Door Progress & Idiot Antic Dotes

Door progress has been slow. This is the last of the 3 doors for the kitchen. I lost a few days dealing with the idiot neighbors, and then, of course, Sunday was The Super Bowl. The NFL is the one and only sport I follow so I had to watch. I was in a $1000 Pool (100 people put in $10 each) at work so I was hoping to make a little money but that didn’t happen. Regardless, it was a good game, or, at least it wasn’t a bad game.

So back to the door. I finished stripping the paint today. I will then give it a whirl with the old denatured alcohol and steel wool. You don’t want the natured alcohol. No, it needs to be de-natured. I’m hoping I can finish that up by Wednesday and put the first coat of paint on it on Thursday. I can then hang the door on Friday and maybe even get a second coat of paint on. I have some friends coming over Saturday and with the rain clouds gone for the week (Whew!) the temperature has gotten noticeably cooler. With all three doors up I can keep some heat in the kitchen.

Now on to the idiots.

After Sunday of last week you would have thought someone dropped a Neutron Bomb over there. Buildings standing but not a soul in sight. Not even the Mom seemed to be around (I kind of feel sorry for her at this point). It was amazing, the boys just packed up and left. I had a feeling of “Why didn’t I do this sooner”. There was also the feeling of, “It’s quite over there. Maybe a little too quite, if you know what I mean.” I keep expecting the other shoe to drop.

Thursday was payday and I went to the bank to deposit my check. I go to a very small branch of the County Credit Union. They usually only have 2 tellers open – unless it gets busy, then they go to 1 (ba-dump-da-tish), but seriously, folks. Seriously, though, there are only 4 teller windows and there is rarely more than 2 tellers at a time. There is a supervisor that sits at a desk around a corner and when the line gets long, or if you can catch her eye, she acts as another teller. This is what happened to me on Thursday. When you are sitting at her desk you can’t really see the rest of the small branch. The place is very small. I would say 20X50 feet.

Anyway, I’m at the desk chatting away with Kelsey and I didn’t notice that one of the idiot brothers entered. It was really odd because I can count on one hand, with a few fingers left over, the number of times I’ve ran in to either of the brothers in town. I got up to leave and there was only one other customer in the credit union and it was one of the idiot brothers. He was covered in dirt and had on knee high rubber boots (no joke) and I didn’t recognize him at first. As I walked past him he was looking at me and had a sort of smirk on his face. I figured it was someone I knew from a hardware store or market or something. You know how is when you see someone out of context that you sort of know and there is a familiarity about them but you can’t quite place where it is you know them from? That’s what it was with him that day.

Anyway, I saw the smirk and it seemed odd. He looked kind of goofy with all the dirt and the rubber boots. I sort of made the obligatory smile and nodded to him, not knowing who it was. As I passed his cell phone rang and he whipped out and answered, “Idiot Brothers Grunt Work” (not the real name of their business, of course). Naturally, I immediately knew it was one of the brothers and I just kept going without turning around. In hind sight, this was probably really good thing. It made me seem cool, calm, and collected to just walk by him and smile and nod, as if to say, “You mean absolutely nothing to me and you don’t intimidate me in the least”.

After I left I went to get gas and as I was pumping the gas I started to think about that smirk on his face. It sort of had a look of superiority about it. I couldn’t figure out what he could possibly feel good about. I mean, let’s tally up the score here. In his column, there is the dead rat and corned been hash on my truck. In my column, his Mom is in trouble with City Hall, he has been forced to move out of an un-permitted dwelling, and he had to move his business. Maybe he thinks he won some sort of moral victory because he didn’t move until the city made him move. It wasn’t me, it was the city. I always suspected these people were dim witted, but know I’m sure of it.

Then after a few more days of zero activity on the property the idiot brothers pulled up in front of my house Saturday evening. One was driving a pick-up and the other was driving the ugliest, most beat-up circa 1975 flat-bead truck you have ever seen in your life. Behind was a 20-foot trailer. Both the truck and trailer were filled with debris. They parked it on the street directly across from my house. They both got in the other truck and left. The only benefit to this was that their beat up truck made my truck look great in comparison.

My first thought was this is noticeably aggressive behavior. They are doing this with the sole purpose of antagonizing me. Maybe they wanted me to run out the door and start yelling at them. I’m not sure but I figured I’m not going to put up with this crap. Everyone tells me I should call the police when they do crap like this, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Besides, I was watching Smallville and Clark was just about to beat up some thugs who were bothering Lana, so I couldn’t be drawn away. I figured Sunday is The Super Bowl so if it’s still there Monday I’ll deal with it then. When I left for work Monday morning it was gone. Another moral victory for the idiots.

Then finally today I was upstairs in the back bedroom stripping the last of the paint off the door. This bedroom is right across the street from the MIL unit and garage that the idiots lived and worked out of. I had a few windows open to air the place out while I stripped…the paint. I heard a diesel pull up and it was one of the brother’s with some friend of his. This was the same one I saw in the bank. I turned off the heat gun and went over by the window so I could listen. It was mostly your average, empty headed twenty-something guy BS. After a while though he started talking about his “new house”. He was trying to convince his married buddy to come by later. He just went on and on about how the move was good and he should have done it long ago. There was no hint of him being forced out by me – excuse me, The City. The whole thing was the same typical macho BS these two idiots have kept up since day one. Just unbelievable.

All I could think was that I should have never given them a second chance. I should have gone to the city and complained 3 years ago. Basically, what we have now is that the two bother’s have moved out and the Mom is left to deal with the mess left behind. These guys are pathetic.