Spring Flowers, The Daily Grind, and Neighbors

Well now that I have been officially sent back to work, kicking and screaming all the way, I find first of all that I did not get near the projects done that I thought that I would during my extremely shortened recovery and second, my job exhausts me! It is the time of the year, I am sure, this is when we start to get really busy and that is good after the winter but there is so much to do that it is just push, push PUSH to get everything done and deadlines. I keep telling myself that we are just making t-shirts here people, this is not NASA but some days it seems like t-shirts are just as important! The Princess is "riding" the World's Smallest Two Wheeler. I found this at the yard sale last week. It is still too big for her, but she liked Mommy pushing her around on it. I think Grammie might milk the recovery a little longer, that looked like a backbreaker pushing that little thing.

Spring flowers popping up everywhere. I love them!

And the continuing saga of the neighbors....just a little background, we have two neighbors to the one side of our house that fight with each other constantly to the point that they take each other to court and are constantly calling the police on one another. One is a single 60ish woman and the other a late 60ish recent widow. Both need a hand every now and then and my dear husband has sort of "helped" them here and there. If he helps Neighbor #1 though, Neighbor #2 HAS to see it and find something for him to do for her also. About a week before my surgery the second one became a widow and she wanted us to find a "home" for her husband's wheelchair and power chair. Of course the irony of this was that he always used our driveway which makes a circle to "exercise" in, making round after round around our driveway in the power chair sometimes aggravating the heck out of me because I was so afraid that we were going to hit him pulling in, AND I would be out working peacefully in my flowers and he would pull up behind me and say something and startle me. Most of the time it was to complain about the other neighbor and I just did not want to get in the middle of it....telling me that she was stealing my tomatoes, then she would say they were harassing her and then he would say this and on and on. I try (have tried) not to be short tempered with the whole thing but it is really a test for me. Not John though, patience of a saint, he LISTENS to them both and helps them and for this I am sure there will be a special jewel in his crown, I give up, just give me a rock. I can't do it.

Enough of the background, the other day Neighbor #1 needs her plastic recycling taken to the trailer for that purpose at the fire hall and she wants John to do it for her. He tells her to bring it to the shop on Mon at 10 and he will go with her and unload it, then he has to leave the shop for something and remembers that and does not want me to have to deal with it so he goes to her house to collect it. She has her house surrounded by a chain link fence and has a security camera scanning the "compound" and he has to wait outside until the camera sees him and then she comes out and opens the gate. This process takes just enough time for Neighbor #2 to see him and dream up some chore for him while he is there so while Neighbor #1 is throwing out five garbage bags of recyclables, Neighbor #2 is screaming (did I mention the sanity issue?) for him to come over there. He collects the bags of plastic loads them in the truck and then has to go to Neighbor #2's house and collect the manual for the power chair that is STILL sitting in my garage waiting for pick-up by some charitable organization. Neighbor #2's house smells so bad that he has to leave there and search for something in his truck that smells good to stuff up his nose to get the smell out of his nose from her house. Of course John makes a big joke of it all and says that it is a good thing that he has been losing weight lately because if anything ever happens to Neighbor #1 inside the fence, he is going to have to pole vault over the fence with the clothesline pole to get to her. I gently remind him that we don't have clothesline poles but we do have a ladder which might be more effective, but the visual of him polevaulting does bring humor!

Anyone else with neighbor stories?