Orbit Was Nice; Now, Back On The Planet

[dr_pretentious]

I hope you're all well. I haven't had a chance to check my friends list since Tuesday, and now there's no possibility of catching up.

First, there was Commencement Day. mischievouspie, jaime_sama, and jaime_sama's consort G all graduated, so I spent the day at the ceremonies, and then helping set the food up for the party, and then at the party. Frabjousness, calloo callay, etc.

Then, there was another day of 6am blood tests, which, after being up all hours for a graduation party for people who had spent, on average, a decade apiece in grad school, was kind of rough.

The next day, Dan's parents were in town. My in-laws are smart, affectionate people who mean well. They really do. They always mean well. I'll stop there.

Saturday, we engaged in highly localized deforestation. Back when we lived in Highland Park, which was populated mostly by university professors and grad students, we got used to being surrounded by scruffy yards. The population of Highland Park was competing for publications and citations--they didn't need to engage in competitive lawn worship. South River's another animal entirely. We bet on gentrification when we moved here, and it's happening, sure enough, but meanwhile, our neighbors are mostly retirees from the brickyard that closed down decades ago, and they seem to derive immense satisfaction from competing to see who can have the largest number of virgin-mary-in-a-bathtub lawn ornaments on the most impeccably manicured grass. We, needless to say, are entirely without ecclesiastically approved concrete lawn ornaments. And our shrubs generally tend toward scruffiness.

One of our neighbors--Dan and I suspect it was the ones who listen to Rush Limbaugh while gardening--reported us to the town for having scruffy shrubs. We got a notice accusing us of having "an overgrowth of vegetation leading to blight." Blight? What blight? And if there were a blight, how could there be an overgrowth at the same time? I would think that blighted vegetation would be kind of stunted. Shows what I know.

Not only do I suspect that it was the Limbaugh fans who sent the town after us--I suspect they did it because we hosted the coven's last New Moon circle, and we held ritual outdoors. But then, these are the same neighbors who came out to watch me like a hawk once after a snowstorm, to make sure that, while shoveling, I didn't get any of my snow on their yard. I am so looking forward to the day these neighbors move to Florida. Sooner or later, that's where all elderly New Jersey neighbors go.

So we spent Saturday on the yard, because the town's shrub inspector is coming next week with his scruffiness checklist. Dan did lots of backbreaking labor involving shears and bow saws and a really impressive pruning device that looks like the perfect polearm for defending your city wall from invading Mongols. Maybe we can storm the house next door with it, once all this bureaucracy is over. Dan, le hallebardier. My most important task was to pull all our poison ivy; I'm allergic, but Dan's anaphylactically so. Every year, we kill back the invading tendrils of poison ivy, and every year, it comes back from its safe havens on the neighbors' properties. But do we accuse our neighbors of fostering blight? No, not even though this plant could actually kill one of us. Sheesh. Not surprisingly, I'm nursing a little poison ivy rash now.

Today, we went to a big in-law family to-do up in Brooklyn. tokeiwakamidesu's mom was celebrating her 60th birthday, so the place was mobbed with family and friends. The catering was excellent, but still not as fabulous as tokeiwakamidesu's father's cooking. One of the best things about the day was, of course, hanging out with tokeiwakamidesu. He informs me that a heartbroken friend of his at school read my anniversary post and decided to evaluate the relationship she'd just lost by comparing it to mine. Well, comparing it to mine, as I described it on its celebratory day, in a good year. Dan and I had two non-contiguous difficult years, back in the Middle and Late Cretaceous Periods, respectively--some of you will remember those years--and I wish I could tell that innocent Chicago undergrad that the slumber party's wonderful and true, but it's not the whole picture. (What is it Alicia says, in the patter she always does before performing her wedding poems? Marriage is hard, and a long marriage is hard for a long time, I think is how it goes. Also true, and also not the whole picture.) Anyhow, I have now weighted down my favorite cousin-in-law's carry-on luggage with the second half of the big book, which I haven't read in most of a year. I wonder how it plays.

I expect to finish this draft of The Novella That Will Not Be Called Bob And The Black Head Of Atho sometime this week, at which point I'll spend a couple hours printing myself a fresh copy of the big book, and find out.

Comments

[kistha.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I also vote for the maze.

Silly buggers.

We have nice neighbors who ask to take violets, and are patient with my attempts to discover just what the hell it is I have in the yard.

Of course we haven't had any rituals out front...here's hoping it won't change.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

But we didn't hold ritual out front. We held it out back, where we (until very recently) had a fair bit of privacy, thanks to our scruffy shrubs. tracyandrook speculated that the neighbors might have forced us to cut back our hedges to cut down our privacy. Maybe. But if that's the case, would they be hoping lack of privacy would be a deterrent, or just more conducive to their keeping an eye on us?

We have other neighbors who are perfectly reasonable, though I'm sure they tell amusing stories about us. There was the year we hosted Beltane, and rather than limp our way through May-related folk songs from another country while we wove the maypole, we went with the spirit of the holiday and played Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On." Our reasonable neighbors hid behind their gazebo to watch, trying to conceal their giggling. We giggled that they thought they had to hide behind the gazebo. It was a fine afternoon all around.

If we're lucky, maybe we'll get another batch like them when the Limbaugh fans move to Florida, assuming they don't fall under the pruning halberd first.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

But we didn't hold ritual out front. We held it out back, where we (until very recently) had a fair bit of privacy, thanks to our scruffy shrubs

Caught that, I was just talking about us. We have a very private backyard year round since this is tree central and we back into a ravine (maybe while you are here, you can come see.) So unless we do ritual out front sometime we're probably in the clear for it never coming up. Seriously I don't think most of them would have a problem. I've watched the neighbor kids whacking each other with sticks, and when I pointed out where they could get real practice swords to the parents they weren't horrified. One set of neighbor's kid is being encouraged to write his book, a fantasy kind of thing, at the tender age of 10. I'm just worried that if it does come up it will ruin what is very nice currently.

The Beltane story is lovely - it's nice to have good neighbors. I hope your Limbaugh pests move to Florida...Maybe you should plant a maze in the shape of a pentagram in their yard. :)Should hurry them right along.

Seriously if they have problems with what goes on in your back yard they should just stop peering over the hedges.