The Manda Attempts to Improve Her Home

The Other Local Home Improvement Warehouse has me on hold. I've been on hold for about 15 minutes, and my cellphone is running out of battery power, but I'm getting desperate here. This is about the fifth call I've made today in an attempt to get estimates on what it will cost to install central air here at Little Blue.

"No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater-- than central air," or so Kevin Smith told us in Dogma.

I can buy that.

But getting a contractor to return a phone call seems to require an act of God hisownself. And while I like to think we're on speaking terms, I'm not sure my karma is good enough to call in that kind of favor. (I have an eclectic theology.)

So anyway, I'm calling all these people, and hoping they'll call me back and we can pencil something in. It's like dating, but at least I have hope that I'll end up with something useful when it's all over.

And don't even get me started on the landscaping. Really, don't. Conversations about landscaping have led me to nearly decapitate reasonably nice people (this is metaphorical decapitation, though, so don't call the cops or anything, either). My "green" mower is fine, but for the space I'm dealing with, I need to call in a pro to get this all under control. And I'm thinking of getting a mower that is decidedly less green because it's all just beyond me; I assume this is how parents of infants feel when they realize that Huggies are so much easier than cloth diapers.

Yes, I know I'm part of the problem.

I'm taking some solace in knowing that at least my yard is currently friendly to my local wildlife, or as the Humane Scoiety calls them, my "wild neighbors." So if anyone asks, I can claim I'm humane, not just lazy.

Wild neighbors means something different here in the 'burbs than it did in the city. I've traded the crazy girl (in the next building over) who woke up my deaf cat with the sound of her slamming doors and shrieking at her boyfriend in the alleyway for bunnies and the resident skunk.

The garageless garage band has been replaced by a groundhog whom I mistook for an otter on first sighting. And the thing is, if my "meadow" in the backyard is appealing enough, then maybe the groundhog will stay in my yard, near his home under the shed. Maybe he won't wander over to my next door neighbor's garden and get himself shot.

I guess a retired dude on his deck with a shotgun and a beer qualifies as a wild neighbor as well.