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      Tuesday, May 30, 2006


tales from the parkside
08:32 AM - 05/30/2006

The topic: The drain

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My mom lives in a senior citizen mobile home park.  She has a very nice home on a fair size piece of property for a mobile home. The park has been around for a lot of years and my mom has lived there since the year after my father died, back in 1987.

She ended up quitting her job, she sold their house, then found a place to live less than a mile away from us. She has a wonderful view of the Lakeside area, she’s got a peach tree, lemon trees and this year, has avocados growing on a tree that she started from a seed years ago.  She has roses, a car, a golf cart and she’s come a long way from the woman she was nineteen years ago.  She’s a breast cancer survivor and she worries that she’ll get another kind of cancer.  She’s a very nervous woman.  She’s a worrier. She’s highly energetic. I call her an “energy sucker”.  If I spend much time around her, I get drained. I’m sure we all have people that it’s hard for us to be around.  My mother is like that for me.

We speak on the phone five days a week.  Just to check in and make sure she’s doing okay.  She usually is. She’s pretty much a big fish in her pond and she loves her life as it is right now. She can do what she wants when she wants and she answers to no one.  For the most part.

She occasionally has problems with neighbors and it’s usually the same ones.  Right now, it’s the woman behind her. 

Mom lives downhill from this woman.  And like so many homes in this area, uphill drains to downhill. Across the street from us, there are drains in their front lawns to handle the water runoff from the houses uphill and behind them. The water drains into the street and goes into the drains at the side of the road.  Developers cannot do this now, but they did it then.

But it would appear that this drain in mom’s backyard is not a water runoff drain. It’s a gray water drain from the place behind her, for the washing machine that’s in their shed.   Mom watched one day and the water coming from the drain was soapy.  The woman behind her denied this.  Mom called the park manager, they had someone send a camera up the drain and told mom it wasn’t coming from the place behind her, it wasn’t washing machine water.

Fine.  Mom fixes it in her own way. 

She blocked the drain.

*lol*

Can you see where this is going?

One of mom’s best friends lives next door to the woman with the gray water.  And she’s called mom and told her to go listen.  There’s a whole lot of cussing going on at laundry time.  Seems whenever this woman does a laundry now, the water is backing up into her machine. 

My mother gets immense satisfaction from this. 

I think I’m a lot like my mother.


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tales from the parkside
08:21 AM - 05/30/2006

The topic: New category

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I’ve set up this category to tell stories about my mom. 

Every once in a while, someone that I’ve “known” on the internet for years just strikes me as very sweet and sincere.  Someone who would never deliberately say anything to hurt anyone else and if by chance someone is hurt, she feels extremely bad. I’ve often wished I could be more like these people, who are very thoughtful and kind to all of those around them, just very considerate.

They take the time to listen, never in a hurry and always are supportive. If they can’t say anything nice, they don’t say anything. And they don’t remind you of that.

And I wonder why sometimes I can be such a miserable bitch.  I guess I can look back to my childhood and how I was raised for a fair idea of why I am who I am.  My mother.  My parents did the best they could with the knowledge they had and I don’t think I turned out too badly.  I obey the laws, I vote, I don’t shoot dogs and I don’t run over little children. 

So, I dedicate this section to the woman who made me what I am today.  My mother.


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catstuff
06:22 AM - 05/30/2006

The topic: How many answer

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There are twenty one cats in that picture.

 


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otherstuff
06:20 AM - 05/30/2006

The topic: Heh

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Watching the KTLA Morning News from Los Angeles, they show traffic and an oil tanker/truck was in an accident and spilled the load.  There were five vehicles involved and no one was seriously injured.

Damn. Another reason for the oil companies to raise prices.


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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

In her spare time, she makes pretty things to sell in her store.

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