:: Friday, March 9, 2001 ::

 

11:40 p.m. Good things always come out of stormy, difficult things. Take the obvious evidence in this photo.

We live right next door to an active preschool or nursery or day care facility. It's one of the three, but I'm not sure which. They are not the friendliest of neighbors, even though they will need us to approve their plans for future expansion, which are pending.

Nonetheless, there are about twenty or so moppet-sized individuals who have a sort of gerbil run right outside my office and bedroom windows and several times a day there is the pounding to forty or so teeny tiny sneakers on the -- why? -- wooden platform that they use for the run.

Anyway, it's not too much of a problem much of the time, and it's a minor inconvenience sometime and then it's a major pain in the cerebrum maybe once a month, depending.

The kids fight and scream, of course, and shout and yell. They rarely sing, which is a pity, but they do repeat. You can be sure that as soon as you hear one of them raise his or her voice, that he or she will most certainly repeat the command or yelp. It seems that they really don't listen to each other very much, so everything must be repeated.

And then, every so often a particularly angry child will toss something over the wall onto our property, amidst screams and wails and more shouts and hollers. Usually, I'm a good neighbor and I drop it back when they're inside, so's not to konk one of the tykes on the noggin with a Tonka or a Tyko.

But look what flew over a couple of days ago! This magnificent spider, which I've been having untold fun posing all over the property in surprising locations. It's fun near the mail slot and on top of the garbage bins and hidden in the dark at the bottom of the bushes. Grownups scream as much as children.

Here, you see it sunning on a raffia mat, posing prettily under some tall potted plants.

Yes, I'll sit it on top of the wall and let it scare the bejesus out of one of the poor nursery school workers when they come back to work on Monday, but meanwhile, it's still got more work to do on this side of the fence.

Also in the photo, but much harder to discern, is the tiny green life that is shooting up between the weave in the mat. This new development is a happy result of all the rain we've been having: my doormat has sprung to life! I would love to see it become a nice square of turf, and so I've been watering it.

Don't know how it will go, but I'll take another photo if and when anything worthwhile develops. Right now, it's still touch and go.