Tis' the season.

Well my friends, it's begun.
That season that only exists where rich people who have lawn service live.

Leaf Blower Whining Season.

I am not yet able to afford to live in such a neighborhood and when I am, I will boycott my WASP-y neighbors by having the Addams Family house. I do love the Addams Family, but mostly, I would just want to piss of all the pickle-in-their-ass Protestant lawyers who live in my neighborhood.

I do happen to work in one of these richy bitchy neighborhoods at a beautiful house, in a corner office with huge windows and a gorgeous view of every one's meticulously preened yards and landscaping. The most anal retentively manicured yardscape in the neighborhood is of the couple whose house backs up to the house I work in and my many office windows overlook it. Very pleasing to the eye, but horrible on my aural senses and brain stem.

I started to get nervous on Tuesday, when I saw the ChemLawn guy spread fertilizer all over the yard (is having a green, weed free lawn really worth destroying our water supply over? I guess that's a whole other blog entry). He was clad in the uniform tall rubber boots, moving as only one exposed to concentrated amounts of toxic chemicals over a long period of time can. But it wasn't his gait that got me concerned, it was his purpose. He was trying to make the grass grow, which meant that other people would soon come to cut it which is always followed by the most abhorrent of all the lazy person's power tools: The leaf blower. Or, as I call it, the fucking leaf blower.

Sure enough, the season indeed commenced today. Since it's 46 degrees with a chilly breeze outside, the lawn crew landed in the anal retentive neighbor's yard with thick jackets (one step down from a parka) and commenced the mowing, followed by the fucking leaf blower. This sound will echo through the neighborhood, just about every day, for the next five months.

Most of the neighbors aren't home at this time of day. They are at work being doctors and lawyers and high powered sales people. Some of their wives are home during the day, I see them walking around the neighborhood at a ferocious pace, pushing the infant SUV stroller, or walking the little yippee dog, trying to get those last stubborn pounds off their scrawny frame. Never a smile or a hello when I see them outside, cause they are way too good to be talking to the girl in her red Converse One Stars with the punkitty rock hair. But these women seem immune to the incessant wail of the leaf blower that consumes the neighborhood. Like it's just part of the natural setting of where they live. That sound, just like Chanel, Conde Nast, and themselves, belonged in a neighborhood such as this.

As a person who doesn't live in such a neighborhood, I find this sound not only irritating but symbolic for many vile things. I, who had to pay the city I live in $250 dollars last summer because I let my grass/weeds get so long that the city sent people to cut it for me, live in a neighborhood of do it yourself lawn mowers. Every weekend morning, starting at about 10am (unless you're the asshole who lives two doors down, then you are mowing at 6:30am on a SATURDAY) there is the glottal grumble of the lawn mower heard throughout the neighborhood. The sound of people who tend to their own property, who, regardless if they want to or not, don't have a lawn crew. This sound is a homier sound to me. It's the sound of people out in their yards, saying hello over the fence, inviting each other to the porch for a Bell's Amber while their dogs rip around they yard together, making plans for a neighborhood block party. The sound of community. You don't hear many fucking leaf blowers in my neighborhood. If there's some grass on the sidewalk or covering the mulch where the flowers grow, who cares? Let's go have a barbecue.

The sound of the leaf blower is cold, unfriendly, passive aggressive and competitive. It's the sound that masks reality. I sit in my office and listen to that incessant howl, all day long, ringing throughout the neighborhood, but if I drive through at night, not a peep. It's placid, serene and frighteningly perfect. During the day, I see the lawn crews working to make everything flawless and sculpted, so when everyone arrives home at night, it's just like the grass lowered itself on it's own and the weeds pulled themselves out from the flower beds and wandered off into the garbage bags hidden behind the garage until trash day when the housekeeper takes it out to the curb. No one had to fuss with a lawn mower of their own or those pesky lawn and leaf bags, no one had to make small talk with the neighbors, no one had to worry about their $1200 pedigree Portuguese Water Dog messing with the mangy Spaniel down the street. They can continue to be exclusive and choosy with who and what gets their precious time.

Me, I like my neighbors. Even though Sarge to the south of me is kind of a dummy who regularly does stupid DIY projects, and it's a miracle that he hasn't blown up his garage, lost a limb or downed wires. Or the house to the north of me that has a rabble of renters who rarely take out the trash and leave it outside the back door for weeks on end. Or me, for that matter, the lady with the unfinished flower bed in the front yard, rusty gutters and the kitten shredded curtains that hang in the big picture window in my front room. But I'll invite these people over for a beer on the front porch, watch their dog for the afternoon, or keep an eye on their place when they are out of town. I'll definitely take that over a well kept lawn any old day.

Where she stops, nobody knows.

I am constantly teetering on the edge of either falling into the warm abyss of happiness or the pit of misanthropic hell. I understand that my brain is still finding a new center point since I've quit smoking and started exercising. There's bound to be a period of time where my brain chemistry is righting itself after the winds of quitter-dom blew the nicotine out of the boat of my grey matter, but how long is that grace period exactly? Is there a specific calculation factoring time of active addiction, time of abstenince, and amount of endorphins from exercise? At what point am I able to say "Ok, this is as happy/grumpy I can expect to be from here on out and if I feel a need for a change in perspective, this is the chemical base point from which to work."? No one has really been able to give me a specific answer as to when I can stop fretting about the emotional pendulum I'm riding. I know where the center point is, I swing past it all day long, and I'm never sure which reaction zone I'll swing into next.

Reaction to the news of the day:

Much to my suprise, Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted on four felony counts of lying to a grand jury. They didn't buy his claims of memory lapse, which is a relief. If he is sentenced to any time, it will be in a country club jail where he will suffer the unimaginable torture of steak and lobster only once a week and having to play golf on the same 18 holes day after day for up to two years. But he did get convicted, and rolled over on Cheney who is in dire need of severe comeuppance. I think that Bush is doing serious damage to our country that will take much time and many resources to undo. But he is Tiddlywinks compared to how insidious Cheney is. My favorite story about kind of person Dick is happened in June 2004. While senate was in session, Cheney was getting grilled by Senator Leahy about Halliburton and Cheney got his feathers ruffled and told Leahy "go fuck yourself". Charming. I understand that people get heated up and tense under pressure, but if you can't keep your snarling at a minimum when people are poking at you about your business dealings, get an IT job. Especially if you want to be the next president, Dick.

I don't have much faith in politicians in general, so when the system works, I feel suprised, cautious and minimally hopeful. I know that Libby getting a small slap on the wrist for lying to a grand jury is a miniscule triumph in comparison to what politicians get away with on a regular basis, but this is an imprtant triumph. I realize that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step and the journey of reclaiming this amazing country from business interests and bringing it back to the people, all of us, is a worthy journey. I know, it's a big lofty pipe dream, but go big or go home.

Then I think that this is a small distraction that the Illuminati put in the paper to make us feel placated. Lulls us into the notion that the system actually works for us and is keeping us all safe from those mean guys who want to steal our democracy and lie to us. In the meantime, the Illuminati are sitting on their uncharted island just off the coast of Peru, drinking the preserved blood of Hitler and planning the next world war. These ideas make me want to eat exotic cheeses with Bear who works at Zingerman's, drink wine and shop for vinyl and pay no mind to the puppets who pose as our "world leaders".

Regardless of what the truth may be, "Scooter" is one of the stupidest nicknames for a 56 year old man I've ever heard of.