It’s genetic

I went out in my teeny backyard to do some weeding on the weekend. Although we finally have some sun now, it had been rainy for a few weeks prior, so the weeds were running rampant. Fortunately, I don’t have much in the way of flowerbeds, so it doesn’t usually take me more than an hour, but I’d really rather see the dirt than the weeds, so I put in the time to weed.

There are a couple of tall cedar trees and several fat rhododendron bushes in this flowerbed that borders two sides of my yard. Interestingly, I actually have no flowers there, just these plants – oh, and a heather plant and a rhubarb. I suppose I shouldn’t call it a flowerbed, should I?

Anyway, I was partly underneath one of the cedar trees, getting scratched to smithereens, yanking out moss and stuff. I was hidden from view because of the cedar tree and the rhodos. And then I heard that familiar, loathed sound.

Snick, snick, snick.

Pause.

Snick, snick.

I peeked out from my hiding place and looked over at my neighbour’s yard. And what was going on there? It seemed that my neighbour’s elderly mother was visiting, and she was standing outside on the patio. She was clipping her fingernails.

Like mother, like son. Obviously.

Love thy neighbour (do I have to???)

My weekday alarm is set for 6:15 am, and I’m usually out of bed by 6:30 am. Well, if I’m honest, it’s sometimes 6:45 am. And often 7 am. But only very, very rarely later than that. Really. I like to get to work between 7:45 and 8 am (the bell rings to let the kids in at 8:30), and it’s about a 15-minute commute, so I need to leave no later than 7:45. This is also necessary if I want to get one of the better parking spots in the carpark (ie. a spot near the school entrance door and away from the walkway).

Yesterday morning, I seemed to have a whole lot of energy, and I hopped out of bed just before 6:30. I went into the bathroom and suddenly became aware of a rather loud engine. It wasn’t a car or truck, it was more like a pressure washer. And it sounded like it was in front of my house.

I looked out the window from upstairs, but I couldn’t see anything that could possibly be making that horrendous din. I was still in my jammies so I didn’t really want to go downstairs and out onto the balcony to get a better look at the driveway that I share with two other homes – but I was getting a little miffed at all that racket so early in the morning, so I HAD to find out what was going on. Out I went.

And there below, I saw my next-door neighbour. His humongous SUV was blocking the entire driveway (good thing it was only 6:30 am and nobody had to leave for work yet). He was washing it with what looked like a pressure washer.

Let me reiterate that it was 6 effing 30 in the morning. And this tool appeared to be pressure washing his big old SUV. In the middle of a driveway shared by three homes instead of parked in front of his own garage.

What kind of person even does such a bizarre thing?!?

My next-door neighbour is that kind of person … the guy who clipped his fingernails so loudly in his backyard early one Saturday morning that he woke me up.

And when I left for work at 7:30, he was still out there, cleaning the SUV’s windows. But at least he’d moved the SUV so I could easily get by.

A rhetorical question: what did I do in my past life to deserve THIS GUY as my next-door neighbour?!?

Clippity clop

The weather has finally turned and it looks like we will have spring in my part of the world after all. Yesterday dawned sunny and warm, and this is supposed to continue all weekend and throughout most of next week. As I type this, it’s currently 23 degrees Celsius and I live pretty close to the beach, so it’ll be hotter the further inland you go.

So last night was the first night in a long time that I could have my bedroom window open. I still had a hard time falling asleep (insert shout out for menopause here), but at least air was circulating and I could breath comfortably.

Naturally, when windows are open, you hear all kinds of things that normally are inaudible or at least muffled. Like traffic. Or the pizza restaurant across the street. You quickly get used to it, though.

But what I will NEVER get used to is being woken up at 8 am on a Saturday morning – which is, by the way, one of the two days per week that I get to sleep in. This is important when you are a person such as myself, who is often wide awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night or who takes a couple of hours to actually fall asleep in the first place. I need to catch up on the sleep I am missing when either of those two situations occur. That would be three or four times each week. Roughly calculating, I estimate that I therefore need to catch up on maybe eight hours of missed sleep on the weekend.

Being rudely awoken at 8 am on a Saturday morning, no matter how beautiful said Saturday is shaping up to be, is NOT the way for me to catch up.

And what woke me up? My stupid next-door neighbour, that’s what. And how did he do that? He was outside in his back yard (which is next to my back yard, which my bedroom window overlooks) clipping his effing fingernails!

If there is one sound that I (possibly irrationally) detest, it is the clipping of fingernails. Aaarrrghh! I don’t even like hearing it when I’m doing it myself or getting my nails done at the salon. I mentally and physically cringe when I hear that sound.

And there was my cretin of a neighbour clipping his fingernails in his backyard at 8 am on a Saturday morning. Who the hell even DOES that?!? What a completely ridiculous thing to do! I can just imagine that his patio is a sea of ugly little fingernail clippings – gross! He probably does his effing toenails out there too – even more disgusting!

And think about this: my hearing is so very attuned to a sound that I hate so very much that it actually woke me up this morning.

Is that a feature or a glitch, do you think?