Local Domain

I work for a real estate agent, basically just picking up houses before we show them or fixing stuff here and there. This project was out of my realm. I do not do stuff like this. I try not to at least. Install bedroom closet organizer. That was what the text message sent. The house she wanted me to install it in was vacant. I swore she had said it was occupied the day before. So I got to the house and it smelled something awful. I realized the previous owners had left heaps of trash in their kitchen. My first job was to take that out as far away from the house as I could get it. That was a task and a half. My second job was the closet organizer. I had never installed anything let alone a piece of wood into a closet in a house that isn’t mine. The organizer was for the master bedroom closet. The closet was huge. The organizer was not. How the heck was I supposed to make this look like it flowed? The real estate agent called just then asking if I was finished. Appalled I said no, I had to take out 30 bags of garbage that made the house smell worse than the streets after a night of binge drinking during Mardi Gras. She wanted to show the house in a hour, she sounded annoyed with me. Like it was my fault that the previous owners were smelly. I told her the only way she could show this house within the next three weeks is to get HASMAT in here to decontaminate the place. She wasn’t very happy with my comment. She came over and yelled at me for the smell. I quit.

I didn’t even know that it was a problem that existed until I saw a bottle of women’s hair loss treatment cream in my mom’s medicine cabinet. It was Minoxidil, just like I’ve seen advertised for men, but made specifically for women. I’ve always heard about male pattern baldness and I’ve obviously seen countless examples of it, but I’ve never in my life seen a bald women. I guess women are more careful, or care more about their appearance so they seek out effective solutions for their hair loss problem, unlike the hoards of men who do nothing but let nature take its course. This has really got me wondering; I’ve heard that baldness is hereditary. When my father passed away at the age of seventy with a full head of hair I figured that I was in the clear, but if my mother is losing her hair does that mean that I’m not quite out of the woods yet, that I still might end up losing my hair. Can the baldness gene be passed down from a mother to her child, or is baldness in women caused by something that can’t be passed on. I want to ask her when it started or if she knows what is causing it, but I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. She hasn’t told me anything about it so maybe she wants it kept a secret. I guess I’ll just start looking for excessive amounts of hair in the shower drain and worry about it then.

We were very upset about what happened to our neighbors while we were gone on a weekend getaway. Our home security system alerted the monitoring people that there was something activity at our backdoor. They sent the police right away. The police must have chased who ever was at the back door away, because they left a flashlight and a small tool pack behind. We hope our neighbors will be okay. They have decided to have the house remodeled, which they were going to do, but not for another couple years. But circumstances can change a lot of things. They are going to have a GE Home Security system installed. Seems a relative of theirs has this system and really like it a lot. Our neighbors are not going to let what happened to their home keep them living in fear, even though they say they hope we never have to live with that feeling of being violated. They say when someone invades your home, it like they destroy something sacred to you, your sanctuary. Things just did not looks or feel the same anymore. Our neighbors have decided to set up a neighborhood watch group. We will all band together.

That coyote skull freaks me out to no end, but I can’t help but love it. My sister Ray is a personal injury attorney in Arizona. She lives and works in this town called New Hope far out in the desert somewhere. In between her cases and chasing ambulances, she treks out into the wilderness and goes all over the desert, even traveling up into other states, plateaus, and mountains. I swear she could live and thrive out there if she had to. Even when we were children, she loved camping trips and always knew better what to do out there in the woods than our father or mother did. Why did she become a personal injury lawyer in Arizona then and not a wilderness expert or camper or whatever? She has a sharp mind and great attention to detail. And she likes working with people and needs to make a lot of money. So she became a lawyer. But on her day off a year back, she found a dead coyote, dragged it home, and skinned it, cleaned it, and did whatever else and gave me the skull on Christmas. It will always remind me of my sister as crazy as she is.

The first thing Jim learned about his problem was about maintaining sugar levels. He shouldn't be on a rocket up or diving into the valley. He had to do this through diet and exercise, neither of which he liked. The diet was the hardest part for him. Sara helped him with that, when she could, but he usually fell down on that while he was at work or traveling. He just got impatient with the idea of having to have only so much protein, so many carbs, and no sweets. It was the lack of sweets that really got to him. Jim has a big sweet tooth. So between trying to keep a diet and exercise and not have his doughnuts in the morning, Jim was not a happy camper. In fact, he got to be quite cranky. Food is a big deal for Jim. After about three weeks he began to lose some weight, and then his attitude changed. He said he felt better too. His color had improved, and he seemed to have more energy. Then the weather got warmer and he decided that the exercise he was doing was not so bad. He began to enjoy it. He even asked me to join him, which I did. We generally walked on the trail at the park, but sometimes it was just in the neighborhood. I was glad to have a partner, because I doubt that I would have gotten out there on my own.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about Tylock, apparently there is no one better to visit for Lasik in Dallas. For the last several years this eye care and laser center has been voted the best in the area. They use the very latest in technology and have the support of the local professional sports teams. I’ve visited the website and watched the videos they have available about the procedure, but I still want to learn more. Surgery, even minor surgery is a very big deal to me and not something to be taken lightly at all. I’ve ordered a cd that explains more about the process and signed up for a free seminar offered by the center, where I hope they explain the actual procedure in more detail to put my mind at ease. They seem so sure of their results that they offer a “twenty/twenty or free guarantee,” which sounds good, I mean they probably wouldn’t offer to give your money back if it were likely that the procedure would not work, but having the money back won’t do me very much good if I can’t see. I know the procedure is pretty common place these days, and the likelihood of anything bad happening is slim, but I still want as much information as I can get my hands on before committing to an operation.