Journal of a Sabbatical

March 8, 2001

island of incompetence and insanity

Today's Reading: The Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan.

The rest of the world, even in the areas with 30 inches of snow like we got, is functioning normally. Life is going on all around us. We are stuck here in this isolated island of incompetence and insanity. The promised snow removal vehicles arrived this morning a little before 9:00 AM. Busy Body was out the door in a flash ordering them to do our courtyard first. Drummer Boy surfaced from the Russian enclave and tried to move his grandmother's car. He flooded it. The chief Russian Parking Space Blocker and the whole Russian colony emerged and caucused at the site of the lone car preventing our courtyard from being plowed. Busy Body was lecturing them, gesticulating wildly. I could hear her voice but not quite make out what she was yelling at them.

The front end loader went to work moving loads of snow into a huge dump truck, presumably to be shipped to New York where they are craving some of our 30 inches of snow. We are happy to share with New York. If the Yankees would like some shipped to their spring training camp so they don't feel left out, we can do that too I'm sure. Anyway, the front end loader worked around the Russian matriarch's car and finally the chief Russian Parking Space Blocker and Drummer Boy managed to push the car to an area that the front end loader was done with. Drummer Boy went inside and called AAA to come start the car. It would be hours before they arrived, but at least it wasn't in the way anymore.

Meanwhile, Drummer Boy's own car, which he had parked on the street as directed by the plow people, got a huge orange sticker on the windshield (blocking the driver's view) informing him it was to be towed for parking there. He tried to scrape it off with his ice scraper but it left a big mess of sticky stuff. I rummaged under my kitchen sink in search of Goo Gone to help him but alas the Goo Gone bottle was empty. The Goo Gone was gone. Sigh.

The front end loader dumped a huge compacted mass of heavy snow at the end of my walk. I could no longer climb over it. I called the management company who forwarded me to the voice mail of some plowing muck-a-muck. I left a long rambling message about it. No results. I went back outside and chopped for half an hour or so until I got it down to a size I could climb over. Then I chased down the guy directing all these front end loaders and dump trucks and pointed out my newly acquired mountain to him. He flagged down the front end loader, which came back and removed a scoopful of the compacted mound. There was still a mound, thick, heavy, and totally frozen but I could climb it easily.

I set to work slowly demolishing the mound. This left me vulnerable to an attack from Busy Body, whom I had been deftly avoiding. She pounced. I got an earful about how she yelled at the kids who were sliding down the giant 12 foot snow bank into my yard and messing up the great and beautiful shoveling job yesterday and how nobody but her keeps an eye on these kids or anything else and demanding to know where I was. I have been trying very hard not to argue with her, but I had to tell her that I was here, I saw the kids, and when they saw me one of them (a real nice kid who's always been polite to me) got a shovel and cleaned up my walk. She had told the kids I would be angry. I was not angry. I hate it when she speaks for me.

As I continued backing away from her, she started in on how she thinks Drummer Boy is retarded because he flooded the matriarch's car. Umm, the matriarch's car is an ancient Chevy with 147,000 miles on it and she never maintains it. It's a piece of junk. Busy Body insists that Drummer Boy is unbelievably stupid and she has worked with retarded people who are smarter. I start to defend Drummer Boy: I mean c'mon, he's the drummer in a rock band, he's spacy ... she thinks this means he does drugs... what? there's no evidence of that.... why am I arguing with her? Why am I defending a Russian Parking Space Blocker? OK, so he's got the best English of the lot and it's his brother and stepfather (the chief offender) who do most of the parking space blocking ... aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!

By a little past noon we have been liberated from the condo complex. Oddly, the rest of the world took no notice.