My Day Just Gets Better And Better

Not really. You knew I was being sarcastic, didn't you? The past 24 hours have been a little slice of heaven. NOT! But I didn't think it would end up with three policemen on our front brickwalk. There was no room in the front yard, what with Paula Deen eating a lobster tail.

Now I've got you hooked. But you have to wade through the minutia to get to the climax. Uh huh. That little arrow thingy won't work, and neither will your scroll wheelie thingy. Don't try it! Take my word for it. Would Mrs. Hillbilly Mom lie to you?

In the past 24 hours, I have dealt with:

1) HH tossing an infantile fit while I prepared the Super Bowl snack supper. So much fit, in fact, that he stormed out and refused to eat it. I wish he had done that before it was cooked.
2) I coughed all night and again this morning during the time for my 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. nap, so I'm running on 4 hours sleep.
3) We left 10 minutes late for school because #1 son forgot his gym clothes.
4) I wasted 30 minutes of my lunch and prep time trying to make my doctor answer the phone. Darn him for hiring psychic girls who know I'm calling for some sweet, sweet Histinex.
5) I wasted another 15 minutes trying to call Hammacher Schlemmer over #1's Christmas present that arrived broken, and has not been credited even though we sent it back 4 weeks ago.
5a) In calling the credit card 800 line, I discovered that the credit was made TODAY, but that we have $700 worth of merchandise from a home building store on our card, and it was a purchase each day for a week, and twice on Tuesday, which HH has not mentioned to me, and would not answer his phone when I tried to check it out.
6) I coughed so hard in class that tears rolled down my cheeks. One empathetic cherub said, "You're sick, aren't you?"
7) I had a faculty meeting after school, where I did not even get to see Mabel, who was minding the low-graders.
8) At the meeting, we were given a survey to be turned in by Wednesday which took 30 minutes to fill out--THE FIRST HALF.
9) My Little Pony proudly proclaimed that he won the Elementia spelling bee, and will be competing in the next round at a neighboring school at 7:00 p.m. Monday night, which is MY BIRTHDAY. (So it's kind of Even-Stevenish. He won me a nice birthday present, but there are other ways I'd like to be spending my birthday, seeing as how that day should be all about ME).
10) When I got home, I coughed so hard I vomited.
11) An hour later, the #1 son vomited a bowl full of blue Gatorade. Followed by Round 2 an hour later.
12) HH arrived home, and out of the blue announced that he has a crazy man after him.
13) Unable to take it anymore (the coughing, not the day), I swigged some of HH's cough medicine with codeine. I hate it with a passion. First of all, it is grape flavored. I can't stand grape flavoring. Secondly, the codeine only makes me sleepy, and does not take away all of the cough. And thirdly, I did not even get a good codeine buzz, because of the vomiting and the shotgun brouhaha. Thank the Gummi Mary I don't die from codeine, like Redneck Diva could. Ever dramatic, that one!

OK. Let's get down to the nitty gritty. I mentioned a while back that somebody bought the land next to the 10 acres we have about a mile away from the Mansion grounds. And that they had dumped junk onto OUR land, and HH left a note on the door about moving the mess to their own side of the property line. A note that included HH's name AND address, which I made him go remove. HH had another hissy fit around that time.

Tonight, on the way home, he saw that somebody was at the squatter's shack listed as a double-wide manufactured home by the real estate agent. According to HH, "I stopped, just to be nice, and introduced myself, and said I had left a note about the stuff on our property." And then the conversation went a little somethin' like this:

I got your note. And I didn't appreciate it.
Well, your stuff is on our land, and I notice that you haven't moved any of it.
Union Electric says they have a 12-foot easement. I'll put my stuff wherever I want.
Look, you have your land, and I have my land. Keep your stuff on your own land.
You wanna sell your land?
No.
Then I'll ruin it so it will cost you a million dollars to clean it up.
You need to keep your stuff on your own land.
I'll keep it wherever I want. And if you come back here, I'll shoot you.
We'll see about that.
Then go call the police.
OK.

Lordy, lordy. That's a triple dog dare for HH. He called that police quicker than you can say 'Paula Deen in my front yard eating a lobster tail.' A neighbor farther up the road heard the dispatcher on the scanner. He's an officer with a local lake development police department. He came a-knockin' and heard the story. Then the real county deputies showed up. There were two, in separate cars. We had a regular law enforcement convention convening on the brick sidewalk HH created from discarded bricks from town. HH had to write out a statement and agree to press charges and appear in court. Which he did, gladly, because as he says, "If he threatens to shoot me, who knows what else he'll do?" To which I replied, "Aren't you glad I made you take your address off that note?" Because I like validation, you see.

One of the sheriff's deputies asked HH, "Did you think of getting an ex parte order on him?" HH said, "Well, since I don't even know his name, that would be kind of hard to do." Then he went further than necessary, as he always does, and said, "I have no intention of getting my gun out and shooting the guy, but if he comes here, I will." Great. Now we're the Hatfields and McCoy. The other deputy said, "You are certainly justified if he comes here with a gun." I wonder how much he knows about the law. I think in every case, even when the rogue gunman comes INTO YOUR HOUSE WITH A GUN, you can't use deadly force. Maybe he just hasn't watched enough CourtTV. I mean, TruTV. He also told HH to take whatever he wants of that stuff. It is abandoned property that he found on his own land. HH might be interested in the roll of copper wire, to burn it and scavenge the copper. But he really has no use for the broken garage door. And I don't recall the other jetsam that currently lolls on our upper 10, but I DO remember that is it more like a broken garage door than a roll of copper wire. Knowing HH, he will build his burn fire right up there on the property line, just to taunt the McCoy. But he will take his posse with him. And he might borrow some body armor from The Veteran. Because that's how he rolls.

HH said the guy was about 60 years old. Or older. Who knows what this unkindly old curmudgeon has going on up there. Maybe he is cooking meth. Perhaps he's the Paula Deen of the meth set. Stands to reason he would not want to be interrupted by HH bumbling around near his cooking zone. There was that mysterious portable meth lab dumped up in here last year. Who knows. Ain't y'all glad you ain't Hillbillies?

Now I have to sleep with one ear open to hear the Baur Baur Baur dog not bark at a real intruder.