Brenda owns the house directly across from ours and she knows the neighborhood quite well. Apparently the secret garden house was burglarized last year and the owners, john and mary, were overwhelmed and have been living in the valley ever since, which is why it has grown wild. Mary is a master gardener and the home was on a botanical registry of some kind. John came by while brenda and i were chatting and says they plan to come back to the house in the next couple of weeks. He sounded pretty devastated about the break in. They never got back what was taken. There is a beautiful flowering vine growing over the fence between our backyards and he says it is kiwi and there's fruit in the late summer. Kiwi!! In alaska! She IS a witch. John seemed really nice.

John and mary and brenda are original owners and lived on the street since the 70s. Brenda said they had a problem with some bad renters on the street last year, in the house the slappers are in now. Lots of people coming and going (drug dealing) and people sleeping in cars and fights and such. Apparently our house had renters in it for a while until the woman who sold it to us moved back in. Brenda said she called the management co for the slapper house and told them they had drug dealing renters and to get them out, and things on the street have been much better recently. She didn't mention the slappers being jerks to their kids so she probably can't hear the racket from her side. So that means the slappers have not been here that long, less than a year.

The slappers have been suspiciously quiet since memorial day, which i don't hate. Here's hoping the 10 hour parties are an occasional thing and not expecting to happen every other weekend, because I don't want to have a "you're having too many long parties, when do i get to have parties" conversation. Ugh!

Other Cat has been spending a lot of time napping lately and i am wondering if she is unwell. She has not been getting up in the morning to go outside, and this morning she had a problem with constipation. She was in enough distress that she let me manually help her poop, and she seemed happy afterward, like she meant to get my attention to help her. She's always been sort of "afraid" of pooping, which naturally we make fun of (pooping is scary! Things come out of your butt!), but she really needed help this time to do her business. I think the stress of moving and painters and not being settled is getting to her. The cat food/water/litterbox is still in a temp location and not "safe". I will move things a bit and see if easier access to food and water helps. Poor thing. We've been low on wet foods lately, too. The internet says to try putting some fiber in her food. I thought she was scared of the backyard because i foolishly moved the windchimes, but maybe she is unwell. :-( If she doesn't perk up, time for a traumatic trip to the vet. Poor Other Cat. Always being traumatized.

Cat, on the other hand, is super happy. So i know it's not something they are eating.

He's become convinced there is a critter in the one corner of the yard and he's obsessed. There's a feisty magpie who likes to taunt him. There's a pile of dirt to poop in. He's figured out there's no screen in one of the front windows so he can jump out into the front yard for freedom if i leave it open (that was exciting). But mostly he's happy with the back yard. There's an old dogsled in the backyard that i had to move away from the fence because he was trying to figure out how to use it to climb the fence. I wonder if john and mary have pets? Eventually, Cat is going to find a way to sneak into their yard and say hello. He doesn't have any interest in the slappers, naturally, because he is smart.

I still haven't mowed the lawn and i really need to do it now. Lots of people mow lawns, how hard can it be? Ha ha.

Entry for that art contest is due tomorrow and i haven't done a damn thing because i have been busy with frustrating house projects that perpetually pivot around some tiny missing piece. Today is do or die day and i'm not feeling that inspired, so maybe die. I'm in that ugly feedback loop again where i haven't "earned" the nice thing? So many things are in disarray that i am kinda drowning in disorganization and that makes me very upset with myself. But things have to be disorganized while i finish what i need to organize! Like, for instance, there's no fucking silverware drawer in the kitchen, so i ordered a kitchen cart with a drawer. But i need to refinish the kitchen cart before i put it together because i don't like the plain light colored wood. So there's parts of kitchen cart all over (refinish and don't-refinish piles), silverware in a box on the floor, no point in organizing the kitchen until i get the cart together, have other things i want to stain at the same time as the cart so i have to get those bits ready, kitchen is a disaster and i don't want to cook ... now i'm depressed because every time i go to eat something i don't know where anything is. Fucking silverware in a box of crap on the floor. So much chaos. DEATH SPIRAL. Not really feeling like a good time to bust out the art supplies on top of everything else, you know? Not relaxing.

I replaced the light fixture in the half bath (it was old and the cheapest thing you can get, i have replaced it with the SECOND cheapest thing, an improvement) and looked down and noticed the toilet was missing the cap over the floor bolt. Then i looked closer and realized it had no nut fastener, either. I dunno about you, but i want my toilet properly bolted down when i use it. Other side is fine. Why a missing toilet nut? How does this happen? No idea, cultists stole it maybe. So then i had to waste time looking up what i needed, where to get it, and making the trip to get a goddamn toilet bolt/nut/cover. Constant frustrating speedbumps like this!! I have a missing box of tools and my allen wrench set is in there and i need them and i've wasted time trying various things without success and home depot is out of cheap allen wrench sets arrrggghhhhhh!!!

I'm in heck. Not hell, just heck.

What am i doing today? My priorities are the bathrooms, main closet, finishing the kitchen cart so i can get to the kitchen. I have to stain the bathroom shelves (need allen wrench) so i can mount them, remove the old towel bar (need allen wrench), patch some holes and paint some stuff (not super critical), get the cedar siding up so i can mount the closet shelves/bars (need to cut, finish & stain). I got the jigsaw yesterday so i'm hoping that will do the trick to cut the wood for the siding & shelving. Like it's all a fucking yarn ball of interconnected fuckery.

Get the closet operational so i can hang clothes. Get the bathrooms fixed up and clean (everybody feels better with a clean bathroom). Get the kitchen organized. Then it will seem like i'm getting somewhere and i can put things in their official place and make the mental map so i'm not playing "where is x" a million times a day.