Keeping an eye on the neighbors

This morning my eastward neighbor woke me up as usual.  I don't talk about the neighbors much. The house is a rental and seems to rent to a pretty tatty demographic.  The selection gets worse with every new set that moves in.  The latest ones are pretty impressive. 
They are oil patch workers, and their hobby is a truck that they take to shows.  The tires on the truck would pay for a furnace, and the rest of the truck seems to be of the same sort, fearfully expensive and high maintenance.
I have talked to the guys on occasion.  They are polite and pleasant and look like they spend their time off drinking and playing music that would sterilize frogs at forty paces at a decibel volume just under a jet takeoff. 
They are gone for a week, here for a week, with someone who stays here to keep care of everything. 
I have seen her twice in the seven months they have lived here.  The first time was seeing her out on the back porch shrieking and banging on the patio door about " lemme have my stuff! I need my stuff! Goddammit you almighty f^(%head, Gimme my Stuff!"  This was about 11 at night in February with the below zero temps.
she did get in and who knows what it was about.
The second time I saw her she was shit faced drunk and fell off the back porch.
So, not someone that I would find a kindred spirit.

So at 7 am this morning, when I would like to take the one day I can to sleep in a bit, I hear one of the guys coughing and hacking with a rising volume until he begins to retch.  This is loud enough to sound like he is on the back porch.  I check out the window.  Nope.  He is producing his magnificent volume of noise from the bedroom.
It's been a long summer living next to them.  I hope the heat breaks soon. 

sacrificing grasshoppers to the poo bah

some how after a very long time in stagnation things are moving along with a vengeance.
A long time ago I applied for weatherization and we had our application accepted.  Not very long ago we called and asked if anyone would be coming out to do anything ever. I guess that we poked them in a tender place because we got a notice not long after, that someone would be out on the 24th, which at 8:30 this morning they were. 
Three guys examined and tested and climbed into attic spaces and looked (god help us ) at the furnace.  Some of the numbers are in, and some of the numbers depend on how many grasshoppers they sacrifice to the grand government Poo bahs.  If the grasshoppers and the numbers add up we get a new furnace, the attic insulated, the crawl space vapor barriered, and a new refrigerator.  We might also get a new hot water heater, it depends on the government to grasshopper ratio.
My water says that the furnace is a go and the heater is a maybe, but they have guaranteed that I will by gum get a new refrigerator.
The Footless Man supervised all this from his wheelchair looking as forlorn and crippled up as possible, as well as footless.  They told him that they would clean out underneath the house to put in the vapor barrier, so he gets the crud pile under the house removed and doesn't have to hire it done.
I await developments breathlessly.

That was wierd

I wanted to go down and have an afternoon with the Erstwhile Child.  We thought that a treat such as the Real Pirates would be a nice decompressing afternoon.
Somehow the nice calm afternoon together turned into an outing at the Museum that included the Mother-out-law (a very nice lady) and the youngest son.  The family tree is messy.  Anyway I spent a lot of time with two people that I never thought I would be able to spend time with at all, due to some circumstances that could only be engineered by God. Then I got tangled in traffic and ended up spending the night in Boulder with my parents, Nothing I had planned at all.  I got back to find that we have been approved for weatherization on the 24th.  God's Steering cause I sure ain't.