Criminals in my yard and criminals in my mouth. Story of my life.

Remember how I told y’all the last time my mom came and stayed at my house that she is completely against over sharing on the internet?  Well, she was back in town again last week staying at my house so I could not come here and over share with y’all on the internet.  If she saw me sitting down and writing all of this stuff on my blog while she was visiting from out of state and wanting to spend time with me, I might be disowned.  That’s why I didn’t blog.  

Her birthday was the week before she came to Atlanta so I took her for a belated birthday gift to a play at a local small community theater because we both love doing that (and if my friend Liz is reading, I know she’ll be happy to hear that since she acts and sings and is all kind of fabulous in the theater out in Tulsa), we visited family, etc.  I took a couple of vacation days to spend with her and one afternoon we decided to chill on the sofa for a few minutes before we got dressed to go to the play and suddenly my mom gasped and said there was a huge dog in my front yard. 

Now I know that most of us are all, “PUPPY!  PUPPY!  PUPPY!” all the time around here, but I have to be honest:  (1) I am about as allergic to dogs as you can possibly get (as in almost having to go to the emergency room several times over the years because I’ve almost stopped breathing and prescription breathing meds were not working even a tiny bit); and (2)  I am not a fan of interacting with a strange dog (and he was HUGE) with no collar that I’ve never seen in my ‘hood before who has somehow gotten into my yard even though it is completely fenced in, the front gate was closed and latched, there are no holes under any portion of my fence, and the dog looks super irritated that it can’t figure out how to get back out.  It went all over my front yard.  Up on the front porch.  All over my backyard.  Up and down my driveway.  Back and forth.  Pacing.  Pacing.  Pacing.  And looking more and more upset.  My mom wouldn’t go out there at all.  So I waited until it went in the back yard, then grabbed a security bar that I keep under my door knob so I could use it as a weapon if the dog suddenly attacked me (because I’m all filled up with the drama), ran outside and opened the front gate then dashed back inside before it figured out I was outside.  I may or may not have been in my pajamas with no bra on when I did this since my mom and I had been thoroughly enjoying a pj day.  He finally found his way out and then went into all of the neighbors’ yards checking them out.  My neighbor across the street ran him off from her yard with a broom.  Some people were walking down the sidewalk and they started screaming when it approached them (apparently my ‘hood is also full of the drama) and then it went further down the street out of sight. 

So that’s pretty much the exciting end of that sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat story.  I know y’all just kept waiting for something actually interesting to happen and then I just disappoint, right?  Did the dog attack her?  Did the dog start licking her to death?  Did the dog really want to find someone to help rescue someone a la Lassie?  No.  The dog just went into some other yards and then walked on down the street out of sight.  You are all glad I shared this story with you, right? 

Then I was unable to blog because I had a 12-year-old boy staying with me at my house all weekend.  Because I’m a total perv.  I love me a 12-year-old boy.  (I hope y’all know I’m kidding.  Do not call the authorities and send them after me.)  It was my cousin’s son and they live not too far out of Atlanta, but they never go downtown and do stuff.  He went to the High Museum on a field trip recently and he said that while the art was pretty cool, his favorite part was seeing all of the tall buildings and watching the people walking around.  He was convinced all of the people walking around downtown were cool college kids.  For his birthday, I told him he could stay with me and we would go downtown and look at tall buildings and see weird people and for some odd reason that sounded like the most awesome birthday gift he had ever received from anyone. 

My mom and I took him to my house Friday night with us and he spent the night.  We had to take my mom to the airport at noon on Saturday so I took them to a great little breakfast place near my ‘hood, then we went to the bookstore because he loves reading (I adore a boy who loves to read…and isn’t afraid to admit it) and then headed to the airport.  I then realized he had probably never been on MARTA (Atlanta’s train system) so even though I live about 3 miles from where I was taking him and could have driven there in about 10 minutes, I  took him downtown on the train which took about an hour each way with the stops and train changes, etc..  Thank goodness I did though since that was his favorite thing we did all day.  He also thought I was nuts when I got into a conversation about incense with a random girl riding the train.  There was a crazy dude walking through the train selling incense and she struck up a conversation with me about how much she loves incense but that dude’s incense “were all crumbly and shit” and that they stunk when he walked past her. 

I took him (my cousin’s son, not the crazy dude selling incense on the train) smack into the middle of downtown and into a hotel that my dad used to take us in as kids because it’s fairly tall without being overwhelming (we went up to the 41^st), and my cousin’s son was terrified and said he felt nauseous.  Also, there was a biker convention of some sort going on and they were all staying at that hotel so he got to see some interesting people (and lots and lots of leather). 

Then, because he loves music a lot, I took him to The Hard Rock Café for lunch because I thought he would love it.  Not so much.  He said he had never heard of most of the artists when I pointed out memorabilia from different people I thought he would know (I then felt like the old hag I am because he had never heard of Sheryl Crow, James Brown, Collective Soul, or Johnny Cash), he was completely mortified when half of the staff and customers stood up and danced all the animated moves to Y.M.C.A.,  and I was only half-way done with my sandwich when he announced that he was ready to go because it was too loud.  Too loud?!  You’re a 12-year-old boy!  I’m a 44-year-old woman and I was having a blast.  The restaurant is across the street from the Peachtree Plaza Hotel so I asked him if he wanted to go up in that elevator (it’s almost twice as high as the one we had been in earlier).  He said I must be crazy.  Which?  Yes.  Yes I am. 

He said what he really wanted to was go back to my house and play board games but first he wanted to stop at Target to look around on the way back.  Crazy incense dude was on the train going back too.  So our big, fun, exciting day in the city was a little bit of a bust, but I think he still had a great time even though it sounds like I tortured him with scary elevators and loudness.  And my awesome Y.M.C.A. moves. 

He’s at that age where he mumbles and is too cool to act very excited about anything but when his mom came to pick him up the next day he told her he wasn’t ready to go home and wanted to keep staying with me.  And I had to explain to him that it is not always fun and games at my house like it had been all weekend.  Sometimes it’s full of toilet cleaning and litter box scooping too.  After he left and I had somewhat put my house back together (he and/or my cat pulled curtains down out of the window in one room while chasing each other and we had approximately 2645987980 board games pulled out all over my dining room table), I crashed on the sofa and could not get back up.  Kids wear me out.  I don’t know how parents do it. 

In other news, some of y’all wanted to hear a story about something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago.  Only now I’m not sure what I thought happened is what really happened.  I hope this is all going to make sense.  I fall asleep on my sofa a lot.  I wake up sometime between 2:30 and 3:30 about 99.99999% of the time and I usually decide to just stay on the sofa instead of turning on lights and waking myself up to get upstairs to my bedroom.  Yes, I need the lights on so I won’t trip and fall and break an arm again because I’m not exactly the most graceful person on earth if y’all haven’t figured that out already. 

Anyway, I woke up just before 3:00 a.m. one morning and went to the restroom (because remember: I am an old hag.  I have to pee several times in the night which I love so much).  As I was walking back to the living room, I realized my flood lights were on at the front of my house and they only turn on when the motion detector triggers them on.  So I proceeded to freak the heck out.  I looked out in the yard, saw that the front gate was still closed and latched just as I had left it, I then went to the back of the house and looked on the deck and out by my garage and in the back yard and saw nothing.  I ran to every window down the side of the house looking outside and saw nothing.  I stood silently so I could hear whoever was out there while looking out a window overlooking my driveway with my cell phone in one hand to call 911 and a broom in the other hand so I could hit them with the handle when they broke into my house which I was 100% convinced they were going to do.  (And please don’t tell me I should get a gun.  That is not going to happen.  I have now spoken on that idea.  Amen.)  I felt like I was going to either hyperventilate or have a heart attack.  This was all just because the light was on.  I had seen no one.  I had heard no one.  And yet there I was freaking in the dining room.  I tiptoed back up to the front window, crouched down below it so the scary person I knew was out there couldn’t see me, and slowly raised up just enough to peek over the bottom edge of the window sill and looked out.  And that’s when I saw him! 

The stupid stray cat on the sidewalk in front of my house, that is. 

That’s all that was out there, y’all.  I never saw a person.  Eventually the stupid light went back out, and I put the broom back in the closet and made my way back to the sofa.  I finally managed to doze back off about an hour later feeling like a complete scaredy cat (see what I did there?) and also like a bit of an idiot.  And I went on for a few days assuming I had almost had a heart attack from a stray cat. 

But I could not stop thinking about it.  How would a small cat set off the motion detector light when it’s about 15 feet or more above the ground?  Why don’t the bazillion squirrels I have running around all over my property ever set it off?  A few days ago for some reason I happened to be on the backside of my garage and deck and I saw something that was moved in a different position than it had been previously when I was back there.  And I also saw a broom handle on the ground next to the windows of my crawlspace.  I checked everything out and none of the windows were busted out or anything and everything else looked like it should.  But now I can’t figure out how someone could have gotten back out of my property that night without me seeing them leave.  Of course I don’t know how long that broom handle had been on the ground because I don’t go over to that itty bitty space between that side of my house and the fence very often either so it may not have been left there that night.  It had been at least a month since I had looked back in there. 

There is no way to get out from that side of the house other than coming back around my house and up the driveway and the fence in my back yard is way too high to climb over (in fact, I’ve been told by a contractor that the height of my fence in the back and on that side of my house is illegal because rescue workers can’t get over it).  The front gate was still closed and latched.  From my sofa, I would have seen the light turn on again if they were anywhere on the driveway side of my house before I fell asleep again an hour later.  But I really don’t think it was that stray cat. 

A couple of days before this happened I was approached by a guy in my driveway when I arrived home from work one night.  He told me there is a guy in his late teens who works at the jewelry store the next street over (I have no clue what jewelry store he's talking about because I've been warned not to go on the next street over) who has been stealing cars in our 'hood.  Apparently he also stole a car in the shopping center up the street from me recently and hit this man's niece and she died.  So he was warning people about him.  I also had all of that in my mind when my lights were coming on in the middle of the night. 

This past week my toilet stopped working upstairs (my house, Daisy Jane’s Money Drain, is still living up to her name) so I’ve pretty much been sleeping on my sofa every night so I don’t have to go up and down the stairs to another bathroom a few times a night.  You can bet I am still a little freaked out and every single time I wake up, I make sure the light is not on out there. 

And in other news, as I commented on June’s blog, I found out a little over a week ago that my dentist has been arrested twice.  Someone told me about it so I checked online to confirm for myself.  Sure ‘nough.  I saw the mug shots and arrest records.  Once for drugs (possession of pot).  Once for property damage, assault, and cruelty to children.  When I went to have my teeth cleaned about a year ago, he was out and there was a temp dentist filling in for him (no pun intended).  I was told he had broken his hand while doing some remodeling in his basement.  I’m now guessing he remodels by beating things with his fist.  In front of his two young kids.  When I went back for a cleaning 6 months ago, they said he was out again because he had had a heart attack.  And then I called to confirm an appointment last month and they told me he was out because his license had lapsed when he was out for so long. 

So if anyone has a great dentist to recommend (locals, I’d like someone in-town near East Atlanta/Little 5 Points or in Buckhead), I sort of think it might be time for me to moving on from this guy.  I’m disappointed because I really liked him.  But dude apparently has some issues.  But has no license. 

That’s pretty much what I’ve been up to:  chasing off strange big dogs, going to plays (it’s based on the things that happen in a Waffle House in the middle of the night), acting like a tourist in my own town, wondering if someone is creeping around in my yard in the middle of the night and standing in my dining room in the middle of the night with a broom, and breaking up with my criminal dentist.  I’m now in the middle of trying to completely change my diet because I need to lose about 800 pounds.  So maybe we can talk about that next time.  What have y’all been up to?