Tag Archives: paranoia

Neighborhood watch (or A healthy dose of paranoia)…

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© 2015 Steel City Corp.

© 2015 Steel City Corp.

Picture it: Ceciltucky. Early Morning. The sun just kissing the tops of the stately oaks and maples lining our exurban streets…

Near the exit of our happy little subdivision, I passed a car coming inbound. That’s not so unusual in and of itself. Based on my observation of the neighborhood over the last six weeks, though, it’s the kind of beater that definitely didn’t look at home here. Still, there are plenty of those in the county. I’d be crazy to think one or two didn’t lurk on our streets. Despite that, it just didn’t feel right.

These are all snap judgements I’m making in the time it takes our two vehicles to close a 100 yard gap at 20 miles an hour. In passing, I may or may not have shot the opposing driver the stink eye, but for sure I made a mental note of the car’s tag number and then watched as it grew smaller in the distance.

For a moment at the intersection I pondered pulling a u-turn just to satisfy my own curiosity… and to be positioned to call the police when the driver sooner or later did something felonious.

At the last second, just before my tires brushed around the median, I saw the plastic wrapped newspaper sail out the car’s passenger window… and promptly felt like a horse’s ass for being a judgmental prick. And for mentally convicting the guy up before the crack of dawn delivering papers.

There’s a lesson there, somewhere. “See something, say something” is a good tag line – but given my experience it seems it could also be helpful to know what it is you’re looking at before firing off half cocked.

That’s progress…

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I had a vague hope for most of the day that the powers that be would intercede and pass the word before close of business. It would have been nice to spend the weekend in something other than a state of definite maybe. That might over-state the situation a bit, but the clock is running and almost everything involved in this process is time sensitive. The longer it takes to square things away here, the more of a headache it’s going to be to start getting things lined up on the other end. Until they officially put a mark on the wall, I’ll remain stuck somewhere between reality and happy illusion – and there’ll be a hard limit on how far I can and can’t prepare. Can I pack every stick of stuff in the house? Sure. But I don’t know if that means I’m going to spend the next two days or two months surrounded by boxes and making dinner every night in the one saucepan that I didn’t pack. I can’t make any definitive plans to get a house full of boxes from here to there. Maybe more difficult is that I can’t start making any decisions about where I’ll be unpacking all those boxes once they get to wherever they’re going. I’m getting visions of way too many nights hanging out in a not quite mid-grade extended stay hotel. It won’t take me long to close out on this end. That’s the beauty of planning your exit for the better part of the year. The issues that are bedeviling me tonight are all about what happens after the Mayflower truck pulls away from Memphis. I know I can torch that bridge when I get to it, but for someone who lives his life by a plan, it’s the kind of uncertainty that can keep a guy up at night. If there’s any up side, it’s that I seem to have gone from being paranoid about the job itself to only being paranoid about what it’s going to take to get from here to there. That’s progress.

Puppy paranoia…

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So, at a few days shy of 5 months old, Winston is at that pesky age where he’s gotten fairly consistent at not peeing on the floor in the kitchen, but not quite as reliable anywhere else in the house. One of the delicate balancing acts I’ve had to learn is that between trying to have quality time with the pup, but still actually getting things done when I can’t keep him in direct line of site. I still don’t feel like I’ve struck much of a balance on that note. So, I either feel guilty of keeping the little fuzzy bastard in his exercise pen in the kitchen or feel guilty because I’m not getting something done around the house… like keeping up with blogging or actually cleaning the bathrooms.

I guess I’m always a bit concerned that I’m just not doing it right… Of course I know I’m probably just suffering from a serious case of paranoia. At the end of the day he’s getting quality food and lots of attention, first class medical care, and doesn’t belong to Mike Vick… so I guess I’ll just have to count on the resilient ability of dogs to adapt to their circumstances.