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In Which I Ramble About Winds and Plants
Life is continuing on. Every day our Hawaii house is just a teeny bit more of a home. It's going to take time, lots of time, well past the next months when I'm finishing up my full-time work for Skotos, well past when I'm going out to Buenos Aires for RWOT10, and well past when we're returning to the Bay Area for an early 2020 visit, but it'll happen.
And it's a lot less stressful than the deadlined work of 2019 to move out here.
Today has been shockingly windy. Doors keep slamming. An entire roll of toilet paper got unrolled in our front bathroom. We actually closed up all the windows in the house. Well, except a couple of turncrank windows in the front of the house that can't be closed because renters let the plants grow under them.
Speaking of plants:
This weekend I bought a new weed-wacker at Home Depot, which I've now been to about half-a-dozen times. I loved my old battery-powered wacker that Bob got me several years ago, but it just wasn't sufficient to cut our steep hillside in back, which is big and too steep for a lawnmower. So I got the best battery-powered Ryobi model. At 40V, that's the same power I have for my lawnmower (and in fact the same battery, which is a plus), and I also got a wacker with a 15" cutting swath and with dual-feed lines. It did the job MUCH better. Previously, I'd been unable to do more than 20% of the back hill before I had run both of my old batteries out and utterly exhausted myself. I exhausted myself again on Saturday, truth to tell, but I finished the whole hill, and all on one battery. So, yay, that's been a problem and it's now resolved (but I need to build some upper body strength).
And speaking of plants in another state:
We had a very disturbing report from our realtor that one of our neighbors told her that a crew of people including a pregnant 30-year-old woman had been out in front of our house recently, trying to stuff our recently laid pebbles and our recently planted landscaping plants into bags!!?? She says she yelled at them to get out of there and that she was calling the police. This is honestly the most bizarre thing I've ever heard of, even in Berkeley (where our realtor said that someone also dumped a bunch of trash in front of our house, which is much more typical of the self-centered, civic-free attitude of a lot of people in the town), but a gang trying to steal our new landscaping??? WTF!!
I do wonder if the story isn't a fabrication, as I think the neighbor is the same middle-aged woman from the apartments across the street who greeted me real friendly a week or two before I left and after we talked for a bit said she was really sorry when she heard I was leaving because she liked us living there. And this was a woman that I'd swear I never talked to before. But she seemed otherwise entirely normal when we talked, and that's also balanced with concern that someone knows the house is empty and thus vulnerable ... apparently to plant theft.
But I alerted our other very nice neighbor, who I know is watching over the house, and hopefully if something is actually going on one neighbor or the other will make sure the police are alerted.
But again i say, WTF. (And did it really happen?)
(We've generally been hearing about minor nuisances at the house, such as a smoke alarm that's started chirping and a few sockets that aren't working right, and I've just been giving our realtor the OK to deal with them and/or spend money to do so. I'm thrilled she's doing so and I don't have to, especially now that we're a thousand miles away.)
And I think when I started writing tonight, my subconscious intent was to write about the insane possibly true attempt at plant theft. So I'll call it quits now.
And it's a lot less stressful than the deadlined work of 2019 to move out here.
Today has been shockingly windy. Doors keep slamming. An entire roll of toilet paper got unrolled in our front bathroom. We actually closed up all the windows in the house. Well, except a couple of turncrank windows in the front of the house that can't be closed because renters let the plants grow under them.
Speaking of plants:
This weekend I bought a new weed-wacker at Home Depot, which I've now been to about half-a-dozen times. I loved my old battery-powered wacker that Bob got me several years ago, but it just wasn't sufficient to cut our steep hillside in back, which is big and too steep for a lawnmower. So I got the best battery-powered Ryobi model. At 40V, that's the same power I have for my lawnmower (and in fact the same battery, which is a plus), and I also got a wacker with a 15" cutting swath and with dual-feed lines. It did the job MUCH better. Previously, I'd been unable to do more than 20% of the back hill before I had run both of my old batteries out and utterly exhausted myself. I exhausted myself again on Saturday, truth to tell, but I finished the whole hill, and all on one battery. So, yay, that's been a problem and it's now resolved (but I need to build some upper body strength).
And speaking of plants in another state:
We had a very disturbing report from our realtor that one of our neighbors told her that a crew of people including a pregnant 30-year-old woman had been out in front of our house recently, trying to stuff our recently laid pebbles and our recently planted landscaping plants into bags!!?? She says she yelled at them to get out of there and that she was calling the police. This is honestly the most bizarre thing I've ever heard of, even in Berkeley (where our realtor said that someone also dumped a bunch of trash in front of our house, which is much more typical of the self-centered, civic-free attitude of a lot of people in the town), but a gang trying to steal our new landscaping??? WTF!!
I do wonder if the story isn't a fabrication, as I think the neighbor is the same middle-aged woman from the apartments across the street who greeted me real friendly a week or two before I left and after we talked for a bit said she was really sorry when she heard I was leaving because she liked us living there. And this was a woman that I'd swear I never talked to before. But she seemed otherwise entirely normal when we talked, and that's also balanced with concern that someone knows the house is empty and thus vulnerable ... apparently to plant theft.
But I alerted our other very nice neighbor, who I know is watching over the house, and hopefully if something is actually going on one neighbor or the other will make sure the police are alerted.
But again i say, WTF. (And did it really happen?)
(We've generally been hearing about minor nuisances at the house, such as a smoke alarm that's started chirping and a few sockets that aren't working right, and I've just been giving our realtor the OK to deal with them and/or spend money to do so. I'm thrilled she's doing so and I don't have to, especially now that we're a thousand miles away.)
And I think when I started writing tonight, my subconscious intent was to write about the insane possibly true attempt at plant theft. So I'll call it quits now.