It's time to write something. If only I had a spot to do it.
I tried to blog in the living room, but my wife is watching Cupcake Wars on the Food Network and always does a running play-by-play of that show as she watches it, even when she knows I'm trying to focus on something else. She just can't help herself.
That's ok. I knew this when we got married.
I moved to my study to write, but as I've mentioned before, there are frogs in my neighbor's dilapidated, uncared-for, above-ground swimming pool. They returned tonight, and they are once again croaking too loud for me to concentrate.
I shut the door in hopes of drowning out the frogs, but that meant I isolated myself with my aptly named cat, Trouble,who was formerly napping on the futon but is currently pawing at my leg with remarkable endurance, only taking occasional breaks to scratch my chair.
I'd move her to another room, but then she'd just scratch relentlessly on the office door, and that would be even worse.
My front porch is a nice place to blog, but then I'm back to the frog issue.
I'd go to a coffeeshop, but it's 9:54 and the ones near my house close by 10. I think some of the fast food places near my house have WIFI, but they probably close at 10, too.
Of course, I could just drive somewhere and blog in my car, and then come home to post it when I get back in the range of my local network. But my computer battery is almost gone, so that doesn't work either.
I could drive to my office, find a parking spot in downtown Nashville, pass through security, unlock my door and blog from work, but that's probably a violation of some kind of obscure conflict of interest law since I work for the State.
What other place with electrical outlets are still open?
There's the bus station, the airport and a 24-hour Walmart. There, I could probably park myself in the electronics section and at least get half an hour before an employee chased me away. If I needed a nap in the process, I could just walk over to the furniture section, or maybe the camping tents.
But actually working in any of these places isn't nearly as fun and writing about the possibility of having to.
So, in the midst of all these complications, I'm only left with one option:
Shut down the computer and go kill some frogs.
I'll see you next week.
Showing posts with label frogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label frogs. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
The Frogs from Hell are Back
After several weeks of traveling, a busy weekend and several consecutive nearly sleepless nights, I spent all day looking forward to a Tuesday night with no plans.
I had dreams of sitting on the couch watching tv until exhaustion overcame me, which would probably be by nine o'clock. I'm pretty sure I even turned off my phone. And then, somewhere around 8:30, the unthinkable happened.
What, you might ask, could possibly get in the way of my carefully planned evening of blissful peace, quiet and a good night's sleep?
The frogs came back.
The frogs from Hell. Sent specifically from Satan to torture me. For the third straight summer.
Some of you may recall that I spent last summer writing about the deafening evening sounds of the frogs that congregate on my neighbor's unkempt above-ground pool, that left me running on minimal sleep for a solid five months last summer, for the second year in a row.
I called the police with a noise complaint, and they literally laughed at me. I tried to catch them myself with barbecue tongs. I tried salt in the pool. And bleach. Nothing worked. If anything, I think all those substances combined to cause a mutation that made them louder.
I called the city code enforcement, but they referred me to the health department. The health department referred me back to code enforcement, and so on, for several hot, sleepless weeks.
Finally, the health department got so tired of my calls that they sent someone out to make them take the pool down, and all was right with the world.
Until they bought another pool a few weeks later.
You can read all about my summer frog saga here http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/04/things-are-jumping.html
and
here.
http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/07/best-of.html
It is the kind of thing that sounds very funny. If it doesn't happen to you.
And now, after a winter of hibernation, with the neighbor's new pool quickly becoming as disgusting as the last one, the frogs have reappeared with a volume vengeance on the worst possible night. There's nothing I can do about it, which is why I'm writing this instead of dreaming in my bed. I'm pretty sure they've had this planned all along, to torture me as revenge for all those frogging adventures from the last two summers. And I'm powerless to stop it.
I can hear them as I type. In fact, if you listen closely, YOU can probably hear them too. Even if you're in Denmark.
And there's nothing I can do about it tonight. I have no remaining solutions, other than perhaps to sleep on the couch on the opposite side of the house from my neighbor's back yard with the television turned up. But I can still hear them, even then.
The only potential solace I can think of is to buy an old Atari system and the ancient "Frogger" video game. You know, I was pretty good at steering those virtual frogs out of danger back in the day (even if their organic cousins don't seem terribly grateful now).
But in this case, I can pretty much assure that those frogs will be coming to intentionally violent ends early and often. I'll turn up the volume as high as it goes, and as I repeatedly plunge the virtual frogs into digital oncoming traffic, those type of croaks won't bother me one bit.
I had dreams of sitting on the couch watching tv until exhaustion overcame me, which would probably be by nine o'clock. I'm pretty sure I even turned off my phone. And then, somewhere around 8:30, the unthinkable happened.
What, you might ask, could possibly get in the way of my carefully planned evening of blissful peace, quiet and a good night's sleep?
The frogs came back.
The frogs from Hell. Sent specifically from Satan to torture me. For the third straight summer.
Some of you may recall that I spent last summer writing about the deafening evening sounds of the frogs that congregate on my neighbor's unkempt above-ground pool, that left me running on minimal sleep for a solid five months last summer, for the second year in a row.
I called the police with a noise complaint, and they literally laughed at me. I tried to catch them myself with barbecue tongs. I tried salt in the pool. And bleach. Nothing worked. If anything, I think all those substances combined to cause a mutation that made them louder.
I called the city code enforcement, but they referred me to the health department. The health department referred me back to code enforcement, and so on, for several hot, sleepless weeks.
Finally, the health department got so tired of my calls that they sent someone out to make them take the pool down, and all was right with the world.
Until they bought another pool a few weeks later.
You can read all about my summer frog saga here http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/04/things-are-jumping.html
and
here.
http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/07/best-of.html
It is the kind of thing that sounds very funny. If it doesn't happen to you.
And now, after a winter of hibernation, with the neighbor's new pool quickly becoming as disgusting as the last one, the frogs have reappeared with a volume vengeance on the worst possible night. There's nothing I can do about it, which is why I'm writing this instead of dreaming in my bed. I'm pretty sure they've had this planned all along, to torture me as revenge for all those frogging adventures from the last two summers. And I'm powerless to stop it.
I can hear them as I type. In fact, if you listen closely, YOU can probably hear them too. Even if you're in Denmark.
And there's nothing I can do about it tonight. I have no remaining solutions, other than perhaps to sleep on the couch on the opposite side of the house from my neighbor's back yard with the television turned up. But I can still hear them, even then.
The only potential solace I can think of is to buy an old Atari system and the ancient "Frogger" video game. You know, I was pretty good at steering those virtual frogs out of danger back in the day (even if their organic cousins don't seem terribly grateful now).
But in this case, I can pretty much assure that those frogs will be coming to intentionally violent ends early and often. I'll turn up the volume as high as it goes, and as I repeatedly plunge the virtual frogs into digital oncoming traffic, those type of croaks won't bother me one bit.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
The Return of the Pool...
Life often develops into patterns that keep repeating. It's happening again now.
In the worst possible way.
My first real blog post was about how my evil neighbor had an above ground pool they never cleaned, the ear-splittingly loud frogs that it attracted, and the desperate lengths to which I had to resort to rid myself of the problem. Finally.
Until this week.
You see, the Health Department might have made my neighbor get rid of their old disgustingly brown pool, but they didn't tell her she couldn't get a new, slightly larger one to replace it! So that is exactly what she did while I was out of town last week (hardly a coincidence, I'm sure).
I came home to a new above-ground pool in my neighbor's back yard that's of such high quality that it's not only been patched once already in its 3 days of existence, the patch itself has subsequently been patched with duct tape. At this rate, it's only a matter of time until she ends up patching the duct tape with bubble gum.
Yes, for some reason, after failing to take care of her pool for the past 2 years, to the point where the Health Department, on its fourth visit, made her take action, my neighbor decided it would be a good idea to get a new one almost immediately thereafter.
There is no possible explanation for this other than that she is just trying to spite me. She can't possibly think this pool experiment is going to work out better than the last one. This is like watching your friend leave an abusive relationship only to immediately start dating a guy named "Ox." It's just not going to end well, every else in the world knows it, but there's just nothing you can do.
Oh well. I enjoyed those three months of sleep.
There is one silver lining, though: in an apparent effort to "class up" the pool, she has this time installed a tiki torch at each corner. So at least this summer, when the pool inevitably turns brown and the frogs come back, I can creatively use those same torches to solve the problem.
Wait, did I say that out loud?
In the worst possible way.
My first real blog post was about how my evil neighbor had an above ground pool they never cleaned, the ear-splittingly loud frogs that it attracted, and the desperate lengths to which I had to resort to rid myself of the problem. Finally.
Until this week.
You see, the Health Department might have made my neighbor get rid of their old disgustingly brown pool, but they didn't tell her she couldn't get a new, slightly larger one to replace it! So that is exactly what she did while I was out of town last week (hardly a coincidence, I'm sure).
I came home to a new above-ground pool in my neighbor's back yard that's of such high quality that it's not only been patched once already in its 3 days of existence, the patch itself has subsequently been patched with duct tape. At this rate, it's only a matter of time until she ends up patching the duct tape with bubble gum.
Yes, for some reason, after failing to take care of her pool for the past 2 years, to the point where the Health Department, on its fourth visit, made her take action, my neighbor decided it would be a good idea to get a new one almost immediately thereafter.
There is no possible explanation for this other than that she is just trying to spite me. She can't possibly think this pool experiment is going to work out better than the last one. This is like watching your friend leave an abusive relationship only to immediately start dating a guy named "Ox." It's just not going to end well, every else in the world knows it, but there's just nothing you can do.
Oh well. I enjoyed those three months of sleep.
There is one silver lining, though: in an apparent effort to "class up" the pool, she has this time installed a tiki torch at each corner. So at least this summer, when the pool inevitably turns brown and the frogs come back, I can creatively use those same torches to solve the problem.
Wait, did I say that out loud?
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