Alone on the Sidewalk

It was a little after 10 pm and I found myself alone on the sidewalk staring at my neighbor's house between the two ambulances, wondering if it was he, or his wife. I knew it was bad who ever it was by the way the paramedics kept running from the house to grab more equipment from the trucks then dashing back into the house.

We've had our share of incidents on the street and I've never seen these guys run like this. Five..., six...., seven trips so far, for more bags and boxes of equipment and medications not counting the trips they made while I was still in my house looking out the window.

My wife and I were watching television when the red and blue lights began flashing off the wall in front of us. Our couch backs up to the big picture window because it's the only wall long enough to fit it. We peeked out to see an ambulance unloading a stretcher. Waiting to see who would be brought out, ten to fifteen minutes passed, watching as they hurried back and forth several times between the house and the truck.

We met Rick and Mandy shortly after moving in to this house. I wouldn't say we're great friends but we're good neighbors. We help each other out, watch out for each other and each others stuff. Actually, Rick does most of the helping.

In the winter when it snows, Rick snow blows four of five of our driveways including his own because he likes it. I've told him he doesn't need to do ours but he continues on.

When I was transforming my front yard into a garden, Rick came over and offered some of the plants from his yard if I dug them up, I said deal! He showed which ones I could have and suggested how much soil to take with it. He said I could take the purple one if I wanted but they almost never transplant well. You have to water them a lot and they still may not make it. I took two of them and watered them and they did survive. Now they've multiplied.

Mandy and I over they last two years have contemplated the drug house next to her, across from me. We've met in my front yard to discuss it, we've met in her front yard to discuss it. The loud music, the fights, the constant flow of cars in and out. We laughed about it at times and ultimately did nothing but complain to each other about it.

Another tank of oxygen...the cold from the concrete seeping through the souls of my shoes, I stood watching the side door of Rick and Mandy's house for twenty minutes or more, still no sign of who was in distress. My dogs would bark through the window every so often, at me, or the paramedics when they come out of house.

More minutes passed, fifteen probably. I paced back and forth trying to decide if I should go over and see if everything was okay when one of the paramedics stepped out of the propped open side door of Rick's house holding his cell phone. He wandered around the grass on edge of the drive away from the door for about ten minutes talking intently to someone on the other end of the phone.

It was then I got a bad feeling and went back in my house to talk to my wife to tell her what I saw and warm up a little. Minutes later we heard a door close outside and looked to see them loading someone into the ambulance. I went back out and waited until they cleared most of their equipment from the side of house by the door before heading across the street to see what happened.

I crossed the street slowly and glanced quickly into the vehicle to see Mandy's pale legs on the stretcher and continued toward the side door but waited on the grass out of the way while the paramedics continued to pack up their equipment. After a few moments Rick stepped outside looking dazed.

"Oh, hi Mark."
"Hey, Rick. What happened?" I asked.
"My wife...I don't think she's going to make....."

I won't tell you everything that he told me because it was bad, really bad, but it also made realize that I hadn't been over to see either of them in a while. He told me Mandy had been previously diagnosed with cancer and gone through treatment and it had come back in June in her throat and spread to pulmonary artery. She started coughing, then she couldn't breath and then the bleeding started. Mandy died a little after 11 pm Sunday, December 7th, 2014.

I'm going to miss yelling, "Hey neighbor!" to Mandy and hearing her yelling it back at me, because that was our thing.

(Rick & Mandy are not their real names)

The Perils of Blogging at Lunchtime from Work

The Perils of Blogging at Lunchtime from Work

I'm new to this whole blogging thingy so I'm still getting the hang of it. Also, I have a few handicaps. Not physical, or mental, well that's debatable if you to talk to my family. No my handicaps are that I do most of my blogging from my phone using several different apps that I have to copy and paste between, and that's not even the difficult part. The really hard part is that I write and post during my lunch break which may be from 11:30am to 1:30pm depending upon what crap has hit the fan that day.

Take yesterday when I wrote the Bird Sh!t post. I started that at about 11:45am and finished around 1:10pm I think. But as my wife pointed out when I got home, "You missed a bunch of words."

I went back and reread it, huh! I sure did. There were words missing, "get" should have been in one sentence. The word "with" should have been "without", that changes the entire meaning of the statement! I can't remember the other ones but I fixed them as I went, and added some more content to the story since I was in there anyway.

One of the issues is constantly getting interrupted by phone calls, and/or having to run out to the plant to fix things during 'lunch' which we really don't get if we stay in the building. If something breaks, it needs fixed, usually immediately, because we run constant production. So if a PC or a printer or a scanner goes down, that slows or stops production and that isn't good for anybody.

If I'm in the middle of typing my blog and a help desk call comes in, and I need to go out and fix a printer or a scanner, that's what I do. Then I come back and try figure out where my train of thought was before I got interrupted. I'm not complaining, that's my job. It comes first! But I think that's how words get "missed".

Either that or I have seizures when typing and think I already typed that word! I could go with that! What do you think? No? No, the meds have been working for a while, they won't let me use excuse anymore.....

p.s. If you find errors in this story, ignore them, eventually they'll go away.

Where Did That Sh!t Come From?

Where Did That Sh!t Come From?

So last night before the hockey game my wife got home from work and I went out to help bring in the few bags of groceries she had picked up.

She handled most of them since they were already in her hands and I grabbed the door and released the hounds! Our dogs go nuts every time we come home, actually, every time we walk out the side door and walk back in. They think they have the right to tear off into the back yard, do a few laps, do some 'business', or not, come in, get a treat and jump all over each other for ten minutes because they're so happy to see us, again!
Like we were gone for decades or something.

Anyway, I opened the door, the dogs exit, come back in, the wife puts down the bags, I reach for the dog treats and see I have fresh bird shit on my thumb! Really fresh! Now it's 7 o'clock at night and I swear there weren't any birds flying around when I went out to the car so how the hell did I get bird shit on my THUMB?

Not my head, not my shoulder, my thumb!
Gross! Now we gotta get moving or we're going to miss have the game so I scrub my hand, and thumb, with dish detergent, dry it with a paper towel and head out the door with my youngest son!

After the game I park my wife's car in the street because mine needs gas and she leaves before me for work so instead switching around in the am, I'll do after the station that way I can get a few extra hours (minutes) of sleep. (It's a mind game in my own head, another story)

When my son and I reach the side door there is a frantic sparrow flying around under the awning of the side door! It startled me. This space is only three and a half feet by three and a half feet square under here. I back up and try to shoo it away but it won't leave. No matter what I do it continues to fly around under the awning every once in awhile landing on the light.

As a matter of fact it's looking at me like I'm trespassing on its territory! I mean really, I'm getting the evil eye from this little brown feather duster! "Really dude! You shit on me earlier!"

Now the light bulb goes off! Pun intended. I know why it won't leave! Ever since our friendly neighbors across the street or whoever it is, has broken into several of our cars in surrounding 6 houses, I've left the side light on. Now that the temp has dropped to below freezing, that little critter decided it was a good place to stay warm.

Resolution without death because I am an animal lover. I turned the light off. An hour and a half later she was gone.

I can't be tracking bird poop into my house with a brand new baby in the family, just can't. It'll find somewhere else to stay warm I'm sure.

Probably, the front porch light.....