Everybody’s all excited about the coming fall and cooling temps. I’m not the least bit excited about the idea of being cold. When we got up this morning it was 73° inside the house and even that’s too chilly for me. Hard to believe it’s getting up into the 90s today, but it is. Dry climates are like that… the temp can be toasty in the daytime, then drop like a rock at night. 

The trees are just starting to turn colors and lose their leaves, making a mess of the roads and calling for more sound annoyances (blowers). Every time I hear a pop as I’m riding over twigs or parts of pinecones I worry I blew a tire. 

It was still a great day for riding. The sun was warm while the breeze was cool. 

Went to Michael’s craft store yesterday and got a few adult coloring books. One has tessellated designs, one has oriental designs, and another has fashions, both modern and not. Got a few new mediums to color with too, that I’ve never tried before. I like the glitter markers, but the metallic pencils aren’t anything to brag about. 

Today we went to Raley’s, which was utterly freezing, and I grabbed a couple of bags of Miracle Noodles. One’s fettuccini flavored and the other is spinach. It’s supposed to be 0 calories but still filling. We’ll see about that when I try them later on. I pictured dry noodles like Ramon noodles, but they’re in a squishy gel-like liquid. You’re supposed to drain them in a colander. It’s some kind of Asian pasta (shirataki). No calories, soy, cholesterol or gluten. 

Last night I dreamed I was at my sister’s place and we were walking around her block with a guy she called Jeff. She and Jeff wanted to walk leisurely, but I wanted to jog, so I ran around the block until we crossed paths and Jeff called out “hi” as I passed them. 

“Jeff said hi to you,” Tammy said, knowing I tend to be anti-social, but not knowing that I still observe things going on around me. I see. I hear. I just don’t always speak. But Tammy didn’t see me wave to Jeff while Jeff did, and he told her I waved to him on my way by. 

Later… 

We saw Bob and Virginia sitting in front of their place as we were finishing up our bike ride. Sure enough, not long afterward, Bob starts this loud, obnoxious, totally annoying hammering. And also sure enough, my husband is quick to defend him, saying he’s not being rude, that’s what people do, and our only option is to move. 

No, there’s another option… for him to shut the fuck up. Seriously, I’m not moving. I’m through running from noise simply because people have no consideration for others. I haven’t done anything wrong and therefore I’m not moving. He may not do this shit every day, but now we’re up to 3 times this month, and that’s almost weekly. I don’t need to hear it and I don’t want to hear it! 

He’s really putting a lot of stress on me. Once someone starts something at least regularly enough, then I have the stress of the anticipation hanging over my head, fearing he’s going to start his shit any second. I don’t know what I hate more, his hammering or his sawing. 

This may be ultra-paranoid of me, but I wonder if I should have mentioned thinking of moving that day I let out my frustrations to Virginia when they turned the water off. Makes me wonder if they’re not trying to actually drive us out of here because they prefer older neighbors they can be friends with like the Ss, not that they’d necessarily get folks in their 70s or older here if this house were suddenly for sale. I just don’t have a very good vibe about him, and again, I’m the only one that can shut him up. Hope that’s not what I’m going to have to eventually do. I swear it’s like he’s slowly testing me like the blacks would after we’d lodge a complaint with the city. 

Forget bitching to Tom, though. If I bitch about Bob, he bitches about me bitching about him. Seriously, he makes me feel like I’m wrong to feel annoyed by it… just like he has with all our neighbors. Had I been Bob in court back in 2000, would he have said, “I just want to see that he gets help?” Or would he have actually defended him because he wasn’t/isn’t his wife? Just wondering when I’m going to get the same defense he gives others. I’m sick of venting about someone just to have him either defend or make excuses for them. It doesn’t help and it doesn’t make me feel better. Should Tammy complain about me in Florida, not that I can see why she would, I hope I get that same fierce and automatic defense. 

Just stopped and ran Bob’s name online again. Why didn’t I get this before? I not only see their previous addresses in Minnesota, which is where they’re from, but they also lived in Carmichael and Sacramento at one point. Also, she’s 82 and he’s 85, almost 86. So what do you figure… about 10 more years of this shit? Again, I don’t want the guy to die; I just want him quiet. I would actually worry if they died or moved because there are so many worse neighbors we could end up with over there. 

Can’t believe they post all this shit on people for free. I didn’t even have to look hard for it. Really not sure I like all this info being thrown out there for all the world to see for little to no money at all. The name Tom is much more common than Jodi, but so far it looks like only old shit on us is available for free. Sooner or later our current address will hit the freebie scene, and again, I’m not sure I like that idea. If someone gets pissed at me online, what’s to stop them from finding our address, calling the cops, and saying I beat them up or threatened them? Or some other load of bullshit? You only need someone’s word, false or not, to convict someone. Prosecutor needs to prove you’re guilty? Wrong. You need to prove you’re innocent. So it’s not like I worry someone’s going to show up uninvited at the door, but more like use the law to spite us. Knowledge is power, and the more info you have, the more you can use it against someone whether they deserve it or not. Still, I’m not going to let it scare me offline. 

So what happened to my lone LiveJournal reader? Scared off by the now visible tracking icon, or just busy?