The Lunatic is on the grass..

It has been some time since I’ve written any new blogs. Fear not, as I have many profound and life changing tales to tell! As my kids get older, I find myself designating more of my free time to do fun things with them. At night, when they go to bed, my creative juices at that point have become drained and usually I just lay on the couch like a giant slug or some form of gelatinous protozoan/amoeba. I must say to my one blog subscriber and super fan….I am sorry. Whomever you may be. At any rate, I have decided to tell a tale of verbal malice and unjustified insults. The story has a twist ending and is sure to shock even the cleverest of readers. As you may remember by reading my previous blogs (probably not), I enjoy working on Saturdays. There are several reasons for this and I will do my best to explain. First, most customers do not expect service providers to work on Saturday. It has been programmed through our society for generations. Yes, there are some who do expect Saturday services but most people, in my experience, do not. When I tell my customer that I am working on their home on Saturday, usually they are surprised and either have low expectations of what I will get done or they are simply just thankful for me going,“Above and Beyond”. It’s very relaxing to know the customer is happy with something I am doing. Secondly, traffic is never an issue because most people don’t work on Saturdays. Lastly, a lot of my customers go out of town on weekends to hang out at the beach or a relatives’ house or if it is a place of business they are not operating. This means that I can get on the roof, turn on my music and start working at my own pace without any distractions! Which brings me to my next story. A Saturday full of distractions and blaspheming banter from a neighbors’ yard.

I had been working on a large office building roof for several days and was ready to finish. It was taking me a lot longer than I thought to fix all of the places on the roof that had been damaged by an army of ravenous squirrels. My last chore was to install 200 feet of metal gutter guard. The only problem was that it was a flat membrane covered roof. There were no shingles and so normal gutter guard screens wouldn’t work. I had to measure and cut strips of steel mesh 200’ long and 5” wide to fit the gutters on the top of the roof. I needed a full day to finish but didn’t want it to take up space in my busy work week, so I decided to get it done on a Saturday. When I arrived it was 8am and the sun was out. Birds were singing, the heathen hordes of bastard squirrels were running amuck on the roof gnawing on the metal I installed over their holes. No matter, they couldn’t get in. I was focused on getting those gutters covered. I spent an hour or so in the empty parking lot cutting strips of mesh. I like to have all of my material cut so that I don’t have to keep climbing up and down the ladder (I know, it’s a genius idea). Once I had My 20- ten foot long strips of mesh, I climbed on the roof and started getting my drill and screws out when all of a sudden I heard a womans’ voice scream , “Get down from there you cock sucker!”.. trust me I was just as shocked to hear it as you just were reading it. I looked around to the neighboring yards but didn’t see anyone. I thought, “Maybe there was someone in the parking lot?” Nope, I walked around and not a sole was to be seen. So, I walked back to the gutter end and picked up my drill. All of a sudden the same woman started screaming again. She said, “You naughty son of a bitch..get your ass off of there!”. I didn’t know what to think, so I said loudly, “Excuse me…who’s there?”. There was a short pause and then I got a strange response. The woman screamed, “I see you up there. Your ass is grass.” I didn’t really know what to do other than just keep working. So for the next hour I listened to this lunatic woman, who I couldn’t actually see, yell at me while intermittently laughing hysterically. My professional “stamina” started to run out. I began to get annoyed and desperately wanted to silence this horrible wench once and for all. Then, I heard something that was actually very funny. She screamed, “You little man..you little weenie man.”. At first it made me laugh but then I thought, “this woman must be drunk or on some drug.” I began to regain my cool and actually started listening to what she was saying. She said things like, “Oh, I’ve heard that before you asshole”, or better yet my favorite was, “Your mother is a hag!” I began to realize that her banter was out of context and did not occur when I did something or spoke but it was completely random. Something was fishy! Noon time came around and this crazy woman was still screaming crazy things. I noticed a car pull into the yard next to the building I was on. A woman exited the car and saw me on the roof and was listening to this other woman harass me. The woman who exited the car said to me, “Oh my god..how long have you been listening to Ruth?” I said, “Well, since 8 am”… The woman said, “I am so sorry, I forgot to take the sheet off of the top of her cage.” I thought to myself, “cage?” She walked over to the covered patio and pulled the blanket off of this giant Parrot cage. The parrot had been watching me all morning through a little peep hole in the blanket. The lady said, “She is a rescue bird from a home where the kids were out of control and used to climb all over the furniture and the husband was a cheating drunk,”. I laughed and said, well that explains all of the insulting things she said haha! The woman said, Once the blanket comes off she only says happy things. The bird started laughing hysterically having a make believe conversation with someone over the phone. “Hahaha you are killing me jerry, hahaha….”. What a crazy bird!