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Y’all are amazing. If anyone out there has problems with another person (as if), please scroll down to yesterday’s post and hit the comments. I have the best, smartest, nicest, sexiest readers in the land, and I can prove it. So there.

During a conversation with my mother today, I finally figured out how to describe a typical conversation with The Owner Who Drives Me Crazy. It goes something like this:

Me – "Please have some chocolate cake."

Him – "But I want some chocolate cake! You don’t understand, I really want chocolate cake. I want it so much. I wish you would listen to me. No matter what I do, I can’t get any cake. I wish I could have some cake. I really, really want chocolate cake."

Me – "Here’s some chocolate cake. How big a piece do you want?"

Him – "You don’t get it! I want chocolate cake! Can you even understand me? If you stopped trying to interrupt me — no! Don’t you interrupt me when I’m trying to tell you something that is imperative for all of us to understand. I want chocolate cake, and I’m going to do anything I can to get it. You should be aware that perhaps legal counsel is the best way to persuade you to give me chocolate cake. I wish you would just listen to me once in a while."

Me – "Hell, pass the cake to me, if he’s not going to eat it. And buddy, you can have some if you want some. I’ll put it in front of you"

Him – "No, I just wanted chocolate cake. That’s all. But never mind. I see how it’s always going to be."

But really, if you have that person in your life that makes you want to stick a fork in your eyeball just so you get some peace and quiet at the hospital, please go read those comments. Bless y’all and thanks.

I have to yet again express my displeasure with the HOA member who is of the donkey family. I repeat myself, don’t I? I just can’t tell you how much he affects me. I guess we all have one, don’t we? Someone who pushes our buttons and makes us fly right out the window of reason. Bam! We hit the window and then we’re through the glass, just like that.

See, I know that we’re right. I know that. We’re trying to fix the house, and he is blocking us at every turn, even though he’s the one who says he wants his unit fixed first. There are four of us in the HOA, and three of us are reasonable and sane. But him….. He makes me feel crazy, like we’re wrong to insist that we meet, that we reasonably discuss things, that we move expeditiously.

It’s as if he screams at the top of his lungs (figuratively) and is so loud he blocks the rest of us out. We can vote around him on every measure, but we don’t always want to. Dude, we want to get some bids on fixing his damn dry-rot, but he won’t give us a time to enter his unit, just insists that the bid he submitted is good enough. And then he threatens to just fix it himself (no way in hell) because we’re stalling. We’re NOT! Aargh. Then I start worrying he WILL get one of his shady friends (he has a lot of them) to start working on his unit, just like he got them to rip out my back deck. The hole is still there for my tenant to trip over. Removed without permission or authorization. Triple-dipple aargh.

It’s something about his personality. Just being in the same room with him makes my head explode. And getting emails from him in the middle of the night, rambling, illogical emails that go nowhere shoots me right back to slamming into that window. Bam!

We know we should look into legal representation soon, or at least arbitration. Just to shut him up. At least the dues are now paid. That’s an improvement on the last two years. And really, I’m writing not to complain about him (can’t tell, can you?) but to try to figure out how to deal with my reaction to him.

Because really, my reaction is extreme. I obsess. I rehearse conversations with him. I plan emails. I try to guess what he’ll do next, and which tack we should take to meet that imagined move. I lie awake in bed, and I drum my fingers on the steering wheel in traffic. I had almost recovered from Sunday’s meeting, and he spews a stupid email at us tonight that heated me right back up.

He’s bumming me out, yo. I was kind of down all week, and I finally realized that it was because of having to confront him last Sunday. I started to pull up and out of the funk, and then the email lands. I just can’t shake him. Any good suggestions for me? Just telling me not to worry about him, that’s he’s a dummy-head and not worth my time or concern, that’s not going to help. Give me something Buddhist or Taoist, something strong, something loud. I tell myself a million times a day that I’m LUCKY to have this problem. And lord knows I am. I have it so good. I am thankful every day, this is true. But he still drives me up the freakin’ wall. And out the window. Help!

You like? I don’t carry a purse unless I’m going to work and need a ton of things. Otherwise I have a cell phone in one pocket, wallet in a back pocket, dog bickies and keys in another, and lipstick in the fourth. While the camera fits in a pocket, I don’t have one to spare, so I sewed this up based loosely on instructions here.

Stash fabric, and leftover button from godson’s Dylan’s sweater. I’m well chuffed.

We finally upgraded to a new camera. I’d had mine for about four years, and it was taking a dive. Lala’s was okay, but big and bulky. So we bit the bullet and sprang for the real deal (imperative for Venice, right? Right?), the Canon Powershot SD500 Digital Elph, with 7.1 megapixels. The POWER! And it fits right in my pocket.

Wow. I just checked, and it’s smaller than my cell phone (not that that means anything, since the Treo is pretty big, but wow).

So here! Fewer cell phone photos for you! (Although you’ll still get them, the phone is always with me…..)

    5 lbs of cute

    There are a lot of these surprised looking shots

    But then I figured it out.

I freaking love technology, man. Now we’re off to the beach, where I’ll probably take one bajillionty million pictures of dogs, pictures that no one else will appreciate like I do, but I appreciate! I do! I also have a lot of errands that I just don’t want to run today….. I had a hell of an HOA meeting yesterday, in which I had to go head to head with the guy next door (he got his name as associated on the title, so we have to let him in the meetings), and I hate confrontation. Apparently I’m good at it, but it left me a sobby, weepy mess afterward. Of course, I had worked all night, and had come home to find Clara in a crate full of intestinal distress (poor baby, she’d eaten something horrible, I think it might have been a rotten lemon from the backyard), so at 6:30am on Sunday, I’m in the front yard, sloshing out and scrubbing the crate with Lysol and hot water, washing the dog under the hose. The meeting came after that (and a nap, thank god). I am in a much better mood today, but in no mood to Do Things I Have To Do.

Lala had a great idea yesterday — every time I have an HOA meeting, we get out a box of Cadbury Creme Eggs from the freezer. There are five left, and I just CAN’T have five meetings between now and Easter, can I? I think that’ll do nicely.

Beach now.

https://rachaelherron.com/we_finally_upgr/

It is not, I repeat, NOT for Christmas, Rabbitch. I sah-wear to god. If you didn’t live in Vancouver (for which you are forgiven all faults, but forget I said that), I’d drive up there and give you such a pinch!

I can’t believe you did that. Bringing up the C-word when there’s another heat wave headed our way. Humph.

So here it is. Let me be the first to make this eminently sensible decision this year, and I am making it out loud, right here and now, for all of you, gentle readers, to witness.

•     I am not knitting anything for anyone this year for Christmas.

Dpn’t get me wrong (that was an honest typo. Hah!). I do love knitting prezzies for people, but I really dislike doing it on holiday deadline. (Christy, the shawl doesn’t count. I’m LOVING knitting it. Can’t wait to show you. And it’s not Christmas.)

And you know what? I’m going further with this, watch me:

•     I’m not going to buy anything for anyone until one week before Christmas.

How do like THEM cinnamon-apples, HUH, Rabbitch? Put that in your stocking and smoke it, lady.

And when I do buy Christmas presents, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to drive to the City, pay for garage parking, walk to the MOMA museum gift store, buy one small and interesting gift for everyone on the list, and then go home and wrap them. I think I can have Christmas done in under three hours, including traffic. Watch me.

Now, you can go ahead and cuss me out for bringing it up. But please remember that I wasn’t the first one. Rabbitch was. Good thing she lives in Vancouver. Safer up there, y’know.

Lately I’ve been trying to jumpstart creativity, just like my Divine Ms. Em has. She has a post and a comment thread that I loved reading this morning. Go give her some more idears, huh?