The Silly Season

Summer arrived this week.

When it isn't raining, Sack people will be outside with increasing frequency and interaction among them will slowly hit a peak.

This means, of course, that more Sack news gets generated. It can be hard to keep up with it.

So let's get to it.

***

Daisy is now late by eight days.

Weed says childbirth will be induced on Monday, if the baby doesn't arrive sooner. He says Daisy "has had just about enough."

He also said that he learned something very important yesterday. Apparently, he has "absolutely no idea" how Daisy feels right now. She set him straight about this after she told him how she was fed up with being pregnant.

Weed had replied by saying, "Yeah, I know what you mean."

***

Dora's shenanigans from the other night continue to be a dominant issue around the Sack.

She made a great deal of noise as she tried to retrieve her dog at three o'clock in the morning. In the middle of this, she also growled and grumbled at almost everyone who lives in the vicinity of the Sack's centre circle.

In the end, Elizabeth called the peelers on Dora. They spent some time speaking with Dora inside Burning Manor.

Sack sources now say Dora received a ticket for allowing her dog to run free. The ticket carries a modest fine. Oscar says there is almost no chance that Dora will do anything different in the future, let alone pay the fine.

He's probably right about this.

***

Gordon is trying to convene an emergency meeting of the Sack Resident's Society. He wants to discuss the latest "Dora incident." He says we need to "develop a consistent and comprehensive strategy" for responding to any future Burning Manor shenanigans.

At least that's what his email says.

***

On an unrelated note, Elizabeth is wondering if a warranty accompanies the installation of a new lawn.

Several weeks ago, Elizabeth gave up trying to get rid of the weeds on her front lawn. She paid over seven hundred dollars to have her existing sod removed. It was replaced by a load of topsoil and then reseeded.

She made the decision to do this after Gordon found her using a chemical weed killer on her hapless lawn. She conducted the spraying under the cover of darkness. Gordon found her moving about with a flashlight.

Elizabeth had previously criticized Gordon for brazenly using chemicals on his own front lawn.

***

So Elizabeth figured she would just start all over again with a new lawn. This would also allow her to safely resume her role as the Sack's resident environmental activist.

Sadly, things aren't working out as planned.

The old lawn was filled with dandelions and other leafy weeds. After two weeks of growth, the new lawn has a number of large brown spots, a few splotches of wispy grass and, of course, a whole load of new, leafy weeds.

In other words, the new lawn hasn't taken.

***

Last week, Burning Manor received some more new sod for its front lawn.

Previously, the insurance company had only provided Dirk and Dora with about three pieces of new sod. They must have won a concession from the company, because a crew (from the restoration company that built the new house) arrived to completely resod Burning Manor's front and side lawns.

Now, even Burning Manor has a better lawn than Elizabeth.

***

From Elizabeth's perspective, there is no justice in the world.

Dirk and Dora are stumbling through life, yet have a brand new house and lawn. Elizabeth is always trying to do what's "proper," but she doesn't think it's getting her anywhere.

Of course, it's a lot more complicated than this. A brand new house and lawn may look very nice, but I can only imagine that it must be very hard to be Dirk or Dora.

Nevertheless, Elizabeth now has a new, crappy lawn, rather than an old, crappy lawn. She called the fellows who performed the work and asked them about the warranty on her new lawn. Elizabeth says they left a message for her claiming that their work should have left her with a lawn that would be the envy of any golf course. If things didn't work out that way, they said she mustn't have cared for the lawn properly. They also said there was no such thing as a warranty on newly seeded lawns.

Elizabeth told Mrs. Wonders that moving to a high-rise condominium might not be such a bad alternative after all.

***

Meanwhile, Little Doug has found a distraction as he prepares to be a grandfather for the first time.

Yesterday, he came home with a shiny, blue pick-up truck. He said he bought the vehicle from a friend who was preparing to leave the province. Apparently, he acquired it at a very modest price.

Oscar said it was "about bloody time" for Little Doug to buy a pick-up truck. He relies heavily on Little Doug for just about every significant home maintenance matter. Oscar was thinking about putting up a fence this summer, but he had no idea how Little Doug would manage to get the lumber to the Sack.

***

Finally, Computer Doug became the most recent Sack resident to jump on the exercise bandwagon. Within less than two weeks, he also became the most recent Sack resident to fall off the exercise bandwagon.

It seems that Computer Doug was becoming concerned about his increasing girth. He said he knew he had to do something when a button popped on his favourite shirt on two consecutive days. Both buttons were in the vicinity of his belly-button.

Computer Doug buys his shirts on eBay. He claims this virtually guarantees that no one else in the old town will have the same shirt as him. I think he could be right about this.

The down side of buying one's shirts on eBay, according to Little Doug, is that it's very hard to find an exact replacement for one's favourite shirt. He said he tried to locate an exact replica of his favourite shirt, but to no avail.

So he had no choice but to lose some weight.

***

Computer Doug is not, by his own admission, the sporting type.

He considered taking up a new sport, as a means of losing weight, but said he couldn't find anything he liked. Finally, he settled on jogging as the simplest way to drop a few pounds.

He said he started to jog every day about two weeks ago. After the first week, he said he was starting to feel like he was ready to commit to it as his new form of exercise. This, he explained, meant that he needed to purchase some appropriate running apparel. He bought a new pair of running shoes from a local running-oriented sporting goods store. The clothing, he bought through eBay.

The clothing arrived late last week. Computer Doug wore the shiny yellow shirt and a pair of light-weight black shorts for the first time yesterday.

***

When Computer Doug returned from jogging yesterday, he said he noticed something very disturbing.

When he looked at himself in his bathroom mirror, he noticed two red splotches on his bright-yellow shirt. Each splotch was located over one of Computer Doug's nipples. Closer investigation revealed that his nipples were bleeding.

Computer Doug had caught himself a bad case of jogger's nipple. I suppose one should more properly state that he had two bad cases of jogger's nipple.

***

Jogger's nipple, according to Computer Doug is very painful.

He says he didn't notice anything until he saw the blood on his shirt. Apparently, his nipples were numb until he removed his shirt. Then it hurt like heck.

So Computer Doug says he's going to take a break from jogging for a while. He said he was starting to get bored with it, anyway.

On the positive side, he says the injury has given him a new appreciation for his nipples. Until now, Computer Doug said he hadn't given his nipples a second thought. He knew they were there under his shirt, but he said he just didn't pay much attention to them.

Computer Doug says his nipple awareness is now at an all-time high.

***

Both Oscar and Little Doug have previously embarked on their own ill-fated fitness plans.

Oscar, of course, was engaged in Man Boobs Be Gone, a heroic effort to reduce the size of his growing breasts. Little Doug "got stuck with diabetes" and had to make a few lifestyle changes. Both of them tried to develop their own walking regimes, but neither had much success.

Oscar's walks ended at the local coffee cathedral, where he indulged in more calories than he burned from the walk. Little Doug started going on lengthy walks around the old town. Daisy complained because he expected her to pick him up from wherever the walk ended. Eventually, he just started walking to the local coffee cathedral, too.

***

Computer Doug told me about his nipple woes during a brief chat near the Sack's centre circle.

He had just returned from the local coffee cathedral with Oscar and Little Doug. Little Doug drove them in his new pick-up truck.

They were going to walk, he explained, but Little Doug wanted them to get a feel for his new truck. Computer Doug said he was happy to oblige.

Apparently, his nipples are much better, now.

***