Hope Springs Eternal

Now that spring is here, and the earth is waking up again—and April showers seem to have been largely postponed until May (probably because the storms can't get through the Strait of Hormuz and have to take the long way around)—I'm sure to be taking an obscene amount of pictures of cloudscapes for the next six months.

Here's the first of four that I've managed to squeeze just into this single post...

On Sunday 19 April, Taylor and Ahlina stopped by for a couple hours while they were down here from Connecticut to pick up a friend's cat that they'll be pet-sitting while he moves to Louisiana and gets situated in his new place.

While both girls have done a ton of growing up in the two years since they moved up to Connecticut, Taylor has slowly but surely been seeing more and more of Ahlina's selfish and abusive side (the side that has been readily apparent to the rest of us all along, but to which Taylor has been blind because it's never been aimed at her until recently).

The girls were perfectly pleasant while they were here visiting: They treated Riley to Wawa, and Taylor and Athennia got to spend some time catching up. But then, about half an hour into their drive home to Connecticut, the girls had a blowout fight and Taylor called Athennia to say she was sure this one was "the one"—a.k.a. the last one.

They've since worked things out—at least enough to be civil with each other—but it's not going to be pretty in the event that they do split for good any time soon...

For starters, Taylor knows she can come back home if she needs to, but also that she'll be crashing on the sofa in the living room with very little privacy, and she wouldn't be able to bring any of her pets with her (since we're already three full cats over the "no pets" policy as it is).

Then there's the myriad of financial entanglements the girls have together: Since Ahlina has virtually no credit whatsoever (on account of her loving mother torpedoing it by fraudulently opening accounts and racking up untold amounts of debt in Ahlina's name in previous years), Taylor is exclusively the one who qualifies them for most of the things in their "grown-up" world: the lease for their apartment, the car loan that's in both their names, the storage unit they share, and so on.

But, Taylor doesn't have a driver's license; and so, Ahlina likes to talk of their the car as being just hers—and she likes to pretend she's all big and bad like her two-bit thug of a father, routinely threatening that she'll just go have Taylor's name taken off the loan... as if it were just that easy.

Consequently though, with Taylor being multiple states away from us and with Uber and Lyft being prohibitively expensive in her area, she has limited options for getting to work, or to the storage unit, or even somewhere as trivial as the grocery store whenever Ahlina decides that she's in the mood to weaponize the car; so, it's not at all an enviable situation to be in.

To make matters worse, the girls still work at the same dog groomer where they've been for well over a year now; and, even though they both do great work, their boss has told them flat-out that she'll fire Taylor if they break up (because Ahlina has seniority, and the boss doesn't want drama at her business).

But, as rough as the week following the girls' visit was, things do seem to have quieted down again for now... not that any of us down here in Pennsylvania know for sure in what capacity or for how long.

Hope springs eternal.

All we can do is take it a day at a time.

Here, cheer up with a sunnier cloudscape than the first one...

On Wednesday 22 April, my mom and I had lunch together. She wanted to head somewhere more in the Yardley direction than in the Fairless Hills direction; so I pulled up the map and found a place called Stony Hill Kitchen.

Imagine our surprise when it essentially turned out to be a cafeteria for all the offices in the surrounding complex—and we had the privilege of ordering lunch via a filthy touch-screen, like we were at Wawa... and then sitting in a giant open room and surrounded by people using their outdoor voices, like we were back in high school.

Saturday 25 April we had dinner at my parents'; but I didn't take a single picture.

Then early in the morning on Monday 27 April, I saw that "the Jamaicans" had had all four of their "usual" vehicles parked here overnight; and so I finally decided to lodge a complaint—albeit anonymously through one of my sock-puppet accounts...

Usually, Mekira is an intelligent Japanese hacker-y type who knows her ABCs and her way around basic spelling and grammar; but this seemed like a job for more of a "Hoodrat" persona. So, be forewarned that this hurt my brain immensely to have crafted something this far below anything I'd consider valid English; and it will almost certainly hurt your brain just as much to read it...

It's impossible to overstate the joy I felt the following day, when our camera spotted Ralph and Leon sniffing around in the parking lot before settling down on the Jamaicans' front porch to issue what I was quick to assume must be some sort of sternly-worded final warning to promptly remove two of their vehicles from the premises and give the rest of us a few spaces in which to park...

...But, imagine my surprise when I watched through the camera as Ralph came to our font porch... and then when I heard footsteps coming up our stairs... and then when I waited for him to leave so I could tear open the door and see what he'd left us...

Now, obviously I can read what he wrote here, no problem... But damn, Ralph! Your handwriting kinda sucks!

Even if I couldn't read it, I tend to remember just about everything—including both points for which the code enforcer dinged us when he did his walkthrough back in October:

1. Riley's smoke detector was missing its plastic housing, which the guy whined about even though the thing was still perfectly functional
2. I'd plugged our living-room A/C's cord into a power strip only so that Odin wouldn't chew on it during the off season, and the guy assumed that's how I'd be running the thing when summer rolled around, even though that would be dumb.

Of course, since we're no longer allowed to have our camera in the stairwell, I had to spend all day Wednesday keeping an eye and an ear out for maintenance... only to have them not show up all day.

Then Leon finally knocked on our door around 2:30 Thursday afternoon—with not one, but four brand new smoće defeefols in hand.

Oh boy! It's our lucky year!

Leon's usually a little on the gruff side, but he was actually perfectly pleasant—especially for a guy who'd spent the whole week putting new smoće defeefols in 90-some apartments (and having to listen to the "test beeps" on every single one, which of course have to be just as loud as the real thing).

And the even better news is, Ralph's letter says that the next inspection won't be until December of 2025 or January of 2026! So, according to my calendar, that gives us until... 3-4 months ago to get things up to code around here before the enforcer shows up again.

And finally, we have some cat pics for you.

Lucky will NOT be appearing in this month's pictures, and he knows why!

Meanwhile, here's an adorable little purrito...

Let's open it up!

Yet another perk of being an indoor cat: You're not likely to end up being the filling inside a chalupa (unless you burrow under the blankets because you do want to be the filling inside a chalupa)...

Meanwhile, it doesn't matter how many times we tell Odin that Athennia's mug of tea would literally kill him if he drank it: He still wants it!

Penny just wants to be re-chalupafied so she can go back to sleep...

And, Odin? Odin's just Odin...