Collapse.

I knew things were moving along a little too well.

Yuppers, folks. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the walled, paved ex-garden, the floor falls out from beneath you … literally, in this case.

Last night we had rain. It probably amounted to about an eighth of an inch of not particularly hard rain. I realize that the resulting damage to my newly paved ex-garden is not obvious in the above picture, so I have created a labeled version for your review. It will be necessary for the reader to excuse the crappy conversion from jpg to gif; my lettering tool wouldn’t work in jpg for some reason, and the color loss in the conversion was worse than normal.

Yes, I have a call into building management about it. No, they haven’t called me back yet. Yes, I rather expect they’re going to have more than a little trepidation about speaking to me after the events of last week. No, I’m not angry. I’ve run out of anger.

If anything, I feel vindicated. So you’re going to pave my walled garden over, are you? Well, my patch isn’t going down without a fight. Yes, it’s futile, and eventually the paving stones will win. But they’re gonna know they’ve been in a fight.

Plans to go to D.C. this weekend are shaping up. Our original plan was to take the train from Philly, but I get out of work too late to make that a practical mode of transportation. I dearly wanted to take the Acela high-speed train, but I’m unwilling to spend the extra C-note it would take to have that privilege. Even taking the cheapest trains down I could find, round trip Philly to D.C. for two exceeded $200. We can drive down for far less than that, so it appears we’re driving. I told the Socialist we could use my car, but I refused to drive in D.C. That city intimidates me, as does Boston, and the entire state of Maine. He agreed to drive, so it seems that transport, at least, is settled.

I discovered last night that the friend we’re meeting there Friday night is coming back to stay with us on Sunday. Evidently I had some sort of major mental lapse when this was mentioned to me, because I had no clue until The Socialist mentioned it last night. I asked the lady who’s picking up Voglinde if she could wait until next week. Tonight I have to clean, launder the sheets on the bed in the spare bedroom, make up the bed, straighten and dust the house, get some food fit to serve a guest, and pack for DC. I now wish I hadn’t spent last night fooling around in cyberspace, chatting with my friends on the liver failure board.

I feel the need to get some quality kitty time in tonight too. For some strange reason, I need to show the brats a little love and attention today. They may be spoiled rotten little brats, but they’re my spoiled rotten little brats.