Tumbleweed Troubles

After a big wind storm, I walked outside to find this on my lawn...

Tumbleweeds against my fence. (Note the crack in the blinds as I am being watched while taking the picture. I've got nosy neighbors on all sides now.) Then I walked over to the fence by the horse paddock and found another big pile there...

Then I looked over at my neighbors' lot to the south...

They've had dozens of these piles of dried sagebrush just sitting on their lot for months now. Every year they bring in all these prisoners to do community service by raking all their sagebrush into piles on their lot until they dry out and turn into lightweight tumbleweeds that the wind can blow away. Apparently, they are too lazy to take it all to the dump or burn it, so they just wait for a wind to come along and blow it all over their tiny fence into my yard...

The man who lives there is a fire fighter. You'd think he'd be more conscientious about the fire danger of having piles of dried brush surrounding his house.

Some people just don't care how their actions affect others. I also spend my weekends picking up their trash, because they never bother to put lids on their cans and try to anchor them down. Thanks for all the extra work, guys. May you have lousy neighbors in your next life... or sooner.

I'm not kidding when I say I'm getting it from all directions. The neighbor closest to me is having a new roof installed, which means more neighborhood noise. This is the lady who has a knack for always picking the best horse training in the round pen weather in June and September to schedule all her major construction projects.

I have a To Do List that is two pages long, typed, and single-spaced. I had hoped to knock some of that down over my staycation last week, but I ended up being sick the majority of the week. What began with allergies led into debilitating headaches which indirectly led into having to schedule a bunch of doctor and lab appointments to rearrange all my medications to find other options for those that cause high blood pressure which indirectly led into a case of Salmonella poisoning which very directly led into additional health problems and everything has gone downhill from there. My white blood cell count must be off the charts at the moment, because those little guys don't know which infection to fight first.

I returned to work for one day and then had to call in sick because there was no way I could drive an hour to the office, sit in a chair for 8 hours and drive another hour back home without something inside my body exploding. I slept all morning in sweats, a sweater, my thickest socks and gloves while I shivered despite it being 80 degrees outside, then stumbled outside in the afternoon to fill up the horses' water troughs. Some strange man I've never seen before was standing in my nosy neighbor's front yard staring at me in my not-so-private back yard.

He kept wandering over to the front door, knocking as hard as he could and yelling out my neighbor's name. I knew she was home, but this man must not have called ahead of time, because she hides from people she's not expecting. He must have known she was home too, because he refused to leave. He just kept wandering over to my fence watching me when I felt like hell having just rolled out of bed after a long illness and the last thing I wanted was for people to stare at me.

I went to a chair behind my horse trailer to rest while the water troughs were filling. I thought I could sit there and have some privacy, but the man came over to the one spot in the fence where he could see me around the horse trailer and he continued staring. Why are there so many creeps in this world? I thought about opening the door and sigging the dogs on him, but the horses were out and they would have stomped on the dogs.

Then the man started calling me over to him, but I was in too much pain. I couldn't walk with shredded intestines, and even throwing my voice out hurt, so I chose to ignore him. I didn't want to go in the house to escape his unwanted attention, because I knew I would instantly forget about the hose running, and it would flood the yard. Plus I felt so drained and in so much pain that I wanted to avoid taking any unnecessary extra steps. This is one of those illnesses where if you roll out of bed, you don't have the strength to get up off the floor, so you just lay there for an hour.

Anyway, my neighbors' business is not my business, so I'm not willing to take messages for them. These people have been such a pain in my butt all these years that I don't want to associate with them or their endless stream of visitors in anyway whatsoever. I could tell that the man was contemplating walking down the street and up my driveway into my back yard to get my attention. Fortunately, right then my neighbor FINALLY came out of her house to ask him what he wanted. I staggered over to the spigot to turn off the water and went back to bed.