about a meter further back from the street to avoid the overhead power lines to which the new pole, when fully extended, can come dangerously close. Our hole was not nearly so deep mostly because we used concrete to secure the base and not just earth.

I refilled the old hole with rubble from the new and made sure the shovel, carpenter's level, etc., were all put away so this doesn't qualify as a redneck 70% project. We'll refrain from hoisting the new flag for a few days until we're sure the concrete as set fully.

It never did rain although there were a few bolts of lightning later in the evening.

Redneck Studies: Consistent Randomness

In addition to my long-standing observations regarding the native redneck's (i.e., my brother's) inability to pursue any project to completion, I have also noticed a distinct tendency toward increasing randomness in his immediate surroundings.

On occasion, and for no apparent reason, he will go through the pantry and move cans and boxes of supplies from one shelf to another. I can't determine if he was actually looking for a specific item since nothing ever seems to be gone or used. They're all just moved. It happens, to a lesser extent (possibly because he hates leaving the door open), with the refrigerator as well.

Similarly, the lawn mower and various other yard implements can be found at any of three or four possible storage sites, not dependent upon where they were last used.

Late yesterday evening, he suddenly began stomping around the house in a foul mood, opening various drawers and going through the recyclable trash in his room and the kitchen. Being the first Sunday of the month, he had decided to pay a bunch of household bills. and now couldn't find them. We're talking mortgage, utilities, storage unit(s), credit cards--the works. He ransacked the house, and then his truck, and then the house again before giving up for the night. I know he was afraid he might have put them in with the other trash paper and thrown them out last week.

This morning he got up early and started rummaging through his truck again, scraping it out down to the floor mats. When I went out the first thing I noticed was a stack of envelopes sitting on one of the lawn chairs by the fire pit he never quite finished installing so I said, "I see you found all your bills."

"No I didn't."

"What's all that stuff on the chair, then?"

"What chair?"

"The lawn chair. There's what looks like a pile of bills and a bag of pistachios on it."

"That's probably the bills." He left off cleaning the truck* and went inside still pissed off but now at himself. Your welcome.

We've had a run of a few absolutely glorious days, warm, sunny, dry and breezy, perfect for sitting outside. I did so a couple of days ago with a book and iced tea, reading and watching the blue jays and mockingbirds fight over ownership of the bugs in the lawn (blue jays are more obnoxious and tend to win), and saying "Hi" to our black snake as she came home in the early evening from wherever she goes during the day (she stopped about four feet away when she noticed me and we acknowledged each other for a few minutes before she made a wide semi-circle to go around and back to her woodpile).

In short, it's been pretty much perfect outside and my brother had decided to do the bills outdoors and got everything set before he went inside, became distracted and completely forgot what he had intended to do and where. He'd walked right by them on his way to his truck and never noticed because, to my knowledge, he's never sat outside to pay the bills before. It was just another random (though thoroughly supportable) notion.

*And will not continue, now, until he can't find something else in the future.

Redneck Studies: The 70% Complete Solution

I've mentioned before my theory that the reason redneck properties end up looking like redneck properties is the subjects' congenital inability to complete any project. I hold to that premise.

Just a few recent items of note in passing:

My brother has a power wash machine that's been sitting in the garage for a couple years now. (I think the last time it was used was when Mom died and he blasted (most of) the outside of the house before the cousins came over for her wake.) A couple months ago he took it out and discovered just how easy it was to clean the driveway of twenty-odd years of weather, dirt and grime. He would do a smallish section at a time a couple times a week and we moved the vehicles around accordingly to accommodate.

Except he's apparently become bored with that now. The last 20-25% of the driveway, down by the street, hasn't been touched in weeks and there is no indication he intends to go any further. And it's not an even break between completed/untouched sections where he can pretend that it's a different color concrete or anything. It's just obviously not done.

The Christmas tree, at least, came down a week after I removed the last of the ornaments. He insists there is one proper way to assemble and disassemble the tree and he knows what that is. So it's in its box . . . which is still sitting in the hallway two weeks later. I do not know the location of his storage unit, neither do I have a key.

Meanwhile, though, he suddenly had the urge last evening to clean out the roll-top desk. It needed it desperately, having accumulated probably a decade's worth of holiday cards, utility bills, batteries (dead and alive), pens (dead and alive), address books (mostly alive), insurance calendars (assuredly dead), and other assorted ephemera and impedimenta. He had apparently finished by the time I came home since he was in his room watching TV having left the chair he was using blocking the doorway and all the drawers and top of the desk wide open. Do you want cats in your roll-top desk? Because that's how you get cats in your roll-top desk. They'd climb on it occasionally even when it was shut. I closed everything up.

I believe he honestly does not see finishing detail. And certainly does not see it as part of the project. The project was to take down the tree. It's down. The project was to clean out the desk. It's clean. End of story.

I don't know what the deal is with the driveway.

. . . And the End of Civilization As We Know It

Today is the day Florida's judicial stay on the enforcement of the declaration of unconstitutionality of the state's ban on same-sex marriages was lifted. It's convoluted.

Several years ago, along with a bunch of other red(dish) states, our legislature managed to work up enough of a paranoid frenzy among the insecure and easily frightened to get a constitutional amendment passed limiting marriage to the "traditional" one man, one woman format and besides, it's what Jesus wants. (Let's forget that "traditional marriage" as they defined it is barely more than a century old and for most of history was a transfer of property contract between men, and Biblical marriage was even worse involving slavery and polygamy (lookin' at you, Solomon!).)

Anyway, last year a federal judge, upon complaint from two guys wishing to wed in the north end of the state and two women in Miami, declared the ban unconstitutional under the federal 14th amendment which requires states to comply with federal law and ordered the clerks of the county in which the betrothed lived to issue the marriage licenses.

The state, in the full majesty of its official capacity, immediately freaked out and requested a stay of judgment to give it time to appeal the decision, which the judge granted.

Now, the thing about appeals is: higher courts are not usually required to hear them and, if they refuse, the original ruling, whatever it may be, stands. And no higher court, not even the Supreme Court where the extremely conservative Clarence Thomas was the justice who heard the request, agreed to take the case.

So the stay was set to expire at midnight last night.

And then the fun started. The state attorney general, still in full freak-out mode, declared that the ruling only applied to the plaintiffs and anyone else seeking a same-sex marriage could still be discriminated against. And the law firm for the county clerks' association warned the members that the clerks of all the other counties not covered by the ruling risked breaking the law by applying the ruling. So on New Year's Day the judge issued a clarification making it plain that his injunction against the constitutional ban applied to everyone across the state.

At which point some counties (specifically those encompassing Miami, Tampa and Key West) began celebrating, most counties began adjusting their forms and procedures, and a dozen counties in the deep redneck north of the state began contorting themselves to do the barest minimum mainly by refusing to perform any marriage ceremonies gay or straight on the logic that the judge's ruling applied only to marriage licenses not actual marriages. (At least they were smart enough to realize that continuing to perform straight marriage ceremonies would open themselves up to discrimination charges. And there are plenty of other options, both religious and secular, for couples to hold their services.)

And so, despite the trembling of the earth, rising of the waters, lightning splitting stone, and howling winds, society has not yet collapsed. And Florida is being dragged kicking and screaming right up to the edge of the twenty-first century.

2015 So Far

Well, this new year seems to be starting off different.

Three police cars showed up out on our main road about 1:45 a.m., parked in a line about a hundred feet apart with lights flashing and stayed there for an hour or so encouraging a party down that way to break up. It was a pretty good party, too, from the sound and sight of it, with music, fireworks and a large bonfire. (I'm pretty sure it was just a bonfire despite looking as if the host house was burning down with flames rising above the roof and thick smoke billowing out since the fire department never showed up.) It took a while for the dozen or so cars to leave.

Fortunately, the police didn't come any sooner since one of the neighbors down our street had been shooting off commercial-grade fireworks from the pavement in front of his house. They were very impressive (Literally. You could feel the force of the shockwave when they exploded.) and quite beautiful and very loud. The cats hid. They started well before midnight so after an hour and a half someone came out and yelled at them to knock it off. They yelled back, "Happy New Year!" The complainers yelled back, "Happy New Year, to you!" and went inside. A couple of shots later the fireworks ended. That's how civilization is supposed to work.

January is a Blue Month for my platelet donations this year: my every-four-weeks schedule means I will donate twice this month. The first one was scheduled for the first of the year which wasn't going to work for anybody so we moved it to Friday, the 2nd. The regular RN was still out on vacation and the hospital was low on platelets so the sub asked if I'd be willing to do a double, which I was. All went reasonably well with only minor beeping of the machine. When we were done, however, the bandage was not applied tightly enough (can't place blame since I participate in that process). I mentioned that I was feeling a little light-headed when I stood up and another donor said, "Maybe it's because you're leaking all over the place."

Sure enough, the bandage was soaked through, blood was running down my arm, and drops were spurting out all over the floor. I hadn't felt a thing. I sat back down and we got it stopped quickly enough. They spent several minutes scrubbing and decontaminating the floor. I went home, threw my shirt in the wash and took a nap. We all promised to be more observant next time.

My brother decided to put the cats on a diet. It's only the mom, Jasmine, that's fat but they all eat at the same time from shared plates so they're all being cut back in both volume and frequency. One of the enterprising little buggers quickly figured out how to self-serve by nibbling/tearing a small hole in the kibble bag. It was perfectly done and only released food when they stuck their faces in the hole. The only reason I noticed was because they acted totally disinterested when I put out the scheduled meal, instead of the hunger-fueled frenzy that had quickly become the norm. So now the bag is in a sealed bucket and they're unhappy again.

Planning Ahead

Well, at least I now know what (some) of the lumber is for.

My brother treated himself to a firepit. He intends to build what he calls a patio by the front door, set up the firepit there, sit back and drink beer and use the wood for fuel. He doesn't want to put it out back because of some obnoxious nearby dogs who are happy to bark at anything they see (or think they see) all night long. He's much happier with it being visible from the road which, in all honesty, is a better view, anyway.

No idea when the construction on this "patio" might begin. No idea, either, on his intentions for the plywood. Or the crutches.

The funny thing is, we already have a couple of woodpiles on the property that have been aging for literally years. Of course, by the time he's ready to start burning, the new sticks could also be well-seasoned despite being pine.

In the meantime, city code enforcement stopped by and left a note on our door. Apparently, the carrotwood tree is visible from the road and so was all the new lumber which is a violation of the city's "No Outdoor Storage" rule. My brother moved a small section of fencing to hide the 4x6 stumpy bits and carefully rearranged the pallets to lie flat behind a decorative wall of railroad ties (still around the carrotwood) and: voila! No more code violation. (At least, nothing that can be seen from the street.)

On the plus side, he did just bring home a large bag of blood oranges from somewhere, so there's that.

More Sh*t My Brother Drags Home

Continuing the kleptomaniacal tale. This past week:

• More industrial size wooden pallets. We now have three complete plus pieces for a couple more. They're stacking up beside the carrotwood tree.
• A pair of wooden crutches with one missing rubberized foot. If he's planning on having a debilitating accident it's going to have to involve ending up with one leg shorter than the other.
• A short (maybe 2.5 feet tall) open metal frame on casters with closely spaced metal flanges facing inward on parallel sides suitable for holding food trays. Except for the inconvenient lack of height, something that might be seen on an airline or in a hospital for delivering meals.

On a slightly saner note: He went and got the Christmas decorations out of storage over the weekend. They were all piled up in cardboard boxes at the top of the driveway until it started to rain last night forcing us to run outside and chuck everything into the garage except the Christmas tree which resides in a waterproof plastic coffin that is now sitting just at the edge of the living room attracting the attention of the cats. My brother has moved his dead bicycle from the corner where the tree is supposed to go so we can probably expect assembly this weekend.

Sh*t My Brother Drags Home

Last Week:

• Two random sheets of plywood, a wooden pallet frame and three buckets full of 4 x 6 ends no more than a foot or so long. I have no idea what he intends to use them for and I'm not convinced he has either. The stumps, except for being pine, would be ideal in a fireplace, if we had one, which we don't.
• A sort of scrapbook/portfolio of some random person's experience in the navy right after World War II including newspaper clippings (of various people so we don't know if the owner might have been one of them), photos of warships (aircraft carrier, cruiser and at least one destroyer), airplanes and Guantanamo Bay naval base back when it was just an innocent naval base located in a friendly country.
• An envelope labelled "Paris 1951" and containing hand-tinted postcards including one of the Eiffel Tower taken from almost the same vantage point as the famous picture of Hitler's visit to the City of Light, les Invalides, Napoleon's Tomb, etc.; several aerial photographs obviously taken by the original owner as he flew into the city; and a couple of business cards to cafes apparently owned or run by American expats with notes about meetings.

He was given the portfolio/scrapbook by a customer and thinks one of our nephews (both active-duty Navy) might be interested in it. I have my doubts since neither has ever expressed a great interest in history, especially not the personal histories of complete strangers.

I have no idea where (or why) he acquired the other items. I could probably put together a pretty good spy story with the contents of that envelope, though.

Over 200 Served, Not Counting the Cops

Last night began with my brother cursing (one of his favorite pastimes) and vowing never to honor this holiday again (totally not to be taken seriously) because the wind kept threatening to blow over the balloons and even the zombies, and the blower motors inflating the balloons were worn out and there were no viable batteries to power the zombies' eyes and moans, pretty much all of which was true but irrelevant since the real problem was that, as usual, he left everything to the last minute, didn't do any pre-installation checking (re: batteries and motors) and, even on the morning of the day, wasted an hour or two (I wasn't home at the time) chopping down a bougainvillea that was encroaching on the lanai--and had been for several years so why it had to come down right then who knows.

There's no point engaging him when he gets like this so I just let him run his course and assumed the wind would die down once the sun set (it did) and the motors would be more effective when the air cooled (they were). The battery problem was solved when he ran off to the store as the first kids were arriving and bought a jumbo pack of AAs. 

Meanwhile the pillaging hordes started to trickle in about 4:30. Our first visitor, a teenage female pirate, was followed by a five-year-old female doctor. I was kind of disappointed that a lot of kids really didn't seem to put much effort into their "costumes" although the first pirate was very good and there were a number of passable ghouls, super heroes (both male and female) and even a couple of classic Ghostbusters. A couple of kids had corrugated cartons on their heads and I assumed they were Box Trolls but, when I said that to one she sounded very disappointed and sighed, "No, I'm a robot," and turned on the flashing rotating lights in her eye and mouth spaces. I think I might have gotten that correct if they'd been on to start with. The most original was a five- or six-year-old orange Crayola crayon. Second place went to a perfect little Beetlejuice being wheeled around in his stroller.

There were three distinct waves of foragers, the first starting just after sunset, the last coming through just as the police arrive around 9:10.

Did I mention that the police shut us down?

One patrol car went by very slowly on the main street early on in the evening but didn't stop. A second one came onto our street and parked just up from the main activity about 8:30 or so but that's way too early to enforce any sort of noise ordinance and we weren't that loud anyway so he left.

We can't be sure a complaint was filed since people were parking in the main road's median strip as well as on the shoulders in order to get into our street and the police may have been responding to the congestion. Comparing the ethnic diversity of our visitors with the homogeneity Neighbor Dan (who, it must be admitted had partaken of a number of shots) was not taking any chances and attempted preemptive revenge on the mean old man down the street who always complains about everything to the point of calling the police and filing reports about car horns, lawn mowing and unregistered vehicles, by taking a visiting German shepherd named Diesel for a walk and encouraging him to poop on said neighbor's lawn. Diesel was uncooperative.

Finally, three patrol cars came back around 9:20 and stayed until everything completely wound down about forty minutes later which it totally would have done anyway since we were running out of candy and the third wave was thinning out. They didn't say anything to anyone as far as I could tell but their presence was a big hint. Plus, the night was crystal clear and the temperature had dropped into the mid-60s which is a little cool for short-sleeves around here. We put the zombies safely away in the garage, my brother deflated the balloons and I went in to make a cup of hot tea.

My brother's mood had been steadily improving throughout the evening (as I knew it would) and now, operating on the theory that any party shut down by the police is by definition a success, he was delighted. By my calculations we served just north of 220 trick-or-treaters. I managed to salvage three 100 Grand bars for myself and my brother gave me two Almond Joys he acquired somewhere.

This morning is bright and sunny but the wind is howling again.

Steal From My Brother Once, Shame On You. Steal From My Brother Twice . . .

My brother has the learning curve of a lizard.

The police rang our doorbell at 4:00 this morning to let him know they had found his truck. (He was already up having been called by them a few minutes earlier to announce their imminent arrival. I woke up at the sound of the bell.) When they saw who was at the door, the cats all took off like the Angel of the Lord was come to take them to their just reward. We didn't see Paribanour or Mittens again for about six hours.

At first, this particular service--waking people in the middle of the night to notify them of the location of their property--seemed a bit, I don't know, superfluous, since the truck was in the driveway when I went to bed. (Apparently, I don't process too well upon first waking unexpectedly.)

The truck was not in the driveway.

It had been stolen.

It had been stolen and used as a getaway vehicle on a crime spree lasting several hours before being left in a ditch behind the town high school a couple of miles away. Several vehicles in our neighborhood (including, it turned out, Neighbor Dan's truck but not my car) had been entered and pilfered but it was my brother's truck they stole.

Because he left the keys in it.

He left the keys in it! After having his wallet stolen out of the truck only a couple of months ago, he left the keys in it!

So we stood in the driveway, under the eaves of the garage, in the dark and intermittent pouring rain with lightning crashing nearby and the tip of one of Neighbor Dan's palm trees rubbing against an electrical wire in the wind, arcing and sending sparks flying, filling the air with the scent of ozone and burning wood while my brother filled out a criminal complaint form and answered the same questions to each of the three officers who eventually showed up one by one.

They warned him that, although they would try to get the truck back to him as soon as possible, it might take a while if the forensics crew decided they wanted to look for DNA or fingerprints. Also, at the moment they were using the truck as bait, having staked out the area in hopes the perp(s) came back.

As it was, they called at seven to let us know we could come and retrieve it. It was stuck in the ditch, bogged down because of the rain. Neighbor Dan ended up coming by and pulling it out.

The truck works fine and, at first, my brother thought he hadn't lost anything, himself, but on further inspection a diamond ring that belonged to our uncle, of mostly sentimental value, and a check he had out to pay the utility bill, necessitating a visit to the bank to change account numbers, were missing. He added those items to the complaint form. Neighbor Dan may have lost a (full) cash deposit bag from his business. The problem with living in an area as safe as ours is that people get careless.

Let's hope, for my brother's sake, that third time's the charm.

The Wheel of Justice Begins Its Slow Turning

My brother spent the morning in court.

Today was the first scheduled trial date for the guy accused of breaking into my brother's truck and stealing his wallet. In the end, my brother never saw the guy and, apparently, the trial was continued to another day.

The alleged perp remains in jail due to the fact the court won't consider bail because he has a long list of prior convictions and was already out on parole when he was arrested for using my brother's card to buy some cigarettes. He's nineteen years old and looking at two more felony charges now. If he's convicted it's going to be a long time before he's out walking around again.

He apparently had an accomplice, as well, that my brother just found out about and who may have been the one to physically remove the wallet. That one is only fifteen years old and, unlike the first guy, will be charged as a minor, not that it makes much difference since he's been in juvie detention in the next county over for the last 21 days on other charges, already.

I hope I'm wrong but neither one of these winners seems capable of learning from experience.

At the Sisyphus Garage

I've mentioned before my redneck brother's tendency to shop by price alone, hence his willingness to patronize WalMart for the slightly lower price without noticing the slightly smaller package size and slightly lower quality, but this series of truck repairs can not be blamed entirely on his choice of barely competent mechanics just because they charge less than his old one.

His truck was in and out (mostly in) the shop last week for headlight problems. Specifically, he didn't have any high beams. So he took it in for what should have been a simple replacement.

Tuesday: They put in new lamps and managed to disconnect the low beams. He brought it back.

Wednesday: They reconnected the low beams and managed to disconnect one of the new high beams. He brought it back.

Thursday: They broke the grill. He left it there overnight.

Friday: They installed a new grill. They double-checked all the connections and the alignments and guaranteed everything was in working order, which it was. My brother took it to work where one of his co-workers backed into him denting the grill and breaking one of the lamps.

The bozos at his garage got a big laugh out of that because, hey, at least it wasn't their fault.

This time.

The Frightful Day Approacheth

The local newspaper has officially announced that Rainy Season ended last Wednesday. They may be right. We haven't had a drop of rain since then and hardly a cloud in the sky.

Let the games begin.

Neighbor Dan took an early lead by laying out several of his inflatable Hallowe'en displays over the weekend but he has yet to inflate them. I suppose he's just positioning to get a feel for balance and composition but he has also not mowed his lawn in over a week and his grass is already shoe-top high and raggedy. If he leaves the displays staked as is he won't be able to cut and will be close to knee deep by the time the big evening rolls around.

My brother, on the other hand, mowed yesterday afternoon. At least, he mowed the front lawn which, after all, is where the decorations go and the only part visitors will see. Actually, in best Redneck fashion, he mowed most of the front lawn, ignoring under the live oak and bougainvillea and around the coconut palm on the logical assumption that neither decorations nor visitors will go there and it will be dark anyway, after all, so who's going to notice.

I've only seen one other house with any decorations and they've been up since late September but the house is nowhere near us and their display consists entirely of smallish inflatable Disney characters leaning heavily on the theme of Mickey as Sorcerer's Apprentice. Not even also rans.

Paribanour's Might've-Been Excellent Adventure

The cats were "out" last evening when my brother came home. He informed me later that he'd let Jasmine and Mittens in but Paribanour was too comfortable where she was and didn't want to move. As I was getting ready to quit for the night, I opened the door to let her in.

No Paribanour.

I searched around in the house in case she had changed her mind at the last moment (they do that frequently) and slipped in behind my brother as he was closing the door. (Mittens is a master at sneaking into my bedroom or bathroom without me noticing and then dashing behind/under the bookcase, the easy chair or the commode where I can not reach her. The solution is always to leave the room and close the door behind me. Within a couple of minutes, she invariably wants to get out again and will sit by the door until I reopen it.) My search turned up only two cats.

The problem is the outer door latch no longer works. I purchased a new "universal" latch but our old latch apparently was not "universal" and so the screw holes for the new one do not match up. My brother claims to have a drill buried somewhere in the garage and has promised, in his redneck way, to find it for me but that's somewhere way down on his list of things to maybe get around to someday. And until last night it made no difference anyway since the cats were all perfectly content to just lie around in the foyer and watch the world go by.

Last night Paribanour figured out how to open the door.

I'm pretty sure it was an accident. I think she surprised herself. Nevertheless,  . . . curiosity and all that . . . out she went.

Being a house kitten, she has no concept of the big world out there and certainly no clue how to deal with the opossums, raccoons, dogs and cars we know are in the neighborhood let alone anything more exotic (coyote) that might come wandering by.

I don't know how long she was out. Fortunately, she either didn't go far or was just returning when I went out to find her because she was in the grass right at the edge of the walkway lights. Otherwise I would have been searching for an all-over dark gray cat in the night shadows. She made me chase her a little but wouldn't leave the walkway so that game didn't last long.

So all's well that ends well. And my brother promises to find the drill. Soon. He says.

Redneck Studies: Deadly Deja Vu Department

My brother called me last night to come out and rescue him. It seems he'd been turning into a customer's driveway when the left front of his truck collapsed onto the pavement.

Again.

Fortunately, he was only going about 5 miles an hour as he made the turn so he was not injured, but the left front still hit hard and looks like it might have bent the frame since he can no longer close the driver's door. I met him out by the side of the road and we waited for the tow truck to drag his vehicle back to the same guys who "fixed" the exact same problem (which only occurred after they "repaired" a different problem) barely four months ago.

He uses these jokers because he's a sucker for an underdog sob story and the owner claims to have quit the garage my brother used to use (and I still do) in a righteous fit because the other owner was doing something shady although he hasn't given any specifics. He now claims the old shop is in financial trouble which I certainly haven't seen whenever I've been in there. All this is hearsay and only one side of the story. My theory is bozo got fired for incompetence. He claims to have quit in a huff without giving notice. I say he was fired on the spot and told to get out immediately. Considering the quality of his work in my brother's case, I feel pretty confident in my assessment.

My brother does not take advice well. Nevertheless, I attempted, as diplomatically as possible, to explain to him that these bozos had already had all the chances they should be allowed and that he really ought to take his truck somewhere else lest they get another chance to kill him because, sooner or later, they might well succeed. I think I might have got through to him. At least, he was talking about going somewhere else and sending these idiots the bill. Whether he does or not, we'll see.

At leas it wasn't raining last night.

In the Fullness of Time

This weekend my brother planted the orange tree I gave him.

For Christmas.

The poor thing has been sitting in its pot either in the lanai or out in the back yard since December 26. Who knows how long it sat in the nursery before that. (Best guess: Not nearly as long.)

At first he wanted to wait for the weather to warm up, which made sense. It would do no good to plant it if there was a chance of a freeze. Then, for a long time after any possibility of a freeze had passed, I don't know what the excuse was except the redneck tendency to never quite finish (or start) any project. At first, he said he didn't know where he wanted to put it. Later it was too hot to work outside (frequently true), then too rainy (sometimes true). Then he needed to buy fertilizer first. That took a month or so to get around to. Then he discovered irrigation pipes tangled in the roots of the (stunted) lemon tree which he originally intended to dig up and replace with the orange.

Yesterday, as I was looking out the sliding door to the lanai, I noticed the orange tree was no longer parked next to the lemon but was back in the far corner of our property past the smaller of our coconut palms. And it was in the ground. And while I was looking my brother took a gallon of water out to it. Knowing his green thumb, it will probably thrive. Of course, the tools he used are still stuck in the ground next to the tree and will be until they are eventually needed somewhere else.

I hadn't said aloud that I would never by him another plant again, but maybe he sensed it anyway.

And maybe I will reconsider.

Redneck Studies: A Close Call, Parts & Labor Included

Neighbor Dan came over Saturday evening shortly after my brother had left for work. I thought he might be coming to visit the kittens as he and his youngest daughter had done the day before but he was stopping to let me know he had my brother on his phone. My phone was charging at the time. It's a problem with not having a land line anymore.

It seems my brother had been driving on our town's main commercial drag, a six lane (not counting turn-offs) "boulevard" of chain restaurants, strip malls and big box stores when the front end of his truck just fell off about four blocks from work. He needed cash for the tow truck. I grabbed $100 from my brother's stash and headed out.

When I found him, he had managed to pull over into a turn-out lane and was out of the main flow of traffic although that did not stop several inattentive idiots, despite his hazard lights flashing, from pulling in behind his truck as they attempted to enter the mall.

He hadn't been kidding about his truck. It looked as if the left front axle had broken or at least separated from the differential. The end of the axle and the ball joint were just lying there on the road. The wheel was turned in and down at a 45 degree angle and the entire front of the truck sagged. It was a good thing he was in town where the speed limit is 45 mph and traffic volume often prevents even that. If he'd been on the highway when that happened the truck would have gone head over heels and he'd be dead now.

And here's where we get to the Redneck Studies. The thing is, that's exactly the part of the truck he'd had repaired only about 1000 miles ago.

Your typical redneck will opt for the independent contractor, good ol' boy almost every time. The main exception is retail where Wally World wins out over mom-'n'-pop. It all comes down to price, quality be damned. My brother had taken his truck to two guys who used to work for an established (but still local and otherwise good ol' boy himself) mechanic. (They claimed they left voluntarily because they objected to certain of his business practices which is just the unverifiably generic excuse I would expect from a couple of guys who were probably let go for being slackers, but I'm cynical that way.) Be that as it may, they quoted my brother a really good price for the work and he let them at it.

You get what you pay for is a maxim that does not register with rednecks.

I offered to stay with my brother but he declined as there was nothing, really, for me to do there and I'd left my dinner on the stove so I went home before the cats could get to it. My brother had the truck towed to the guys who messed it up, left it parked blocking their garage bay and walked home. I gave him my car to go back to work. So now we're down to one car until the truck is fixed or he can convince his insurance to pay for a rental and since he drives for a living that may not be automatic.

Stereotypes, Florida Automotive Division

Today, on a major boulevard in town: a delivery truck for a local electronics retailer cruising down the middle lane with his left turn blinker on. Yesterday, on a slightly smaller street (only two lanes in each direction) a motorcycle in the far right hand lane, ridden by an elderly gentleman, cars fearful of passing him because he, also, had his left turn signal blinking merrily away for over a mile.

Coming out of the library, a little old emphysematic lady (she doesn't use oxygen but you can hear her wheezing a good ten feet away) wisely stopped at the edge of the curb and waited while an SUV pulling out from the book drop-off ran the stop sign. She then tottered through the parking lot to her own car where she literally disappeared (her hands on the steering wheel were more visible through the windshield than her head). The car eased off down the road a good fifteen miles and hour under the speed limit.

The decade-old, mufflerless pick up truck with the rebel flag decals on the rear window that took off from the intersection as if the green flag had dropped at Daytona all screeching tires and clouds of exhaust fumes only to stall out half a block down the road blocking the lane.

And not least, by far: the Mercedes SUV with the "Tell Barack I'm Baroke" bumper sticker.

I don't think so.

The Place Where I Live

A couple in this county but a few towns over recently had a safe stolen from their home. It contained $100,000 in gold and silver bars that they had just removed from a bank safe deposit box in order to buy a house. I'm thinking either first generation immigrants untrusting of banks due to experiences in the old country (although, why then use a bank's safe deposit box?), or drug dealers trying to keep income off the books (although, I can't imagine customers buying with gold and silver so somewhere along the line cash must have been paid for these bars so there's a record somewhere), or--and this seems most likely to me--idiots.

Considering all of the advertising on TV and in the paper pushing gold and silver hedges against a falling dollar, junk mail touting collectible coins and medallions and right-wing ranters extolling the virtues of hoarding hard metal for the end-times, I'm not surprised someone thought this was a good idea.
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On a totally unrelated note, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissioners remind people that it's not just a bad idea to hunt alligators with a handgun, it's also illegal. Handguns are, apparently, perfectly legal when hunting Burmese pythons, as long as the coup de grace is administered correctly.

But do not share with bears. Or the feral hogs.