The Past, the Pleasant, and the Neighbor

First of all, I want to thank Laura from Thoughts of a Career Woman for giving me this Sisterhood award:

She's a sweetheart and the baby sister I never had.  Yeah, I know she looks nothing like me, but work with me here, 'K?

Over at Diane J's blog, Contentedly Neurotic, Diane was responding to a tag that had questions about the past, present, and future.  Evil Twin and I decided to steal the question about the past:

What were you doing five years ago?

Me:  I was working a corporate IT job and was assigned to a project to "re-invent" the company's website. 

Evil Twin:  Yeah, I remember you talking about your boss.  Remember the time she....

Me:  Shhhhh. 

Me:  Hubby and I were working at my mother-in-law's house cleaning and clearing up piles of clutter while she was in a rehab facility after back surgery.

Evil Twin:  Gotta match?

Me:  I was teaching yoga at our corporate fitness center.

Evil Twin:  I can do yoga.  Watch this:

Me:  Whoa!  WHAT happened to your head?  Did you open the door to the cellar?  Remember I told you never to do that!

Me:  Hubby celebrated ten years at his company.

Evil Twin:  I'm speechless.

Me:  Good.

Me:  Hubby and I booked a cruise to Alaska.  We took our moms.

Evil Twin:  Wait.  I don't remember this.

Me:  Yep.  That's right.  You weren't invited.  Hee Hee.

Me:  At the end of 2005, I had my distance vision corrected via LASIK!

Evil Twin:  Yeah.  You were afraid of letting me come with you.  I was wanting to see what they did with the discarded eyeballs.
Me:  Um.....

If you're still awake, let's move on to the latest rendition of "Good Neighbors".

Neighbor: I see you had someone work on your trees.  Why didn't they take that bent limb out of your pine tree?

What I wanted to say: What?  Does the bent arm bother you because you can see it from your yard?   Wait.  How about you get rid of your gigantic rodent-attracting brush pile and numerous compost piles that are visible to us from just about everywhere.

What she probably meant:  That limb is broken and will probably die.  You had other dead wood removed and two dead trees taken down so why not that limb?

What I said: Um,  it's not dead yet.  We will just "let it be".

Sigh.

The photo is our pine tree with the broken arm.  It's hard to tell but our property slopes down.  I'm standing considerably "uphill" from this tree.  Knowing this makes this next exchange make more sense.

Same neighbor:  We are going to do something about this washout area here at the back of our property.  Doesn't the water that washes out my flower bed come from your septic system?

What I wanted to say:  **rolling eyes**  No. We've had this conversation before.  There is an underground spring that starts up the hill from my property, runs down my property and spews water out towards your property after heavy rains.  Why did you build a ##$%#$ flowerbed where the the water rushes out?

What I said:  Um, no.  The lines would not go this far.  There is an underground spring that starts up the hill from my property, runs down my property and spews water out towards your property after heavy rains. Good Luck with whatever you decide to do.

At least this is a neighbor I like.

Sigh.

Photo credits: Headless yogini:  Seven morris on flickr.com, Creative Commons license (see sidebar), broken pine:  Reffie