A Good Evening Out

People invigorate Fiorella, even at a ladies' wine-tasting party at which Fiorella doesn't partake of the main course because she's never developed a taste for alcohol.

As Fio started out for vecina (neighbor) Kathy's casa (house) at  about four, her vecina up the street, Micky, joined her and they walked and talked the rest of the way together. At the party, Fio became acquainted or better acquainted with other vecinas. We talked about the vecindad (neighborhood)--the casa that is up for sale, current gentrification efforts, rattlesnake and coyote sightings--and we talked about our perros (dogs) and familias (families). Fio managed to get in a plug for Fernando's yardwork, and Kathy told everyone about the romances Fio writes, but the real thrill for Fio was when one of the vecinas, a native speaker of el espanol (Spanish), offered to help Fio with the language. Pobrecita (poor little one), she doesn't know how soon she's going to be called on.

Paranoia Revisited

Fiorella lives in an isolated settlement of rugged individualists whose rocky tracts measure at least five acres.  In her experience, the area's worst threat is the armadillos who tear up our meager lawns, but the area's leadership figures seem to have more vivid imaginations. Remember the outcry a few months ago about non-residents driving into our idyllic enclave?  Apparently the hew and cry came to nothing once the cost of decals, floodlights, and security cameras was toted up, but then a new bandwagon came rumbling down our country road.

A person who lives in a neighboring single-road subdivision has bought land in our subdivision and wanted to build what amounted to a road on it to connect across to our road so he would have another way out when the river crossing his road out front flooded.  (Got all that?)

The neighborhood association officers promptly went ballistic and sent out communications about how the road would  threaten our security, lower our property values, and violate the deed restrictions. The last charge hit pay dirt and a a judge issued a restraining order against the would-be road builder.

What Fio draws from all this is that canny politicians will manufacture causes, often dire threats, to radicalize their troops and solidify their own power--or even just to stir up the ant hill.  Think about it.
i

Bulletin! Urban Legend Alert!

According to the neighborhood loop, Fio's security is threatened not only by mystery cars, but also by the most hardened criminals of all--kids.  They're supposed to be putting a Drano and tin foil concoction in plastic bottles and tossing them around for unsuspecting adults to pick up and thus blow their fingers off.  Hmmm--if the combination is so volatile, why doesn't it blow up the kids?

Aside from the fact that the only young'ns in our area are people's visiting grandchildren and that no one around here would stow Drano under the kitchen sink because we all have septic tanks, this is an urban legend that's been making the rounds for many years.

As Fio told you, she lives in paranoia central.

Forever Home

Fio and Husband attended a neighborhood association get-together on Sunday afternoon, talked to a lot of people, ate good food, and had a great time.  Then yesterday, when they had parked on the road by the side of their dry creek to pick up rocks for the driveway, their neighbors to the south spotted them and came over to help load the trunk.  And, probably because Husband had turned on the car's hazard lights while he and Fio were so precariously parked, four neighbors who were driving by paused to ask if Fio and Husband were okay.

Fio wants to live here forever.

Howdy, Friend

The first time Fiorella and Husband drove through this subdivision, a jogger waved at them.

That one wave was enough to convince Fio she wanted to live in the area.  Eight years later, neighborhood pedestrians and drivers still wave at each other, and Fiorella has adopted the habit herself.  It reminds her of her youth in Waco, when one politely greeted anyone one encountered while walking down the street.  That didn't hold for crowded downtown sidewalks, of course, just as Fio's current hand-waving ceases when she hits the highway.

One has to be in a more intimate situation to acknowledge fellow travelers.

    

Going Upscale

No doubt about it--our area is gentrifying itself.  Yeah, the boondocks are sprucing up.  The people at the end of the street added a front patio last year, and now they've got a work crew out there laying a U-shaped drive across their front lawn, adding extra parking spaces, and pouring a graceful concrete walk to the new front door of their house which opens into the new addition they added two years ago.  Before that, they turned their back yard into a garden of Eden.

And the neighbors halfway between the end of the street and us are leveling their driveway and adding a concrete lip.  And across the street, a new house is going up, and it looks sorta GRAND.

Husband and Fio have done their bit by having the cedars on their front acre removed two-thirds of the way toward the street and also hiring handyman McHugh to clean out the western planting bed, but more work is going to have to wait till they've paid off the groom's share of Son's wedding.

Eyes, Neighborhood, Writing

Fio's recovery is progressing. The skin around her eyes has gone from red and black to yellow and purple.
*
Cedar Hollow Road looks like a drunken Arab wrote all over it with black tar, which means either a dribble truck drove down its length or the county is repairing cracks left by the winter freeze. Guess elections are right around the corner.
*
Fio got turned down by all three agents who expressed interest in her, which is discouraging. On the other hand, failure is the route to success