Piled Higher and Deeper

As we headed into the back half of July, it certainly felt with each passing second like we were quickly nearing a point where the odiferous effluvium would hit the rotating oscillator.

Around 11:30 P.M. on Sunday the 12^th, we'd been laying in bed for the better part of an hour, when I heard a loud car stereo outside our back window; so I paused my chess game to pull up the feed from our security camera to make sure it was just someone parking on the street or passing through... as opposed to some jackass who thought he'd be settling in to show off his subwoofers at the guardrail for the next half hour or something.

It was just a guy cutting through the alley between our apartment complex and the next one. No problem. But, might as well switch over to the parking-lot camera real quick while I have the app open, just to see what's going on out there.

And, ooh boy! We had a problem...

See that car with all the stickers on the rear window? That's our neighbor Nicole's car.

But, the thing is, Nicole's about as white and blonde as a Targaryen—which means that that guy leaning on the car like he owns it... that's not Nicole.

And that made my Spidey sense tingle; so, I got out of bed and headed to the living-room window to get a closer look...

Over the course of five minutes or so, I watched this guy lean against Nicole's car every which way while he talked on the phone; and I also watched him walk to the gray Volkswagen sedan at the end of the line (which belongs to an older neighbor of ours to whom I lovingly refer as "Fat Caucasian Smoker's dad")—at which point the guy proceeded to set his phone on the Volkswagen's trunk while he swiped through TikTok, or Instagram, or Tinder, or Grindr, or whatever other endless wall of brainrot and horseshit encapsulated in a mobile app happens to be trending this week.

But, here's my issue with that—or at least my biggest issue with it (since I'd probably have more than one if I thought about it): Other people's property is neither your personal phone stand nor your personal loafin' post... and anyone over the age of about four really shouldn't need to have that explicitly spelled out for them.

I would have been content to stand guard there forever—especially since the guy was just inches away from Athennia's car, and her keyfob was hanging on a peg just a foot or two behind me in the darkness (which meant I could have set her alarm off at any point, had the guy given me any reason at all to do so).

Fortunately, Athennia got up and came out from the bedroom a few minutes later; and, when I told her what was happening, she reminded me that she and Nicole had exchanged phone numbers a year or two back. Since Rob and Nicole's lights were still on, Athennia decided to send along a neighborly, "Hey, you may wanna check out the rando who's using your car as his own personal hammock."

And that was that: They're down on the ground floor; so I imagine the guy noticed immediately when Rob's inquisitive face appeared behind the glass a few feet away from him.

Then he promptly f*cked off, and you'll never guess to where: the ever-problematic Apartment 10.

The next morning marked another Monday; and Athennia immediately got bombarded the moment she walked through the front door and clocked in at work.

The company has been hemorrhaging employees at a rate of 1-2 a week for several months now, because people are just sick of the bullshit. So, naturally, Bob pulled Athennia into his office and was quick to offer all the raises and perks that should have been steadily forthcoming over the past four years—when each and every performance evaluation Athennia received was nothing but five-star ratings and rave reviews, followed by... no raise whatsoever.

It just so happened that Bob and Angelique's younger son Shane was hospitalized with appendicitis or something; and so Angelique had not been in that day. But of course she had to throw her two cents into the ring as well... only, she probably doesn't remember that Athennia has that 90-mile round-trip commute that she drives every day (with gas and tolls constantly increasing, while her hourly wage has more or less stayed the same).

So, Athennia did get a chance to look at this text Angelique had sent at 4:17 P.M. until she arrived home and got upstairs 13 minutes later—at which point she lamented that she really shouldn't have to take her boss's calls or texts at all during off hours; but, since Angelique regularly exhibits all sorts of narcissistic traits, ignoring her isn't exactly the best strategy either.

I suggested that she just tell Angelique she has "a few minutes" while making it clear that this really does mean "a few minutes, and nothing more." Hence...

And, sure enough, Angelique gave her precisely the sort of reaction one might expect from a mature adult: Nearly an hour later, she responded with, "Call anytime"; and then she literally counted "one hundred Mississippis" before spamming a bunch of angry faces like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.

The whole thing definitely threw off Happy Gilmore vibes left and right...

On Tuesday 14 July, I woke up to a text from Joe asking if I wanted to grab breakfast somewhere—which was weird, since that dude normally wakes up closer to sunset than to sunrise.

But Joe and I hadn't actually seen each other in person since we stopped doing the woodworking back in... May? ...April? ...March? I don't even remember at this point.

Perhaps we'd been planning to dine at the Chick-fil-A by Sesame Place; but that location has apparently been bulldozed into complete nothingness...

So, we ended up going to Metro Diner in Langhorne—which is where we'd been planning to go all along 😉

Joe and I caught up on things over breakfast; and, among other things, he told me about how he had recently sold one of his Cadillacs to a guy who flew up from Texas and then drove the thing all the way home—which, as a breakdown of the logic that powers the specific version of the too_many_cars_true_or_false.exe utility inside Joe's brain will show, can only ever lead to one possible outcome...

Wednesday was less eventful by comparison, although I decided to whip up some cheeseburger stromboli—or rather, some cheeseburger strombolis, if you're a dumb American who likes to repluralize already-pluralized foreign words.

They were pretty good for something I threw together off the top of my head—although I went a little too heavy on the cumin, and so they were like cheeseburger-taco hybrid strombolisses...

On Thursday 16 July, Angelique proposed an official counteroffer to Athennia, in which she promised to match Athennia's new salary—which is on the one hand a nice 20% bump, but on the other hand not even as much as Athennia's colleague Jonathan (who just jumped ship the week before) had been making for the last few years.

Additionally, Angelique offered to create a new position for Athennia, called "Manufacturing Training Lead," which—in addition to sounding like kind of a bullshit title to begin with, would also require her to fly up to the New Hampshire location on a semi-regular basis. But then, Angelique had hired Athennia as "Principal Technician" and still continues to officially withhold that title even now; so............... why should anyone trust her when it comes to titles or promises of any kind?

So, ultimately, Athennia responded in the only way that really made sense...

But even with her two weeks' notice in, she still gave them a 48-hour work week—and then she came home Friday evening and said...

On Sunday 19 July, we celebrated Kelly's 39th birthday...

We had to pass the cake up to Kelly so she could blow out her candles...

...And then we passed it back down so that Hannah and Uncle Kev could polish the entire thing off by themselves...

Nobody else got a crumb.

It was a balmy 91 degrees though; so, we decided to play outside...

Fast-forward to Tuesday 21 July, and I woke up just after 8:00 A.M. to what sounded like someone blasting some dubstep music right outside the bedroom window.

My first thought was, "There is ONE thing that this might be, that I will allow."

And, fortunately for the culprits, they were indeed engaged in said one thing: Remember that hole they left in our parking lot back in like 1936?

They were finally fixing it!

I stood and watched just for two minutes, and my brain hurt so much that I damn near segfaulted. And then, just for fun, I asked AI to imagine what it might look like if I segphalted instead...

In other big news, I'm sure you all spotted it in the pictures above; but, just in case you missed it, that metallic-red Nissan Maxima is indeed our good old' neighbor Ruth's little boytoy who moved out sometime last year.

Apparently he's back!

Anyway, Riley and Kassie had plans to go to Six Flags again on Thursday; but, when Athennia went to drop Riley off for a sleepover Wednesday evening, "the Jamaicans" from Apartment 10 had her parked in for the better part of 10 minutes, until Athennia finally got tired of waiting and started laying on the horn...

On Thursday 23 July, Athennia had her exit interview with Deb in HR—which apparently lasted more than two hours and got pretty candid 😏

Riley was still at Kassie's when dinnertime rolled around that evening; so Athennia and I grabbed a pizza from Bambino's.

Then on Friday, I was in the bathroom and happened to see this little bastard scurry from the baseboard to the shower curtain...

Suffice it to say that my heart skipped a couple beats, under the assumption that we had cockroaches again after being 100% roach-free ever since the crappy dirtballs downstairs moved out and Keith and Rosie moved in.

But, I sent the picture to Athennia, and she did what any reasonable person in 2026 would do, and farmed the question out to AI—who confidently told her that this is not a cockroach, but rather a "Longhorn bug."

Friday was also Athennia's last day. And, now that the company has like four employees left, they've decided to pull out all the stops and show that they really care!

Sounds like a real hoot! It's a shame she's gonna miss it 😆

Saturday 25 July, Riley spent the day at the beach with Taaro's family.

Then on Sunday, Taylor and Ahlina were supposed to stop by on their way down to drop Ahlina's mom's dog off at Ahlina's sister's place in Virginia... but Ahlina decided to do Ahlina things, and announced at the last minute that she was leaving Taylor up in Connecticut for 48 hours... no food in the fridge or the pantry, and no car with which to easily go out and procure some.

We still had some company come over on Sunday though: Riley's birth father Bradley biked over with his girlfriend Dee and two of his sons; so Riley got to meet her half-brothers for the first time.

And then on Monday 27 July, Athennia started her new job!

She said it went well—and that it's stressful for now, but she's confident she made the right choice in the long game.

That evening though, Taylor called to say that she and Ahlina were totally and definitively done: Ahlina had kicked her out of her mom's apartment (where the girls live 99% of the time because it's about four minutes away from their job) and driven her back to their apartment, which is infested with cockroaches—and, once again, completely devoid of anything at all to eat.

So, Athennia pulled up the Enterprise website, booked a 15-passenger van rental for Friday night into Saturday, and made plans to drive up to Connecticut after work on Friday evening, help Taylor bag up everything from the apartment and from the joint storage unit she has with Ahlina, and bring it all back down to Pennsylvania to stick it all in a storage unit here so Taylor can go through it and de-bug-ify it piece by piece once she's back home and out of Ahlina's clutches.

But, by Wednesday night, the plot had been completely rewritten: Circumstances at work had led Taylor to confide in her boss Dana about just a fraction of what was going on between her and Ahlina; and, the moment Dana realized that Taylor would be moving back to PA, she responded in a most unexpected way...

So, on the one hand, that's a boatload of golden irony—since Ahlina has worked there nearly an entire year longer than Taylor has, and is the one who got Taylor the job to begin with.

But, on the other hand, it's the logical conclusion of an attentive boss who knows who her top workers are: Taylor's been telling us for months now that she often volunteers to take the bigger, more problematic dogs that other groomers don't want (because, with the increased risk of injury tend to come larger tips). And it would seem that, in addition to Taylor out-earning Ahlina at a job Ahlina's been doing longer, their boss has also noticed that initiative in Taylor (as well as the shit attitude that Ahlina often demonstrates in contrast).

So, now the plan is for Athennia to drive up to Connecticut on Sunday instead (since Taylor works Saturdays), and they'll decouple everything they can from Ahlina, and probably still stick all of it in a storage unit somewhere.

But, Taylor gets to keep a job that she absolutely adores (and where she has been thriving), while hopefully getting away from Ahlina's toxicity once and for all... if she's strong enough to stop herself from crawling back.

In other news, while the first few weeks of Athennia's tenure at the new job will mostly consist of her shadowing various people to learn the ins and outs of the industry and the company workflow, she came home Wednesday evening with stories of how she had already completely revolutionized their inventory system in the warehouse...

They were lamenting how some of their supplies come in boxes of 25, and others in boxes of 50, and still others in boxes of 100; but, when everything is on the shelf in opaque cardboard boxes, it's impossible to tell at a glance how much is left of any given item... So, Athennia jumped in and said, "Well, this is all metal shelving—which means it's magnetic—so, what I would do is use magnets to implement some sort of color-coded system for keeping tracking of how much is left of everything... like maybe a traffic-light style system, with red, yellow, and green."

Boom.

She's not even out of her probationary period yet, and she's already brought them into the Magnet Age.

She's bringing Liv and Hannah in for interviews next Tuesday: They're experts with magnets... and with their traffic-light colors.

This is what winning looks like.

So, yeah... the shit's hitting the fan, one turd at a time; but it turns out that most of it's so dessicated and crustified that the blades are just pulverizing it into dust and blowing it into the wind.

If anything, the Langhorne bugs will probably just eat it... And then Odin will eat them... and then eventually he'll poop... and that's called the circle of life.

Yeah. Things are working themselves out as they should, one at a time.

And finally, we have a few cat pics for you to close out the month...