About watching the work proceed in the front yard. You may recall last summer's fiasco of ripped out hedges, soil, dirtbags standing around while nothing got done and the sidewalks they poured in front of our house.
It would take me a month to write up all the mistakes they made and to explain about the mess they left.
A mess that until this weekend, nothing has been done about. It's Eric's way of thumbing his nose at the city. :)
But Saturday, Eric decided to move the two very large Lace Leaf Maples that were up next to the foundation in front of the house in front to different locations and start landscaping for real.
He and his guy dug around them and pulled them up with the help of a piece of heavy equipment and some ropes. Now we soak them three times daily with water and hope for the best. The big one he parked in front is worth about a thousand dollars, he said. No danger of someone stealing it, though. It weighs between six and eight hundred lbs.
I could talk about the stuff that needs to be done inside the house, but that would just depress me.
I could rant a bit about how stupid the goddamn media is, too. Once again, SW Louisiana has been swamped, inundated, devastated by the hurricane and everywhere else is being covered by the news. My in-laws evacuated to Mississippi this past weekend, and Ike came to their town. He put their sandwich shop/deli under two feet of water.
That's admittedly less than Rita did. You remember Rita, right? She was the hurricane that arrived on the heels of Hurricane Katrina.
To refresh your memory, according to mainstream reporters who really should know better, Katrina was sent by George Bush to terrorize all the poor black people in New Orleans while Rita (I don't know who sent her) killed people and ruined lives in SW Louisiana. My in-laws have been back in their home for six months since Rita went through town. The other 2.5 years they spent living in a travel trailer provided by the company my father in law works for.
They came home yesterday to find that their shop is ruined once again. They've decided not to re-open this time. The house is fine, because it now sits 14 feet off the ground. This was a requirement after the last flood if they wanted to be eligible for flood insurance.
But look through your news coverage. See anything about Louisiana and Hurricane Ike? I didn't think so.
Selective coverage is nothing new, of course. One sees it quite a bit in political coverage, too. You may have noticed politics in the news quite a lot lately.
Only seven weeks to go until the hype is over and someone has to pretend to live up to the empty promises puffed up with the glowing terms and false optimism of the professional speechwriters.
I was chatting with some friends Saturday night online in the homeschool chat room. Politics, that dirty, filthy word came up.
A person I've known for a long time left in anger because I did not agree with her that Barack Obama is the Messiah.
To be quite fair, I'm not a McCain fan either, as I'm sure I've mentioned.
I feel bad on more than one level about this. She's someone I like and know personally, not just online. It really wasn't my intention to hurt her feelings, but it just kills me that someone as smart as she is thinks the answers lie with a politician. Any politician.
He can't save us. No matter which figurehead we install, things are going to continue to go to shit. Fingers will be pointed. Blame will be placed. And we'll continue the slide down the chute. All the finger pointing and ranting in the world isn't going to fix the mess. And those happy assholes are wasting time pointing fingers and pontificating instead of WORKING for the people who elected them.
No matter what they say in their speeches, no matter how sincere they look while reading them, whatever their intentions are, we're in a world of hurt. And when our elected officials continue to rip us off, kick us while we're down, and bury us under mountains of debt no matter which party is in control, it's just going to continue.
I think it's human nature to hope that someone will come along and fix stuff, but it takes strength to admit that it's not really fixable.. at least not in my lifetime.
But I'm not going to write about any of that today.
It will just ruin my morning. Who needs that?
I hear ya screaming real loud and agree with you also.
ReplyDeleteAmen, sistah! We are screwed either way!
ReplyDeleteOH and YES we love firefly (we even have the movie to go along with the box set). Why did they not make season 2? All those dorks in LOVE with reality TV. bleh
It was only in the 60's here in Michigan. Sorry abou tthe sidewalk mess!!!
ReplyDeleteSounds like Eric and his guy are doing well with the landscaping :).
Sorry about your friend :(. I do agree with you 100% though myself. I don't think either of them (prehaps no one) will do any good!
Sorry abou the In-laws!
I try very hard to avoid conversations about politics unless the person I'm talking to is an intelligent, respectful person. But sometimes, even those people get pretty emotionally involved. My most used response is, "You know, the president is only 1/3 of the government. He doesn't change anything on his own."
ReplyDeleteHysterical to me how much talk there is about "change" when everyone still pretends there are only two parties, and lives under the delusion that those parties are completely and fundamentally different.