One of the main attractions of this tiny little Santa Barbara garage apartment that I call home is the large lemon tree out back in the 4 foot by 4 foot yard we have on the side. It's a small yard and a big lemon tree. We used to squeeze lemons into anything we drank or ate and were so excited about our fresh lemon supply when we first moved in. Well, then the winter came and it became too cold to go out side (the temperatures dropped to below 60!-c'mon it's California) and to be honest we got a little lazy. Now that the days are longer and we can actually see the yard when we get home from work, we decided it's probably about time to clean up all those rotten moldy decaying lemons. Rummaging through the foot high weeds to pull up all the soggy lemons SMACK, Trevor hits me in the head with a baseball. I shriek, "Ah what the heck was that for?!.........." hmmm Trevor?...... Trevor is not here. The baseball was actually a lemon. And it was the tree that dropped it on my head.
A couple nights later, I stopped at a store on the way home and by the time I got to the house it was dark. To get to the front door of the apartment you have to walk through the side gate and down a little path. The gate is closed, but I could see that the sensor light is on and I was thinking maybe Butterscrotch came back.
[UPDATE: Butterscrotch has not been seen in about a month. The last time I saw Butterscrotch I pulled up to the house as per usual and Butterscrotch greeted me at the driver side door. I was on the phone with my sister and was carrying a couple of grocery bags. Butterscrotch followed me over to garbage can that I began to drag up to the side of the house while squishing my phone between my ear and shoulder and balancing one grocery bag under my arm and the other on top of the garbage can. In the midst of my balancing act I notice a middle-aged lady staring at me from the curb across the street. She mumbles something and in my multi-tasking mess I give her a "Umm huh wha?" And she replies "My cat seems to really like you." I am flabbergasted that 1) Butterscrotch is her cat, that 2) she is a miserable cat owner because her cat is in miserable shape and 3) how do I get Butterscrotch to stop following me?! I stutter something about "Oh this is your cat? He's a really friendly cat" and then motion like I don't know what she wants me to do about her uber friendly cat but I'm going inside. I didn't feed Butterscrotch that night. I never saw him again. I did see some roadkill on the side of the highway about 5 miles south that resembled an orange cat, but I didn't stop to check]
BACK TO THE STORY: So it's been a couple weeks since I last saw Butterscrotch and I get a little excited that he's hanging out in the yard because the sensor light is on. I open the gate, and oh hello Mr. Police Officers, what seems to be the problem?
Apparently our neighbors, the ones who live in the big house (we live above their garage) and who happen to both be legally blind, heard some tapping on the window sill and thought someone was trying to break in. The cops checked it out, didn't see anyone, and chalked it up to the probability of an animal that they believe they scared away. Ok dokes thanks, goodbye.
The next day it rained. The tapping returned. And they called the cops again.
The landlord got involved and alas there is actually an animal living in the wall of the house. What type of animal they do not know. I secretly convinced myself it was Butterscrotch. It wasn't. The trapper came on a monday morning. When I opened the gate and breathed in the rotten air night, I knew what animal it was. A skunk.
They put her down. I don't know why. Sad story I know. And still no Butterscrotch...
Well to cheer you up or at least change the subject, I'll tell you about how my sister sent me a pair of underpants in the mail. That's all there is to the story. Just when you thought underpant-gift-giving was only reserved for mom's at Christmas time...... surprise here's a nice pair of panties from your soon-to-be-married sister on no particular holiday or occasion! Okkkkk, has the world gone bonkers?!
The other day I was in a Wet Seal, a cheap clothing store aimed towards adolescent girls and cheapo young professionals (that'd be me). They have T-shirts in all different colors with all different slogans some of them cute sayings like "I heart my boyfriend" and some of the other ones are pretty offensive and racy and I don't know why anyone would say some of these things let a lone plaster them on t-shirts for children to wear around. One in particular read "BOOM I got your boyfriend."
What is wrong with people?
And while on the topic of what's wrong with people I would like to take the opportunity to vent my frustrations with David's Bridal who:
A) charged me for a dress but didn't actually place the my actual order
B) refunded the shipping price in a separate transaction instead of charging it
C) put me on hold for 15+ minutes while they did who knows what
D) hung up on me
E) apologized for hanging up and then asked me why I wanted to order 2 dresses when I called back
F) passed me around from Kathy to Janice to I don't know who who finally said ok we won't charge you for shipping but what's your address
G) then asked me what it was again that she was shipping me
H) said everything was taken care of but when I asked for an order confirmation number replied I would have to call for that. Call who? I don't know, but I want to call the police. Can you have someone arrested for giving you an anxiety attack?
I hate David's Bridal....
....Trevor hates folding socks.
Sometimes when he folds laundry, he doesn't pair any of the socks together he just shoves all of them in the drawer. In his mind this is more efficient because then he doesn't have to unfold them when he needs to put them on (2 less steps). One might argue that he might have to spend more time trying to find a pair, but when you have one person folding socks and the other not, there's usually enough paired socks to keep you going and you just start accumulating a large pile of unmatched socks that you only need to go through in times of desperation. Well he can do whatever he wants with his socks, I don't mind (yea right) but when my socks start losing their pairs it drives me crazy. And when I start finding my un-matched socks in his piles of unfolded socks, well it's time to take drastic measures. That was about a year ago when I returned home from Denmark. I went through all the drawers, closets, laundry baskets etc. and found every single pair-less sock I could find, put them in a bag and hid them deep in the closet. I never told Trevor about it and to be honest I never really thought about it again until the other night when we were folding laundry. And Trevor mentioned that "how come I have all these un-matched socks?" and "where do all the single socks go?"
I ran to the closet, pulled out the bag, and dumped out all his single socks on the floor. He was really surprised. And a little shocked. His exact quote was, "This is the weirdest thing you've ever done."
