Kindness of Strangers

There's a woman living on the same floor as my MIL's apartment who has made a pest of herself to most of the other neighbors in the building, essentially to the point where people avoid her.

My MIL, however, being as she is always gracious and kind and hospitable, puts up with her and this woman takes full advantage of it. At least once a week and sometimes even more often she'll come over with a request for my MIL. She'll want my MIL to pick her up some groceries. She'll want my MIL to take a bill to be paid at the bank. Once she asked my MIL to go buy her a coffee maker. Oh. And bring some coffee too, please.

The picking up food thing seems to be the most annoying. She always wants things like one banana and one apple from the produce people or three eggs from the egg guy and the worst is going to the butcher. Once the old lady wanted 50 grams of liverwurst. Have any idea how hard it is to successfully slice off 50 grams of liverwurst? It's hard enough that the guy behind my MIL hollered out "Don't slice your thumb off in the process!". It embarrassed my MIL, and to her a good reputation with merchants is important to her. It made her want to announce to everyone "It's not for me! It's for my weird neighbor!".

Now I feel bad for the old woman. She's somewhere in her 80s and doesn't seem to have any friends or family at all - at least none who want to have anything to do with her. She suffers from deep depression and she's also had some lengthy hospital stays in the past year - I'm not sure if it was from a physical ailment or a mental breakdown. The others in the apartment building have been putting up with her for years and have gotten to the point where they stay away from her but so far my MIL hasn't gotten to that point. It's not easy for my MIL though. While she's younger than this neighbor, my MIL is also recovering from knee surgery and she's also got some thing going on where her blood pressure is lower than normal and she becomes exhausted after exerting much less physical activity than she's used to. Still she doesn't tell this old woman no. This neighbor woman really needs to be in an assisted living arrangement or even hire someone to check on her but she either can't or won't spend the money so she continues to take advantage of anyone who will accommodate her requests.

This past Saturday about mid-morning she rang my MIL's door bell asking to ask if my MIL would get some groceries for her.

MIL: Well, okay. I suppose I can go across to the market and get what you need.

Old lady: Well I need some liverwurst and some bread and some cake and some butter and some milk.

MIL: Okay. But right now I'm busy. I'm right in the middle of making potato salad and I'll go when I'm finished.

Old lady: Can you make some potato salad for me too?

MIL: Uhhh...yeah.

Old lady: Do you make it with mayonnaise?

MIL: Yes.

Old lady: I don't like mayonnaise. Can you make mine without mayonnaise?

MIL: Well I suppose so.

Door closes. My MIL bangs her head against the wall.

I sometimes consider what my life will be like when I'm much older and I sometimes get afraid. I get afraid that the story I've told you is going to one day be my story except I'm afraid that I won't be playing the roll my MIL has taken. I'm afraid I'm going to be the annoying neighbor everyone wants to avoid. I'm afraid that perhaps I'll be old and unstable and without friends or family who will look after me. I'm afraid that doing something as simple as getting a few groceries will be beyond my ability and I'll have to depend on strangers deigning to help me out.

But maybe it won't be as bad as I, in my mind, make it out to be. After all, I detest liverwurst and we all know I love mayonnaise.

You're Off The Hook - Somewhat

Much to your everlasting relief chagrin, I don't have much in the way of knitting talk this week. I'm still knitting on Paula's second sock and I told Poppy the other day that I'm suffering from S.S.S. but in this case it means Second Sock Slowdown. I knit like gangbusters (I like it when I can slip in an old fogy term like "gangbusters") on the first sock and then take twice as much time to finish the second sock as it took me to do the first. This may be why I like to knit for others rather than knit for myself because if the sock is for someone else I feel at least a little pressure to get it finished.

The photos I've seen of socks done in Opal Hundertwasser yarn I have shows an example of a sock with vertical stripes. I think this particular yarn looks so interesting with vertical striping that I found the English translation of the German pattern for this particular sock. It's knitted flat, sewn together with a seam at the back and then put on dpns to make the toe. Poppy mentioned to me that a seam may be uncomfortable and I'm inclined to agree with her but I still may give it a whirl just to see what it's like. Maybe I can sew it super flat. Or what if I made the first row on waste yarn and then when it's time to sew the seam, pull out the waste yarn to make live stitches and then just Kitchener stitch it closed and thereby avoiding a seam? Any thoughts from you other knitters? Any thoughts from you non-knitters? I'm just begging for comment love, aren't I?

Yarn talk is officially over. You can uncover your eyes now.

While having a nap this afternoon I had a dream where I could see my ex-husband standing with some other people on the other side of a road. I don't remember much about the dream except I had shoulder length strawberry blond hair that was in tiny, tiny curls and in the dream I went home after having seen my ex and wanted to go back to talk to him. I wasn't married to him in the dream but as I remember it, I wasn't married to B either. And I think my mother lived with me.

It bugs the shit out of me when I dream about my ex-husband. When we were married I virtually never dreamed about him. In my dreams I very seldom dream about anyone I know in real life (I'm either in dreams with strangers or the people I know in dreams don't exist in real life) but since we divorced I occasionally dream about my ex - once every few months sometimes. In the dream I was thinking of when I last saw my ex, thinking it was sometime in 2001 or 2003 but in reality I haven't seen nor heard from him since I last saw him in the clerk of the court's office while we signed our divorce decree nearly ten years ago. That's what irks me. I thought I was shed of him and he invades my dreams. He probably wants me to fetch him a glass of iced tea or bring him his supper so he can eat it in front of the TV.

And what really bugged me was waking up and thinking "When was the last time I saw him? Did I see him in 2001?". It pissed me off so much to think of my ex after having woke up from a nap that it ruined my whole post-nap groove.

After my ruined nap groove I took my dog, Bonnie, out for a walk. We were a few blocks from my apartment building and were walking along a grassy area and Bonnie needed to poop. Actually Bonnie wasn't feeling too well and she had diarrhea. Not just regular diarrhea but something akin to water. Now let me say that I am very good about picking up after my dog. I don't go anywhere without a plastic freezer bag in my pocket - cause I don't just want plastic between my hand and dog poop but want thick plastic between my hand and dog poop. However this instance a plastic bag wasn't going to clean anything up. Nothing short of holding a paper cup under my dog's rear while she proceeded to evacuate her bowels would have helped so we walked away. I didn't pick anything up because there wasn't anything to pick up. You could hardly see where specifically landed. And just about that time an old woman, who evidently saw my squatting dog, hollered out of her apartment window from a good 20 yards away "You need to clean up after that dog! You there! Clean up after your dog!". I whirled around and hollered back "I can't!" and was told by the old woman that I needed to bring things with me to clean up after my dog.

Jeez, that irked me. Maybe it wouldn't have irked me so much if my post-nap groove hadn't been ruined but there it was. That's when I whipped the plastic bag out of my back pocket, waved it in her direction and shouted back "I have something! My dog has diarrhea like water! It can't be picked up".

You could read the visible "Ewwwww!" on the faces of those standing at the bus stop who were witnessing the confrontation.

I'd be temped to blame this on it being a stereotypical anal retentive German obsessed with cleanliness who was shouting out her window to me but that wouldn't be completely true. I really blame it on city living. Living in a city puts you in much closer contact with busybodies who love to dictate to others how they should live than what you'd find in a small town or suburbs. Every urban area has it's people who lack a life of their own and have nothing better to do than look out their windows in hopes of catching someone not holding their mouth just right. Bombay, Cape Town, London, Beijing, Brooklyn, Cairo - every one of them has someone hanging out a window ready to pounce on the unsuspecting person walking their diarrhea stricken dog.

And for good measure I'll blame my ex-husband as well.