There are a few things I would like to have happen today. The white-grey sky could rain all day and it would be fine with me, so that the garden grows, although that means the weeds will grow twice as fast. My weeding has been sporadic, at best. The grass in the yard needs cutting and as much as I love the smell of newly-shorn green, I'd rather have a drenching rain. A rain so loud, the beat is mechanical, almost musical. A rain that lasts into the night, with thunder and some lightning. Yes, I would like all of that to happen today.

I'm so tired of hearing the primping of neighboring lawns, hedge trimmers, loud lawnmowers, and the like. I have lost the friendship of several neighbors, most importantly Edith, due to the former neighbor trying to sell her house. I did not have our privacy fence, damaged by Hurricane Sandy, fixed fast enough for her liking. Her supposed window of time coincided with my mother's surgery, her recovery, and family members celebrating my mother's 90th birthday.

Small town lack of fencing ordinances, an offer to gift us a fence on our property could have waited several days, but the former neighbor made a fuss, which ended with an ugly-as-sin fence being installed without a proper survey. Oh, I tried to talk with the former neighbor in a civil manner, then she called the zoning officer. The whole thing upset my husband, just as we were starting his new routine at the Adult Day Care Center. Sad to say, I gave up that fight and tried five times to smooth things over with Edith. Whatever lies the former neighbor told her have hardened her heart. I gave up that fight as well.

I have lost the thirty year neighborly friendship of the couple across the street, as he took charge of installing the fence. That's not as important as losing Edith, yet it's a loss all the same, at a time when I don't need more losses. My anger and frustration at it all has dissipated, yet I feel as though I should have been stronger.


I wouldn't mind a surge of energy to clean one small corner of anywhere in the house, which gradually has become too large. All else, I dare not ask for, except perhaps an inner sense that things will unfold as they should, at a time when so much is out of my control. Please God, make me a stone.