I spent the better part of yesterday futzing about in the garage, organizing shelves that had slowly accumulated a rather impressive variety of crap over the last few years. Normally, I’m fine with allowing the garage to be generally disorganized. It’s not attached to the house and over the years, it’s become more of glorified storage building than anything resembling a little cottage for our cars. I unwillingly started organizing the garage because I had nothing better to do while the pest control technician conducted indiscriminate chemical warfare to take care of unwanted interlopers inside my little homestead.
You see, a few months ago, my next door neighbors moved out in the midst of a divorce. They were generally nice people, despite the fact that their lived behaviors fit redneck stereotypes so perfectly that they make Jeff Foxworthy’s observations on the matter sound like those of an Ivy League sociologist. Near the end of their tenure as residents, they acquired a pair of puppies for their four children, with the purpose of training them as hunting dogs. The novelty of two little puppies wore off quickly and they were left in the backyard to their own devices, with only minimal attention from their once fawning owners.
I hate it when people buy a pet only to partially discard it a few months later by neglecting it in this precise way. There really wasn’t anything that could be done about it though, as the dogs had shelter, water, food, and secure fencing. I was glad to see them go, in a way, simply because I wouldn’t have to think about it every time I walked out on the back deck. Due to the neglect of their little furry compatriots, the dogs became infested with fleas, which naturally spread to my lawn and colonized my poor dog like a bunch of scurvy-ridden, foul smelling Spanish explorers in the 16th century. I suppose it was kind of the neighbors to leave a parting gift. I just would have preferred the flea farm hobby kit to be more like Sea Monkeys and less like a flea apocalypse.
I unknowingly gave my allowance money to a white supremacist who sold me a rip-off product and then used the profits to buy weapons for the KKK. You can’t make this up. It’s a miracle I’m not more cynical.
Dissimulationism 