Out of Our Element(s)
Earth, fire, water, and wind.
This first week of July, we battled each of the classical elements.
And we're still here to tell the tale; so...
Whatever. Who knows?
Water
Back on Tuesday the 1st, we had a rainstorm roll through but we had no ideas as far as dinner; so Kitten and I ventured out to grab ourselves some Qdoba.
Naturally, everybody on the highway wanted to keep it under 15 miles per hour and flick on their hazard lights like this was The Real Apocalypse This TimeTM—yet they all inexplicably had to hang out in the fast lane—and so it almost made the entire trip not worth it.
Ah, but who knows why Jersey drivers do the things they do?
Here's one who doesn't even know how to park!
As we got out of the car, my plan had been to walk in to Qdoba and just immediately ask everybody in there, "So, who's the new breed of special who had to cross state lines just to park his snot-and-booger-colored shit-heap across two spaces like he thinks he's got a Ferrari?" in the hopes that a bit of unwanted publicity might shame the offender into cleaning up his act a bit going forward.
But there were literally no other customers in there as we walked in; so I have to assume the jerk must have been in the Wine & Spirits store next door instead.
It's the Promised Land, all right. Fievel is totally stoked...
But of course, the drive to Qdoba was only half the fun: The Molerat eschews Qdoba's fresh and tasty ingredients in favor of deep-fried pieces of dirty dish-sponges masquerading as "chicken nuggets"... which means that Kitten and I get to give good ol' Mickey-D's our patronage from time to time as well.
Perhaps not all of our readers have had the pleasure of experiencing a McDonald's drive-thru in recent years; so allow me to document the adventure...
After dinner that evening, we saw the next generation of McDonald's drive-thru operators—A.K.A. the neighborhood's junior thugs—making their own fun in the rain...
The kids were using Dollar-Store water-spitters-but-not-quite-guns to squirt each other with parking-lot runoff that was no doubt chock full of motor oil, antifreeze, bird crap, and untold millions of bacteria that people with IQs above 45 probably wouldn't want getting in their eyes, ears, and mouths.
So, was a cocktail of pathogens and automotive fluids really that much worse?
Who am I to judge? When you have it your way, maybe it really does taste better.
While watching the thugs practice shooting each other so that they can one day graduate to actually shooting people, I noticed that a baby praying mantis had somehow found its way inside and was hanging around our bedroom window...
Naturally, we felt it was our moral duty to transport it downstairs and outside to a small tree just outside where Athennia has seen countless other mantises over the years :)
Eventually we resigned ourselves to sitting in front of the television like good citizens for the remainder of the evening.
Christian HVAC has been running an ad for months now that annoys me every time I see it; so I decided to snap a pic...
If something is effecting your water quality, everything is great! It ain't broke; so there's no need to pay anyone to fix it.
Hope this helps.
Welp? That's Water down. It doesn't feel like much of a win, to be honest; but we survived Jersey drivers, McDonald's food, junior thugs, and grammatical errors.
Bring on the next element!
Air
Wednesday the 2nd, my mom came to pick me up so we could attend the funeral service for my friend Joe's father who had passed away late last month.
As I was hanging out by the living-room window and waiting for her to arrive, I was treated to a rare sighting of our distant neighbor "Lurch"—whose few-and-far-between outdoor appearances seem to track alongside the prime-number-based 7- and 13-year cycles of cicadas.
You can see in this first pic that his Spidey sense was tingling, and he seemed to be tuned in to the presence of a predator hiding somewhere in the weeds nearby!
...But he decided to ignore his instinct risk the decidedly short walk over the mailboxes anyway. And that's when fate decided to pounce!
See, ol' Lurch is the father of the legendary "Magic Mike"—whom I've only ever had the pleasure of seeing exactly one time, a summer or two back when he showed up on the doorstep down there to find that neither his sister nor his father was home... and he proceeded to spend the better part of an hour just hanging out, break-dancing, rocking back and forth in the fetal position, and fighting one of those bushes until his sister finally arrived to unlock the door and let him inside.
Meanwhile, the guy who drives the white Honda SUV in the pictures above seems to have a highly-toxic but long-term romantic relationship with Lurch's daughter; and so he's here a few times a week, and seems to have some anger-management issues on top of a winning combination of low self-awareness with a touch of narcissism that means he has absolutely zero qualms about running his mouth at the top of his lungs whenever he and Lurch's daughter get into an argument... which is often.
'Drew's Crew' had just arrived home here and blocked some of my view; but you can see that the boyfriend's vehicle is still parked just past Drew's van—and with that, there he came... swooping in from out of nowhere like a hawk!
Honestly, where did the guy even come from? Like, I know he's tall and thin; but seriously, was he hiding behind the damn drain pipe, or what?!
But anyway, this is the same guy with whom I got into it back in April—when he was here on a Saturday afternoon and screaming at Lurch to try to taunt him into calling the cops... so I'd gone to our front window and shouted back, "If he doesn't, I WILL, jackass!"
Beat it!
I had no idea whether or not this guy would remember or recognize me all these weeks later; but you can be damn sure I'll remember and recognize him forever. And so, I had to assume there was at least a chance—no matter how probabilistically remote—that he might see me and try to start something whenever my mom arrived and I went outside.
And, of course, that's what happened.
My mom backed into an open parking space. I gave Riley a heads up that I was leaving. Drew's Crew got out of his van and was lingering in the middle of the lot while finishing up a phone call—though he's a decently stocky dude that I could see some people perceiving as intimidating, and so my mom was too busy keeping an eye on him to have even noticed Looney Tune getting back into his car one space over.
I had my eye on him though—along with a clear enough expression of antipathy on my face, I guess, that when Loon and I made eye contact through his side mirror as he glanced in it while backing out, he immediately threw it into park and leapt out of his car to confront me...
Great.
This would have to be the one day—out of just three instances across the entire last decade of my life (the other two being my sister's wedding and my own)—when I was wearing long pants and a constrictive button-down shirt, and not carrying a weapon of any kind.
Suffice it to say that I had not been anticipating a fist-fight on an ordinary Wednesday that I was just headed out to attend a funeral. But here we were just the same... and, now that I was seeing this guy up close for the first time, I could clearly discern the telltale flaws in his face from habitual drug usage.
Tired eyes. Sunken cheeks. Maybe missing some teeth.
Super. He's already got a good five to six inches of height over me, not to mention the disadvantage presented by my dress clothes. What are the chances that he's also high right now—which, depending on what specifically is in his system, might also give him crazy energy and/or a decreased sensitivity to pain.
Whatever would happen, it would be recorded on half a dozen cameras. But at any rate, I would be a-okay with not doing this today.
He was all the way out of his car at this point, and did what he does best: He screamed at me...
Perhaps I could've simply concurred.
That's not really my style though. Especially since I was full-blown furious at this point and the adrenaline was flowing.
<points to... like, the back of GIANT or something>
I honestly forget which of us got into our respective vehicle first; but at this point he sped away and disappeared into the wind.
And, for anyone who's curious, I later looked up verb usages of the word grill in an attempt to make sense of just what the hell he was talking about...
Apparently it's New York City slang for "to stare at."
The guy sure is an angry child... And, though there doesn't seem to be much method to his madness, there's clearly some madness to his meth-ness.
He shall henceforth be forever known as Mad Meth.
Joe and his mom had a lovely funeral service for his dad, and I got to see and introduce my mom to a few of their family friends that I've met over the years.
Unfortunately I did not get the chance to reminisce with a certain cousin of Joe's—whose acquaintance I may or not have made once (well over a decade ago, at this point).
Now, I'm not saying that any of that ever actually happened or anything; but, if it had happened, I imagine that it would've been cool to say hi to that guy and share a brief chuckle over an "oh, hey; remember that time...?" recollection.
After the funeral, my mom and I had lunch at Arby's in Feasterville... where the entire staff consisted of good old-fashioned red-blooded human beings! Everybody there knew how to smile (and to enunciate!), and their approach to customer service was delightfully refreshing after the 2+ years I've spent visiting the McDonald's and the Burger King here in Morrisville!
But, now that I think about it, pretty much everyone at the Bensalem/Neshaminy Qdoba is terrific as well: It's extraordinarily rare that we get stuck dealing with some unpleasant zombie or sourpuss there that speaks like they have a mouth full of golfballs.
So, kudos to you guys as well, Qdoba :)
After all of Mad Meth's hot air earlier in the day, the rest of my afternoon, evening, and night were pretty low-key and uneventful. But Kitten had a gallbladder attack and barely managed to get any sleep; so she ended up cutting her losses and just getting up and going into work around 3:00 in the morning!
Then on Thursday evening, she and I happened to be looking out the living-room window together just in time to see 'Seymour Butts' pull up in his stupid white Tesla, go inside Rob and Nicole's apartment, and trudge back out with everything he owns: a pillow and a hamper full of clothes...
I doubt we'll ever know which—and, truth be told, we're fine with that... as long as the guy stays gone this time!
Maybe not gone with the wind. But at least gone from here.
Fire
Friday was of course the Fourth of July—which means less than nothing at this point in the United States's trajectory towards being a complete kleptocratic surveillance state.
But simpletons still like to blow shit up; so, we all sort of tacitly agree to keep pretending there's some reason to set off fireworks every year.
As usual we headed over to my parents' house for a family picnic... though the guy in front of us on the way there wanted to get the party started ASAP...
We still got to my parents' place before everybody else, because we're dedicated and punctual like that.
And eventually everyone else arrived as well. It was pretty much my mom's entire side of the family except for Dave, Angie, and the girls: Dave was over in Portugal with Alexis; and Angie and the twins were out in Colorado.
<shrug> That just left more cheese for the rest of us...
Riley got to hang out with Ava (and a Steve-muscle)...
We sang "Happy Birthday" to Aunt Sue as well as everyone else whose birthdays are within a 50-mile radius: Roy, Pete, Kelly, Ava, and maybe even some others that I forgot...
—probably someone
Kelly made a bunch of desserts and demanded that I get pictures. The M&Ms came out so good I would've assumed they were store-bought!
Here's a jello cup with Athennia for scale...
And, sure enough, look who was trying to plant the seeds of chaos on our way home...
It was the KGB hitting us where it would hurt the most: by driving half in the lane and half in the shoulder!
And now, it seems there's going to be hell to pay. I can't say I blame them: I'd be a tad miffed too.
Earth
By the time the weekend rolled around, there was just one element left with which to do battle. But this one could prove to be formidable.
Saturday afternoon, we headed down to Nina's house to pick Taaro up and bring him back to the apartment so he and Riley could hang out.
If you've ever seen Pulp Fiction, you'll probably remember the scene where Butch asks Marsellus if he's 'okay' after taking out a couple of rednecks who were sodomizing him...
This scene always pops into my head when we pass "Goodnaw Street" and I ponder the fact that we're headed into North Philly...
That's where the name of street actually comes from: It's a Pulp Fiction reference. True story.
We'd been hearing tales of enormous heaps of trash piling up around the city as a result of the garbage men (and a bunch of other people) being on strike so they could get more money for less work.
Big heaps of trash on Philly streets sounded about as absurd to me as... I don't know, someone stirring powdered milk into a glass of milk to try to get the milk even milkier than it was to begin with.
I had high hopes that we would be treated to something truly astonishing. Here's what we encountered...
Oops! Spoke to soon. Here's the garbage...
Everybody has about 37 red lights at the same time.
And there are way too many people per square foot.
Once we get out of the city, we should vow not to come back.
I just hope this doesn't effect affect anyone's water quality.
Especially not the mantises!