I normally post at the end of the day, but sometimes there is breaking news that just can't wait.
I'm caught in the recurring nightmare that is Cletus Sneed again. You may be saying to yourself, "For God's sake, is there anything he keeps private?" Just think of yourselves as therapists for the cheap man.
Today was bug man day. "Hold on there Sneed. Aren't you the guy who doesn't kill anything, including bugs?"
Well, yes I am. The bug guy is the idea of another member of the family. A member with veto power. Besides the bug man doesn't actually kill any bugs, he sprays his chemicals and if bugs choose venture into our home anyway, what can I do?
The bug man will reappear in the story shortly.
At 6:40 am, I got a call from Cletus, asking me what I was doing. This instantly pissed me off. The crux of the call was that he was not working today and would drop by if I was going to be home. I was noncommittal on the being home part, so he hung up, leaving me clinging to the hope that I had dodged a bullet.
Then, as the lovely Mrs. Sneed was leaving for work about an hour later, Cletus rolled up on his bike. I was cutting up some tree branches so that the trash man could haul them way tomorrow and came outside to find him talking to his mother in the driveway. Nothing good can come from him being here at that hour.
Cletus announced that he needed to go to the hospital and needed me to take him. Since he rode past two hospitals to get to our house I chalked it up to just more of his BS. A huge argument resulted, leading to the following charges.
1. I make no effort to see his children. The fact that even he doesn't know their current location was not an adequate defense.
2. I refuse to help him get an apartment. I reminded him that I once helped him get an apartment and got sued by the apartment people for my effort. Again, inadequate.
3. I refuse to help him gain custody of his kids. He lives on the street. the answer should be apparent, even to him.
In the end I drove him to our neighborhood hospital and dropped him off. He was genuinely indignant that I wouldn't go in with him. He stood in the emergency room driveway yelling, "The bug man is more important than your son!"
Spending hours in an emergency room with a drug-addled idiot is way down my to-do list for today. It that seems mean, it has been 20 years in the making.
My favorite part was when he tried to physically restrain the car, in a effort to make me come with him. So off I went, arriving home just as Larry the Bug Man did.
Larry the Bug Man is a really chatty guy who likes to keep up on the latest concerning his customers. We were chatting in the kitchen about my retirement, golf, the weather, etc., when, and I am not making this up, two policeman barge in through the garage door. By barge, I mean they opened the door and announced that they had to come in. One had biceps the size of tree trunks and they both had really big firearms, so I invited them right in. They didn't want coffee.
It seems, according to the police, that someone in my house made a 911 call and then hung up. This led to the cops having to search the house, room by room, just in case I was hiding a body on the premises. Let me tell you, the police don't have Larry the Bug Guy's chatting skills.
I told them about the Cletus situation, but since he never came in, I was mystified about the 911 call. We have taken Lacey's phone privileges away, becasue she went crazy ordering dog toys on the phone, so it sure wasn't her. Son Sneed said he didn't do it. A real conundrum.
The police asked me a lot of questions and they both wrote stuff down in their tiny spiral notebooks. Finally, convinced that all was well at Casa Sneed, they left as they had come, out the garage door.
Larry the Bug Guy left and I went back out to cut my branches. I was surprised to see the cops still sitting in their cop van at the curb. I walked over and asked if it was possible that my neighbor called 911 when Cletus and I were in the front yard argu...uh, talking loudly? Nope the call definitely came from a phone listed at our house.
The cop asked me if I had a phone number 874-XXXX? It turns out that Cletus Sneed, jackass, has his cellphone listed at our address and the moron called 911 from it and hung up. Since it is a cellphone and the dumb ass didn't answer when the 911 operator called him back, the police did the only thing they could do, show up at my house and conduct a hard target search. I don't really know what a hard target search is, but Tommy Lee Jones said it in The Fugitive and I have always wanted to work it into a post.
If it's not one thing it's another.
So someone just shoot me now. No wait, I should be careful about what I ask for, Cletus might just do it. Kidding.
To put it in the words of a famous blogger from Texas, "That is all."
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor
5 comments:
You're doing the right thing by engaging less and less and less with Cletus. I think it is time to give him the "We can't see each other anymore" speech. the "It's not you, it's me" phrase is optional.
I can relate to the surprise of the police barging in after my "Large Russian Woman" experience.
this is a lot for Merle Sneed to go through in a very short span of time. My advice is a nice aromatherapy bath (lights out, or candlelight) that's the therapy I suggest-- relaxation. and it only takes a few minutes out of your busy retiree day.
Could you post the steps for changing my cell phone over to your address?
Also, that lady from Texas got "That is all" from another blogger you know who uses it a bit more judiciously.
I was just commenting on Reya's blog--realizing I am just not as "available" to participate much in dramas anymore-- I used to get sucked into things, asked to "solve" problems , and at some point I just stopped feeling it was a duty to help everyone. Because often in these dramas, help isn't what is wanted--it is the participation in the drama-- nothing gets solved.
Oh my gosh! Poor Merle! I hope you're sleeping soundly right now or that you're at least relaxing. What a horrible day! I'm very sorry you have to deal with all that. The police storming in would have given me a heart attack, and I'd end up sitting next to Cletus in the ER after all. So sorry, Merle!
My only advice is to keep listening to that brilliant blogger in Texas. And Kurt is just jealous because he doesn't know how to "work it."
That is all.
Yanno the best way to really, really relax?
Put the dog out on the porch, take out a big glass, fill it with your favorite hi-octane OH product, sit down in the lazy-boy, put a bucket nearby, kick up your feet, and... guzzle.
Shouldn't take more than a minute or so. Ya'll either throw up or pass out. And ya can save that pretty candle for the next time.
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