Ice and wabbits

The ice was beaten back, at least for now. We chipped it out of the driveway and the pavement is now sucking up solar energy to melt the rest of it.

While we were on our way out to deal with it, my rednecky-whiny neighbor Keith yelled at me, "hey, it's been a week since the snow, you can't be parking in the middle of the street!" It had actually been three days, and I wasn't "in the middle of the street."

Eventually I'll whine back at him about his shotgun target-practice at 9am on Saturdays, and his habit of driving golf balls into my yard, where I hit them with the tractor and they explode into a blur of gray rubbery string. He lives in the house his parents own, though they're now in Florida pretty much permanently, and the parents would never have dreamed of telling a neighbor how to run their house. If Keith is that damn worried about how I run my house, he can pay a piece of the mortgage. Or move to somewhere that sort of thing is smiled upon, like some shitty suburb with a homeowners' association. I moved out here to be free of shit like that.

Anyway, Suzanne and I went out and hacked the rest of the ice out of the driveway, so we could fit both cars in. And yes, we'd planned on doing that anyway, so all that Keith proved by whining about it was that he doesn't have anything better to do than watch for me to come out of my house.

I am starting to show some symptoms of asthma. At Suzanne's suggestion, I tried some over-the-counter bronchodilator stuff and it helped a great deal. The other night my lungs felt so tight I couldn't even breathe lying down, I had to sit up.

The rabbits are now here. They have the entire Purple Room to themselves, and believe it or not, it's the least cluttered room in the house. We tossed out three or four large bags of stuff (Waste Management will dislike me intensely tomorrow morning) and disassembled the bed that had been in there for years. Oddly, I don't actually own any part of that bed... the frame belongs to my long-ago ex-girlfriend Stacy, who is now married and fat in Buffalo, and the mattress set belongs to our former housemate and my friend Bill, who is married and living outside Buffalo.

The bed has been in my possession for seventeen years, so I am claiming it.

Anyway, the house is in good shape after the ice and snow, the cars are in terrible shape, the cats and wabbits are OK. Gus and Bert were selected as the Welcoming Committee to introduce the rabbits to the fact that they're not the only small animals in the house. Gus was sort of bored by the rabbits, though one of them was fascinated by his tail. Bert wandered around sniffing them and causing a great stir, but even he decided it was more fun to talk to us than to sniff these nervous podular rodents. I think we'll try the cat-meeting stuff again later this week, maybe with Fred.

Next weekend, Suzanne's large items move down, just in time to miss all the ice. I will still have to clear a space in the garage for her couch, as it's too damn big to fit decently in any room in the house. The piano and china cabinet have places laid out for them, and Suzanne already pretty much owns the room over the kitchen with the nice oak floor. Other than that, everything is in flux.