Thursday, June 21, 2007

Uphill battles

The past two weeks have been a real scramble -- moving steadily along, but up hill and over a lot of obstacles.

It started with the realization early last week that our new accountant was really out to lunch. I had to sic Zorg on him, which means I'm at the end of my rope. Zorg, of course, got results. The guy finally did our taxes, and now we're going to switch to a more reliable accountant I've already lined up. But anything that involves the IRS (which had sent us some ominous letters) makes me queasy.

Smokey, our cat who likes to live with elderly neighbors, went in for his annual checkup and turned out to have an abscessed tooth. Smokey is the only one of our cats who had not gone in for expensive tooth cleaning procedures ever other year -- and he's the first one to have a serious dental problem. Well, he'll be going in next week, getting the tooth removed, and getting the cleaning. He currently lives with an elderly woman five blocks north of us; we'll be kidnapping him and keeping him in our basement the night before the surgery to make sure the doesn't eat or drink anything after midnight.

Zorg and I both worked as volunteers at the Fremont Solstice Parade over the weekend. I did "traffic control" at a major intersection, keeping the parade route clear. Have been a spectator in previous years, it had never occured to me that 95 percent of the people at the parade want to see the parade, but the other 5 percent want to barge across the road right through the parade to see if there's something interesting on the other side. I must have body checked one guy ten times ("I'm sorry, sir, please clear the parade route and step back to the sidewalk"). It was discouraging.

(What I immensely enjoyed about volunteering was assisting with the midnight procession that moves the floats from the Powerhouse on Fremont Avenue to the area near Lucca Statuary where the parade begins the following morning. The floats move out into the roadway, we put down flares and stop traffic, music and drumming starts up, and dancers roll the floats through the night. It was beautiful!)

My yoga teacher has been out of town this week, and one of the women in the class has been leading our sessions. I have a whole new set of sore muscles from her new routines!

Another bit of fallout from last week was the new glasses. I ordered some that were supposed to be "just like" a pair I'd admired; they're done, and I don't like them. Oh well, I have my old ones. My expensive attempt to look more fashionable flopped.

Finally, we've been coming to grips with the consequences of firing the lawn service with the noisy, smelly gas-powered mowers and edgers. Zorg is mowing with a push mower, and I'm edging with an electric trimmer. He's discovering that our itty bitty sections of lawn with pavers and benches aren't easy to mow, and I'm discovering that lots of pieces of lawn mean lots and lots of edges! My guess is we'll be hiring a new lawn service (a better one) in September when the rains come and the grass starts growing again.

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