300 Words: Thoughts of a pretired French Teacher

Neighbors down the street had put this Little Tikes tractor, wagon, and gas pump out for garbage pick up (or for someone like me coming along to grab it).

November days are not generally super cold. Today when I went out with Stewie, it was only nineteen degrees. Luckily, it was a windless nineteen degrees.

Lethargy is the word of the day. Yesterday, I got through the day on a piece of peanut butter toast in the morning and my only other calories were an extremely, slowly drunk can of Coca Cola. Early on in the day, I was queasy and despite it, I went to the gym. While there, I realized that I needed to go home since I apparently had some sort of virus.

The symptoms were very acid reflux-like with frequent tastes of bile and a whole day where I could not eat and only sip coke and period tastes of water.

Nauseated was the word of the day. Once home from the gym after noon, I took it easy and I wasn’t all that sure that I wasn’t going to lose the little I had eaten.

I found out later when MK went out for a supposed chance to see two of our granddaughters at ballet class, which ended up in being the result of a fake news e-mail that was a false alarm. MK got there only to be told that the e-mail received was incorrect and it was not a day for seeing the girls perform. While there, she explained my symptoms as being the reason I was not there and Rita, Richie’s nurse, mother-in-law said not to worry since it was a twenty-four hour thing.

That was totally correct, by bedtime, my queasiness had subsided and I was able to go to bed and sleep through the night.

I must say that I am not overly hungry, but I was able to eat steel cut oatmeal and have a cup of decaf.

Never a dull moment.

Only select cars may be parked in front of this house.

I have to admit that had the malbor not called the police on Stewie a few weeks ago, I might have allowed his presence to slide in my view to the point that I would not write about him.

Unfortunately, he continues to be mean and vindictive and subhuman, as so many of our current leaders are. He is the totally different rendition, the creep who lives next door.

Today his parking viewpoints are on my mind. Years ago, our boys told us (malbor never did) that he felt that the street area in front of his house was a parking area that should only be used by him. To be frank, that is true, because for the most part, even his son is forced to park somewhere else. His work van is currently parked right now in front of malbor’s neighbors to the south. During the day, his son has to play a car jockeying game with his van or car (if it so happens to be here). He is not allowed to put it in the driveway until dark, otherwise it must be on the street. If he is working on the van, it may only be in the driveway when he is working on it.

The two cars belonging to malbor and his wife must absolutely be in the garage and it is a cold day in Hell when one is left out all night.

One time, I parked my car for a short moment in front of malbor’s house and sure enough my sons’ mention of malbor’s dislike of it was expressed to me. His comment was in the usual vein where he likes to discuss my masculinity, or perhaps his view that my masculinity is in question. The fact is that my take on this is that he has serious masculine identification issues and thus is projecting it on those he dislikes. He said to me, “Gee, I bet you feel like a real man parking in front of my house.”

I am thankful for the cold weather and the fact that it makes it less likely for any sort of sightings of the malbor.