Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Day 113 A room with no view! By By pitbulls!

Monday June 21st Ran 6 miles. Miles so far 191/ Miles to go 809. Bought two weekly grands and the Wednesday lotto ticket. Won 4 dollars on the Weekly Grand so my $5 investment became only $1. Gambling investment so far $63/ Winnings $37...Total losses $26

Ran 6 miles at lunch. It felt good to be in such a mileage deficit reduction mode. Two days in a row at six miles. But all afternoon I was dragging and I had to teach my class at 7:50 so by the time I got home around 10:15 I was really tired. I stopped at the Kroger to get some essentials. We were out of paper towels and I needed contact lens solutions and new tooth brush and some face and body soap, etc. Since I am trying to do more high protein Atkins kind of eating I picked up some fiber mix because one of the recommendations from my roto routering was to be sure I had plenty of fiber in my diet. Orange flavor...will be like my morning OJ with out the OJ lol. By the time I checked out, my little stop for a few items ended up costing around $70. I wonder how that is possible.

Yesterday as I filled up a water bucket to water the four large crepe myrtles that I planted in from of my house which do not look too good in this 100 degree heat and are certainly not blooming yet like most of their older cousins at other houses on my block, I realized that I had lost my 1960s era kitchen window view. My house is in a vintage sixties ranch style home neighborhood. I am one of the few with an upstairs. Next door the son of the woman who owned the house is moving back in after her death and has been renovating for what seems like forever. He is cheap and seems to always hire contractors whose prices are too good to be true because they aren't. Then they walk off the job leaving him with half finished projects and more expense than if he hired a good one to begin with.

From my kitchen window I used to have the vista of a chain link fence through which I could see into his yard and see an old fashioned clothes line...yes the original I am sure. It always reminded me that when I was a kid I used to hang by my knees from the cross beams of cloths line poles until one time when there was still dew on one and I slipped bumping my head and injuring my pride more than anything else. I don't know if kids do that sort of thing anymore. It may have died along with tree climbing and bottle rocket wars. I even remember coming home one time from Tony Komen's house covered in peach juice. He had several peach trees in his yard and several of the neighborhood gang had participated in a rotten peach fight. The pits could really hurt if they hit you square on. It was a much more rough and tumbled world I suspect that many kids of my contemporaries where mothers arranged "play dates" at public parks where kids could be watched 24/7. I remember leaving the house after breakfast and returning after dark for dinner. Oh well....I know my younger readers and thinking "and you trudged six miles to school in the snow yada, yada, yada...

Back to my kitchen window view, before all the renovation began, the side and back fences of my neighbor's house were hidden by very mature shrubs so that after looking through his yard, I saw just the hedge and the tops of neighbors' trees beyond. It was a pleasant, pastoral sight. The first time I realized that this was going to change was when I heard the chain saw and looked out to see all the side yard hedges being unceremoniously chopped down. I wondered how long they had stood there. The naked stumps looked so forlorn and suddenly through now revealed chain links I could see the next neighbor's yard which contained a large tent like structure covered with ugly blue plastic in which he keeps pit bulls that we suspect are used for fighting. I am told the police have been to his house many times and he has many tickets, etc. The owner of the bulls is the son of the house owner I am also told. In any event this view was no substitute for the nice line of 12 foot hedges.

My neighbor had decided he needed an 8 foot wooden privacy fence and three contractors and several weeks later, it is up. Now from my kitchen window I see the metal poles and wooden slats of his castle walls....bad news...no more shrubs....good news, no more blue caped killer dog tent, bad news...my vista is gone. I plan to plant some vine or something on my side of the fence so over time I will see something other than the ugly side of the fence. But this entire episode made me long for a simpler time of chain links and clothes line poles....

More on vistas in a later post.....but life is good!

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