What a Shame

Suffice to say, I've been lax in blogging pretty much this entire year.
What do you think that says about me? That I'm lazy? Yes. That I lack discipline? Yes.
Lucky for us, Margaret Mitchell didn't suffer from those same maladies, otherwise she never would have written that weekly column for the Atlanta Journal. Oh yeah, and that little book she eventually penned...the one about Scarlett and all of her shenanigans.
Did you know, by the way, that Margaret's first marriage ended because she found out that her husband was a bootlegger who enjoyed a little too much of his own product? Unlike Rhett, the sauce apparently rendered her husband mean and nasty. Rhett just became more fun when he drank. Anyhoo, she ditched the bum and then she married his best friend, John Marsh...the one who had been the best man at their wedding.
 Gone With the Wind was published in 1936 when Margaret Mitchell was thirty-six years old. As far as anyone knows, she didn't write anything after that. She was hit by a car only thirteen years later. I blame John Marsh for that. If he had been more like Rhett Butler, a true gentleman, he would have taken her hand and made sure it was clear before they stepped off that curb into the path of the car that killed her. And why was she the only one who got hit? Where was Johnny boy when it happened? Certainly not walking beside his wife. Scarlett O'Hara's disenchantment in the ability of the men in her life to actually take care of her may have been an eerie foreshadowing of the author's own demise.

A Girl Can Dream

Aaaaahhhh. Springtime. It's so nice when everything comes alive. Maybe not so much for the hay fever sufferers, but for the rest of us, the fragrant, color-filled blooms give us a renewed spirit. The world looks different, in a good way.
It also sounds different...in a bad way. Weed-eaters. Lawn mowers. Every second of every frickin' day, some neighbor somewhere has to be doing yardwork. It's the great spoiler. A perfectly pleasant morning with the windows open - and all I can hear is that familiar, abrasive noise. And those lawn service people with their big-ass mowers...they're really, really LOUD!
On Saturday, PhillyTwo and I were sitting in the backyard soaking up some sunshine, enjoying a pleasant conversation, when some motherfucking neighbor decided it was the perfect time to break out the weed eater. We could barely hear each other over the noise. I fantasized about walking over and putting a gun to the man's head. "Put that damned thing away and you'll live to see tomorrow," I'd demand through clenched teeth. But I knew I was just channeling the Sopranos. I don't even own a gun.

Update 10:30 a.m.: OMG! Today the noise is coming from my own yard!