A Garden Variety Hike... and a Hail Mary

I took off work the day after Christmas, and Kevin and I wanted to get out for another hike in our last free day together.

He realized as were leaving Tyler State Park two days earlier that we had never walked up to the gardens at the community college, and he said we should do that the next time we were there.

So, we decided to make it happen!

It's a pretty scenic walk from the parking lot up through the meadow that separates the park from the campus:

Kevin got a kick out of this:

He suggested we snap the same photo of ourselves on this bridge over a little stream:

I asked why not just take a selfie, and he asked if people over the age of 20 actually take selfies?

The Secret Garden

And then we arrived at the gardens:

Those white pots at the base of the staircases had purple kale growing in them!

Statues, hedges, ornate fountains. I never knew any of this was here:

Kevin said the only thing different from the last time he was here 15 years ago was this black fence:

Kevin says the cliff just past that fence is steep enough that people sometimes commit suicide there. (And the college probably just doesn't want the liability of being held responsible for an accidental student death.)

Apparently he and a high school friend climbed it twice, but that was a lifetime ago and not while it was as muddy as it has been lately. So we passed on finding a way around the fence to get closer.

We debated what this might be: Perhaps a greenhouse with all the shade cloth taken down for the winter?

Into the Woods

We did find a way around the fence, but only so we could follow the creek back in the direction of the park (as opposed to going to the cliff).

It was very beautiful back here! And not terribly muddy, although the slope was steep enough that we really had to plan our steps in certain places.

It's a long way down. Don't fall!

The Roots

We found a beautiful web of exposed tree roots:

I would have loved to capture them from a few differents angle. But I wasn't about to chance venturing any farther down the slope to do it!

Kevin did though:

Such a cool effect. It looks like a bunch of snakes.

Downhill

A few minutes later we did find a place that looked semi-safe to head down closer to the water.

We made it down in one piece:

Hang on... Got a pebble in my shoe.

Okay.

And suddenly, things were looking up now:

We inadvertently snapped almost the same photo (which happens quite a lot actually):

Follow the Path

We knew that following the creek would eventually bring us back to where we had parked by the foot bridge and the boathouse. So it was just a matter of enjoying the scenery. (And hopefully not going for an unexpected swim along the way.)

Would you take the high road or the low road here?

The high road was nothing but scree that looked like it would just slide around under our feet, and the low road was a muddy slope.

And either way, one misstep meant we would be taking a plunge!

I would have opted for the high road myself, but Kevin went low so he could lean into the slope and have roots available to grab in the event that he lost his footing.

And he made it across without issue, so I decided to go low as well.

Timber!

We came across a tree that had fallen over the path, and we got lots of really interesting shots:

The Home Stretch

Eventually we started to hear dogs barking and kids shrieking, so we knew we were getting close.

We tried our hand at some panoramic shots:

Kevin snapped some pics of this mossy log that really came out nicely:

Back Home

No sooner did we get back home and up the stairs when three people came out of the apartment downstairs:

Later on I made bacon and eggs for dinner and then we relaxed the rest of the evening.

Then Wednesday the 27th came crashing in... and Christmas was officially OVER:

The downstairs neighbors were being excessively loud and obnoxious at 8:30 in the morning, so Kevin asked me to call and complain to the landlord. But the woman in the front office basically told me there's no limit on how noisy they can be if it's before 10:00pm.

What?! There's NO limit? At all?!?!

So then I mentioned that we had been told the neighbors would be out by the end of the month, and I asked if that was still slated to happen.

Oh, yeah. They were going to leave by then. But that's changed for the time being. They're not leaving now.

Fantastic!

Then around noon our realtor Angel reached out to Kevin to see if there was an update from the USDA yet. (Of course not.) He told us the seller's agent is starting to get antsy at this point and we're probably in danger of losing the property, because it's technically not even the USDA's lack of funding at this point: It's the fact that we personally don't have a lender backing us until our loan officer Kirstyn pulls her head out of her ass and gives us an answer!!!

Then shortly after lunch, I could tell I had a fever (on top of the cough I had had for 24 hours by that point). So I knew I was getting sick.

It seemed like the whole world was crashing down around us :/

I called and ordered a couple pizzas on my way home from work so we wouldn't have to cook, and then I crawled into bed the rest of the evening.

Kevin made dinner Thursday night (and I spent most of the day in bed with a fever, chills, body aches, and a bunch of other flu symptoms).

Then on Friday morning, Kevin practically shook me awake just after 9:00am to tell me that Kirstyn had FINALLY just emailed us back with our new certificate of approval for the same $377k the USDA offered us back in June! (Which as we explained last month, will end up being closer to only $340k or so, since we're going for a manufactured home).

So we have from now until April 19th to put a few finishing touches on this project before they would kick us out of the program again and we would have to reapply a third time. That is PLENTY of time. There's no excuse for Kirstyn to screw us over this time!

And Kevin immediately forwarded everything over to Angel so he could reach out to the seller's agent and try to assuage any cold feet he and the seller might be having (now that we were at least financially approved again, even if there's still no funding at the USDA itself yet).

We had leftovers for dinner Friday evening, Kevin and I watched a couple Fringe episodes, and I spent the whole rest of the day in bed.

Saturday I took it easy as well. We watched the four final episodes of Fringe to finish the series, and not much else is worth reporting on.

And that of course brings us to yesterday, New Year's Eve. I am starting to feel marginally better but I still spent most of the day resting in bed.

Riley asked if she and Kassie could go to the Oxford Valley Mall if Kassie's mom picked her up.

Of course! Go have fun! And if they offer to include you in whatever New Year's plans the might have, feel free to take them up on it.

(Kevin isn't nearly as sick as I am, but I knew he and I wouldn't be doing much of anything.)

Later in the evening the neighbors started with their club music and their carrying on. Kevin granted that it was a holiday and said he would show them some leniency, but if they were still doing this after midnight or 12:30 we were going to call the cops. Especially since the landlord was so unhelpful and unsympathetic earlier in the week.

So sure enough, midnight came and went. The rest of the world got their fireworks out of their system by 12:30 or so. And at 1:00am, the club music and commotion downstairs was still going strong. Along with line dancing shaking the entire building.

So Kevin banged on the floor and gave them one chance to cool it. And after 10 more minutes with no change in volume, I called the police.

We waited maybe 20 minutes for an officer to show up, all the while realizing that if he pulled in by our door, the neighbors would almost certainly see him and just kill the noise temporarily. But we hoped we could have the guy knock on their door and give them a warning that might convince them not to press their luck.

But no, instead an officer called me back and politely but disappointingly told me that this was considered "apartment living" and there wasn't much he could do unless he could hear the party from outside in the parking lot.

Which he could have, if he had bothered to show up. But he seemed more interested in convincing us that it wasn't worth him taking the time to come out.

He did say he would write up a police report stating that we had called, and we could take that to the landlord, as some sort of "proof" that the neighbors were so out of control at 1:30 in the morning that even though the police wouldn't do anything, maybe our crappy landlord would?

I thanked him and we hung up, and Kevin just shrugged and said, "So, the message I'm getting this week is that the rules don't mean anything at all; and, if that's the world we suddenly live in, then I'm gonna play right to the edge of that box."

And if the neighbors thought they were hot shit making the building shake from the ground floor, they must have been astounded when Kevin started all out jumping around on our floor just over their heads!

The music went way down instantly... And we went to bed.

I, however, woke up a couple hours later around 3:30 in the morning and opened the bedroom door to hear that the music out in the living room was even louder than it had been before!

So I put on some shoes, walked downstairs, went outside, and recorded a few videos from my car before calling the police again and asking them to reopen my request from earlier and send someone out.

Two phone calls and two hours later (with me standing outside in my pajams the entire time because I honestly believed the dispatcher when she said someone was coming), I had hit my limit standing out in the cold while being sick with the flu.

So I recorded a few more videos to capture the excessive noise while showing my exact location in the parking lot. And then I called the landlord and left a couple messages to hopefully capture the commotion in the background of the phone call as well.

Then I headed toward the front door to go back inside.

But.

Who should I run into in the stairwell, who was just on her way out as I was coming in?

The one I call "Bitchface".

Not only did I startle the absolute crap out of her, since she clearly wasn't expecting to run into anyone else (at almost 5:30am by this point), but then I decided to take the opportunity to see if I could scare some sense into her as well.

I put my phone to my ear and pleaded my case to nobody at all:

Yes, that's correct Officer.

Yes, Apartment 13.

It's been going all night.

I don't know how many people they have down there, but it has just been nonstop club music, and dancing, and shouting.

I can even hear it from four or five parking spots away out in the parking lot.

By this time, Bitchface had gone out to retrieve something from her car and was on her way back to the door, only I had made sure to shut it tightly when I came in.

This left her with the choice of having to ring the doorbell and wait to be let in, or hoping I would be nice and open the door.

So I gave her a pretty hard stare before I opened it for her. And then I said, "Can you guys just turn it down?"

She stared back at me for a moment. And then,

Okay.

She slinked back into the downstairs apartment.

The music stopped.

And then I heard voices in little more than a whisper, along with the clink of empty bottles being cleaned up.

So, problem solved?

Just that easily?

I suppose only time will tell.

For now, here's hoping 2024 sees us continuing to make our escape from this place and heading to "greener pastures" (in a more literal sense than most people use that expression!)

We have our family :)

We have our health (aside from my flu and Kevin's cold).

And all things considered, we have a lot to be thankful for and almost as much to hopefully look forward to in the coming months.

And we of course have our fur babies.

2024? Have 2,024 Cat Pics!

Sweet little Odin has been feeling right at home from Day 1:

I forget exactly when his powers manifested:

But then the heavens called him to rule from his throne in the sky and watch over all those below:

He resolved to rule fairly and well:

Keeping one eye on his subjects, and one... (Well, he would just make sure he did his best.)

But being a deity is exhausting!

He's just one tiny kitty in a great big universe!

He opened a portal to the underworld so he could meet with the stygian queen who rules there:

He sought her advice over many, many meetings.

They met on conference room office chairs like normal people:

They met clandestinely "under the table":

Odin even had Kevin rig up an encrypted tunnel so they could meet securely in cyberspace:

So Odin and Penny met many times to swap advice on how to be gods.

And then they took a break:

And another break:

And anoth—

(But really, they were.)

They eventually decided to switch places:

Penny would rule up above, and Odin would rule down below:

Odin made his new throne the bottom shelf of our TV stand.

But then some thoughtless human tried to curry favor by offering him a soft, warm cat bed! (Which he promptly ignored, and instead moved up to the second shelf of our TV stand):

Elsewhere in another dimension, Lucky the Lord of Purgatory feared he would never get to meet this new young deity he kept hearing in the dimension next door:

He sent his most trusted ambassador to negotiate terms for a meow and growl (that's like a meet and greet, but for cat gods):

The ambassador was successful! And Lucky was overjoyed.

He hadn't sniffed a foreign butt for many eons:

But this butt smelled like nobility, and Lucky invited his visitor to dine with him in his court:

They forged an honorable alliance that day.

Then they dipped into the catnip some more:

Finally it was time for Lucky to return to his throne. He had his most trusted ambassador carry him back:

Little Odin returned to his dimension with a new resolve to rule even better than he had before!

He's not quite the alpha... and he isn't sure yet what omega even means...

But, he's pure, and good, and lovable. And loved :)

Happy New Year, everyone!!