So it’s been well over a year now since I’ve been alone here in this house.  Well, alone except for the dog. For a while it was me the dog and the cat – but Beki saw fit to shuffle off her mortal coil in February, so it’s been a bit with just the two of us. The neighbors haven’t said anything at all about Sam’s departure, but then what do you say?

“Oh hey – so…..your husband took off.  That’s….a thing…”

No.

So I’ve slowly been establishing myself as the sole resident of the house, both inside and out.

I kept the lawn guys, because there are wasps outside and I really REALLY do not cotton to those.  Plus, yard work?  That smacks of effort.  They’re not THAT expensive and I like coming home and going “Oh hey! The lawn is mowed! Awesome!” Plus they do gutters and leaves and whatnot.  It’s a good deal.

But it’s weird sort of being “me” instead of “us” in the local environs. Plus, if we’re all being brutally honest, I am a crazy person now – at least some of the time.

I mean, my Josh Groban porch-sobbing episodes HAD to have occasioned at least some gossip as I tried to tearfully explain to the dog, me in headphones, why the adorable little gnome just KNEW how to punch you in the feels with his angelic warbling.

And exiting the front door, face-first into spiderwebs streteched between my two giant yew bushes, and then dancing around yelling “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKING SPIDER FUCK GAH FUCK ADAUGHTER OF UNGOLIANT BITCH FUCK” was probably not the best thing I could have done for my reputation in my quiet, conservative burg.

You have to understand that if you translated “We have lots of money and we love our lawns” into Latin and slapped it on a flag, that’s my city’s motto. Only they’d argue for days – weeks – about the color of the flag, not because anyone gave a shit about the color, but because they worried about what message the color might send and whether or not it clashed with the awareness ribbons.  Awareness of what?  NO ONE WOULD KNOW.

So I am trying to be a good citizen, but occasionally I fail.  Thus it was yesterday when I let SB out back. I just needed him to do his thing and come back inside. Only he caught sight of something and decided it was a terrorist cell in the next door neighbor’s yard. In fact, it was a white squirrel.  Like all white.  Like, admittedly, frighteningly white. He DID NOT LIKE ALBINO SQUIRREL.

So he went apeshit. Like you do.

I tried my normal CTFO tactics, but he was not having any of it. The barking. And the jumping. And the snarling.

I finally ran out of patience and, forgetting myself just a tish, screamed “I KNOW IT’S AN ABOMINATION IN THE EYES OF THE GODS, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF CHEESE AND WAFFLES LEAVE IT!” Which, strangely enough, worked. As if my acknowledgement of its eldritch strangeness was all he was really looking for to begin with.

Also though, my neighbors looked out their back door.

So I went inside and cranked up Josh Groban. For internal consistency reasons.