Family, Feud... and a Standoffish Mexican?
We have a family. We have a feud. And who is this Mexican kid?
Family Time (with People Who Matter)
After months of Athennia and Riley trying to get Taylor to come over and spend some time with them, the stars finally aligned this week when Taylor's iPhone gave up the ghost and she came running to Athennia for help.
Athennia ordered her a new [Android—for the win!] phone and had it shipped to our apartment, then said she would pick Taylor up over the weekend, take her to the store to have the new phone activated, and bring her back here to hang out with Riley for a bit.
Just the two of them.
That almost worked. But Taylor maneuvered around it by having her friend CJ drive her, so that they could meet Athennia at the phone store instead. And then Taylor and CJ came back to the apartment afterward...
Fortunately, CJ is polite, sensible, and remarkably grounded for a 20-year-old; and so, Athennia and I have no problem with having her in our home. We were just happy that circumstances had finally seen Taylor concede to come see her mother and her little sister for once!
We left the girls to hang out and watch a movie in Riley's room. Then, after maybe an hour, I asked Athennia if she thought they might agree to stay for dinner if I ordered some pizzas: The afternoon seemed to be going well; so I thought, why not continue to see it so, in the hopes that maybe Taylor would decide to have some sort of a relationship with her mom and Riley again?
So, I treated everyone to pizza from Bambino's, and we had a great meal together and then listened to some music in the living room before Taylor and CJ headed home.
Hopefully it was a good first step toward reconciliation from whatever the hell has been going on between Athennia and Taylor for more than a year now since I met them.
Feud Time (with People Who Don't Matter)
And then, we have the inbred troglodytes we get to call our downstairs neighbors...
I've set out to blog about them several times over the past couple months, but I've always edited them out before publishing.
Until now.
So, their apartment is a veritable clown car of... Kenyans? ...Nigerians? ...Ugandans? I neither know nor care where they came from: I only know that each one is ruder and lower in IQ than the last—to the point that it's barely even enjoyable to feud with them.
Except that they're bullies. And, GOD, do I love crushing bullies.
Since I moved in two months ago, they've been getting progressively worse with blasting their club music and carrying on at all hours of the day: At any given time, it sounds like there are 8-10 people down there, and the noise level is what a reasonable person might begrudgingly tolerate on an occasional Friday night every now and then. All the time.
So, there's a little snapshot into the psyche of at least one of the people with whom we're dealing: Not exactly the caliber of person with which I would expect to successfully implement diplomacy.
Nah. I'm just gonna hit 'em back as hard as I possibly can :)
So, I've spent the last few weeks "dog-whistling" them in a quasi-Pavlovian experiment where I crank our stereo and smoke them out every time they get too loud.
On the plus side, a lot of the angry nu metal music that got me through high school but hasn't enjoyed any airtime in the two decades since is finding itself being projectile-vomited out of my subwoofer once again, and blasted straight down through the floor at level 50 like it was intended to be.
Only for 20-30 seconds at a time though: I'm not trying to punish all of our other [presumably innocent] neighbors here; I'm merely trying to condition the animals downstairs to associate the prompting stimulus of their unpleasant music with the resulting stimulus of my unpleasant music...
...As in, you morons only hear me when you make me hear you; so, whenever you make that connection and decide you're ready to STFU, I'll be more than happy to return to doing the same. But until then? Enjoy "Death" by Skinny Puppy, Slipknot's "The Heretic Anthem," and a boatload of other tunes you're sure to ;)
We'll see how it goes. They're pretty dense—and I'm not Ivan Pavlov—so, it may take some time. But, who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? I will continue to stimulate them for as long as it takes until they salivate at the mere sound of silence. We and everyone else living adjacent to them deserve nothing less!
But, this blog isn't called Tales from the Pound; it's called The KARTography. So, back to our super-exciting lives...
Mexican Standoff...ishness
Two nights ago, Athennia made pasta and sweet Italian sausage with sauteed peppers and onions for dinner... followed by Rice Krispies treats for dessert! That's actually the whole story on that one. It was just too tasty not to mention :)
And then yesterday morning, she and I were having breakfast around 5:45 A.M. before she left for work, when Riley unexpectedly came out to the kitchen and sat down at the table with us.
As I reported back in December, Athennia bought the girls a pair of geneaology DNA kits from Ancestry.com...
...All because Riley wants to confirm that she's 97.3% molerat ;)
(Or so I said at the time.)
So, it turned out that Riley had received her results via email and wanted to open them in our company.
...Aaaaand, that other "2.7%" wasn't quite what she was expecting!
According to Ancestry's scientists, Riley is also about 0.0002% Mexican! So, despite her clear lack of amusement, guess which part of her ethnicity I've decided to zero in on ;)
I've already started planning her quinceañera; that's all I'm sayin'.
In honor of Riley's newfound Mexican-ness, we decided to try out this tex-mex place called "Qdoba" for dinner. But, I suggested that we check out the Bensalem location (since our friend Larry is transferring there in a couple weeks, when he returns from vacation).
That idea turned out to be a bust: We arrived to find a sign taped to the door, explaining that they closed early due to "fire alarm issues" and wouldn't reopen until the next day.
I got a bizarre picture out of it though: You know when a little kid is writing something in sloppy crayoned lettering... and he only has space for a couple more letters until the edge of the page; but, rather than start a new line, he just goes ahead and tries to write a word like encyclopedia anyway—only realizing the issue when he's a couple letters into it?
That seems to be what happened here...
M
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Sw
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Herding Cats
We pretty much amass enough cat pics to break the internet on a weekly basis; but, it's often hard to fit them all in on the blog.
I thought I'd close out January by sharing a few highlights...
Bonus points if you can tell Penny and Lucky apart without context clues!
I'm gonna go blast some Slipknot and get cracking on the enchiladas Riley will probably request for dinner :)
We'll see everyone in February!