"You Have Problems..."

Don't we all? Well, my problems were evident to a strange woman whom I found trespassing on my property this morning.

I had just finished my breakfast and was packing up my lunchbox when I heard a noise right outside the kitchen. It was a pretty loud thud.

I glanced out the kitchen window to see a woman walking down my driveway. She had just deposited something in my trashcan which was uncharacteristically in plain view, and that thud was the sound of the lid slamming shut. I usually place the trashcan behind a makeshift dustbin in front of the house, but because Ann and I were collecting trash last night, I left it in the driveway.

After thinking about it for a moment, I soon realized this was the same lady that I saw dump a pile of her dog's shit in my neighbor's trashcan one day when it was in plain view. She wasn't going to get away with it with me.

So I began to call the lady back from inside kitchen but she couldn't hear me. I then exited the kitchen, went to the trashcan, and found a little yellow plastic bag with the dogshit inside. I carefully grabbed it.

"Excuse me," I told the lady, arm outstretched with the dogshit bag dangling from the tips of my fingers. "You forgot something." She looked absolutely shocked.

"I just saw you put this in my trashcan. Go put it in yours, please." Her mouth was agape.

"Would you rather have me leave it on your yard?" she said.

"I'd rather have you put it in your own trashcan and to stay off my property," I replied. She still looked shocked, so she had this next line coming.

"Look, lady. I've already seen you put your dog's shit in my neighbor's trashcan. Now take this and go put it in yours." Dead silence for a moment. Then she came back with a real crusher.

As she took the bag from me and headed down the sidewalk to attend to a dog that was smaller than half of my cat, she managed to utter the following:

"You have problems." I laughed and walked back into the house.

Yeah, lady. I have problems. No, I really do. And at the moment, they were:

- A stranger on my property, aka a trespasser
- Said trespasser putting their dogshit in my trashcan on my property

While I do give her credit for picking up the steaming pile, the point was that whether she did or didn't, he dogshit would still be on my property--either on the yard or in my trash--and that she willingly entered my property to dispose of it. I'm not cool with that. If I really had "problems" as she said, I could have come out screaming and weilding a Wiffle bat or something.

There's a good chance that this woman is one of those who puts her dog--it's probably got some stupid name like Poopsie--high on a pedestal, feeds it lean ground beef from a silver fork, and lets it do wherever the hell it pleases. And that's fine if you're into that.

But I'm wondering how she would like it if I went over to her house and made a deposit of fresh, steaming catshit nuggets in her trashcan. Somehow I doubt it.

Ann already told me how she plans to remedy this problem. She's going to set the sprinklers to go on at the time she walks her 3-pound hound by our place. And our sprinklers do tend to overshoot the yard sometimes.

Changing gears...here's some phone-cam shots of the aftereffects of the Anaheim Hiils wildfires. It's not too far from work:



This was the sun rising this morning:



Ugly stuff, folks. Ashes everywhere.