I love neighborhood tales. I even sometimes like being in them. But it makes me all happy. I get really emotional over communities. I love it when there is an event (parade, neighborhood festival, whatever) and complete strangers start talking to each other and ME and we're all friendly and helpful and I swear, I have to fight tearing up. It's a little bizarre, but I guess it's just seeing the humans do something right and being nice. I mean, I like voting day because I like standing in those lines for an exercise in community of sorts. Makes me feel all benevolent. Even when there are assholes, cause then you band together against the assholery.

Sap, standing right here.

I want to see if I can get my apartment building to enroll for recylcing. Thing is, I don't know the name of the owner or property manager. Well, what is a property manager? Is it the same as the building manager/super?

Looking through my files, the only legible name I can find is Vice President of the company that owns the place.

That should be enough, right?

At my mom's house there's a spinning wheel that originally belonged to one of my paternal great-great-grandmothers. We think it dates to ~1850, and IMHO it's simply beautiful. DH took some pictures and did some research on it, and it turns out it's missing one or two small parts and therefore isn't worth very much, which is just as well, because now it's emphatically a family heirloom rather than a potential asset, you know? GeorgiaBrother and I have been politely arguing over it for years--on separate occasions we privately mentioned to my mother that we'd like to be the one who gets it next, and now every time we see each other it's, "You take it." "No, really, I don't mind. You take it." I have a feeling GeorgiaBrother will get it because he lives so much closer. But, anyway, here's the one heirloom of a family that until recently was too hardscrabble-poor to leave much of value behind:

The wheel.

Wheel with preschooler shown for scale

Susan! She's so big!

I have a new livingroom. yay!

a week after it was supposed to be here, my new sofa is here and the rug from last week is down and centered and the enterainment center got moved and the new recliner is now in it's place. WHEE!

I have an empty corner yet to be filled, but I like the new layout and furniture.

I should go to bed, but I want to sit here couch and enjoy the room.

Susan! She's so big!

I know! I swear she was a newborn just the other day!

Just overheard the weirdest heated argument ever. Man's screaming at this woman outside and calling her a dumb bitch because she told him, apparently, that he'd asked her a stupid question.

The quesion in, ah, question was about capitalising names at the start of a sentence.

Tears and recrimination, oh my.

Well, that does make me feel better about every heated argument I've ever been in. They no longer seem quite so petty...

I'll bring the sparklers!

Just keep them away from Cass -- or we'll have a whole new reason to take away someone's bucket.

OH NOES!

And, for the record, we caught the bucket of water on fire too. Apparently Plei, Jilli and I are the Flammable Trinity.

The Flaming Threesome.

The Fiery Three

Trouble