Mow, Mow, Mow His Yard

I just mowed the drug dealers yard. I didn’t do it because I’m a nice person or because I’m a team player or even because I had the urge to help out. It wasn’t altruism that mowed that yard, it was disgust. The drug dealer has left the building , although I saw a light on inside that didn’t make me think the house was entirely empty. The drug dealer left because... depending on who you ask :

1. “The police came and now he can’t live there anymore” (his six year old nephew)
2. “The house is being foreclosed” (The neighbor on the other side of the crazy woman)
3. “He was put out, he may be living close by though”” (my nice neighbor)

Whatever the reason, he did not leave on purpose. I didn’t notice a mountain of crap outside and a mountain of crap outside a house usually speaks to a forced retreat. One day the people are there, the next day, mountain of crap and they’re gone. I do kind of remember seeing some sort of notice on the door a while back but it wasn’t the right color. The notice the sheriff puts on a door when the occupants have to leave is goldenrod and usually features a lot of bold face capital letters. The notice I saw lacked those, also what ever was on his door was white - but that would speak to the “police came and he can’t live there anymore” I got from the nephew. Maybe it wasn’t the sheriffs department that put up the notice. Yes, I interrogated a six year old. He wanted to talk about his little cousin and I wanted to talk about the little cousins big daddy. Our needs intersected.

So anyway. I was mowing my yard with my push mower. I am so glad I have that. If you can, you should get one. They are very quite, and very green and I think the yard likes them better too, it seems to stay mowed for longer. People just can not believe what they are seeing when I’m out mowing, it takes them back, everyone has a story of watching their grandpa mow with one or how they used to have one. While I was still focusing on my yard, my nice neighbor came out in the yard and told me that his first job was mowing yards with a mower very much like mine. It was really sweet, it was a nice moment, and it never would have happened if I was mowing with the gas mower. I get all kinds of comments about the push mower, all of them positive..

Anyway. As I was marching back and forth across my yard, I couldn’t help looking at the absentee drug dealers yard and thinking That looks like crap. Everyone else takes care if their yards, why can’t he? Asshole didn’t do it when he was there either. and every pass I made I thought that really looks like crap and nobody is going to do anything about it. It’s just going to look like crap all summer, and the next thing I knew, instead of turning for another pass on my yard, I just kept right on going in the drug dealers yard. And I mowed it. His yard looks better and I feel better. I cussed him the whole time, and I realized about half way through that I was missing 30 Rock and that pissed me off. I also wondered if he would feel shamed when he found out that a neighbor took it upon themselves to mow his yard - because I would feel shamed if my yard looked so bad that a neighbor took it upon themselves to mow it, so while I was doing it so I lost whatever good karma points I might have accrued if I could have thought pleasant, non-judgmental thoughts about him, but I got it done.

On a more altruistic note, on Wednesday I went to try to give blood and I got two pieces of good news, the first being that since I moved here I have donated a gallon of blood, the second being that I was able to donate an additional pint. And there was much rejoicing throughout the Dianaverse.

For the gallon I got pin shaped like a drop of gold blood with a tiny “1" on it And I may be eligible for a second pin with a tiny “2" on it - no one there was able to say how many pints I’ve donated since I got the donor card. I think they could, the manager at the desk said they could, but they didn’t want to. They wanted to go home. I scored a tee shirt for the pint. Yay.