Dear Write On Followers, I’m taking a week off. I will be posting popular stories on Wednesday and Friday, Susan A. Culver

I’ll BE POSTING A POPULAR STORY FROM THE PAST ON WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY.  BEST WISHES, SUSAN A. CULVER

Here it is Monday morning again. The weeks seem to fly by. I’m a writer by trade. I have to produce a weekly story for an online fiction writing site. The problem is that I’m also a procrastinator. And I often wait until the last minute to start writing. Sometimes I have difficulty coming up with an original idea right away. And as the years go by, my ideas seem to flow more slowly each week. 

And this week is no different. I sat at my desk for over three hours, and not a single idea came to mind. It’s eleven-thirty, and I have nothing. My mind is a complete blank. I start to panic. And at that moment, I happen to glance out my office window. And I see one of my neighbors coming out of his garage with his dog on a leash. It looks like he is about to take him for a walk. And then a delivery truck pulls up to his curb and parks. The driver emerges from the truck with a relatively large package in tow. The dog barks at him, and the closer the delivery guy comes, the louder the dog barks.

My neighbor, whose name is Jake tries to calm his dog down. He accidentally loses his grip on the dog leash, and the dog lunges at the UPS guy, and he drops the rather large package. I hear noises indicating that something fragile is in the package. And then Jake trips on the curb and falls flat on his face. Jake’s dog growls at the UPS guy, lunges at his leg, and bites down hard. As if he’s biting down on a raw steak or something. The UPS guy screams out expletives so loud that I can hear every word he says. The dog takes off down the street like a bat out of hell. The UPS guy is a close second. He looks mad as hell, and I fear for the dog’s life.

I can no longer see what is going on with UPS guy and the dog. I run to the front door, open it, and look from right to left. I don’t see either of them right away until I hear UPS guy still yelling profanities at the top of his lungs. Then I spy the dog running into our neighbor’s back yard across the street. I see Jake limping across the street and calling out Tuc a the top of his lungs. That’s the dog’s name, Tennessee Tuc. Now the dog, the UPS driver, and Jake are in the neighbors’ yard across the street.

This is the most excitement I’ve seen in our neighborhood in the five years. That’s how long we have lived here. And nothing, absolutely nothing happens here. It is a small development with twenty houses. One street runs through the development, and three streets end in cull-d-sacs. We rarely see anyone. Everyone has a garage, and they go in and out through their garages. If you’re lucky, you will catch one of the neighbors riding their lawnmowers and cutting their grass during the Spring and Summer. Otherwise, our neighborhood seems deserted. I’m not exaggerating. The neighbors do not talk to one another. Occasionally they will wave, but that is a rare occasion.

The next thing I see is a horse running across the street into our front yard. I guess you might be wondering where a horse came from. Well, believe it or not, there’s a horse farm behind our development. One day one of the horses opened the gate and took a walk across the street. And apparently, and decided to use our yard as a toilet. When I went outside, I found a large pile of horse shit. I walk across the street to the owner’s house and tell him, “one of your horses is in our yard. He doesn’t have a harness on him, so I couldn’t bring him home. He came over and took the horse home. Apparently, the horse’s name was Tina. Can you believe it?

Now, I’m having difficulty hearing or seeing what is going on. Since Jake and the dog and UPS guy are at the horse farm, the horses are becoming upset by the commotion. Tuc is barking, and Jake’s yelling for Tuc, and the UPS guy is screaming like a banshee because he is still mad as hell. Barring any common sense, I cross the street to investigate what is going on at the horse farm. Yeah, I don’t know their name either because I only saw the husband going in and out of his barn. And I never saw his wife at all. Can you believe it?

So, now I’m standing at a distance from the action, but not so far away that I can’t see and hear everything coming down. I feel like I’m watching a movie or something. I have no shame. And there is no end to how nosy I am capable of being. Well, we all have our faults. And this is mine.

Tuc is lunging at the UPS guy who has had about enough of the crap that he’s going to take. He starts picking up random rocks from the farmer’s backyard and propelling them at Tuc. At least I thought they were rocks until I got close enough to smell them. And I realize he’s pitching horse dung at Tuck and Jake. For some reason, I find this to be hysterical, and I start laughing so hard that I almost swallow my tongue.

That is when they all turned in my direction and became aware that I was watching them. Apparently, they don’t think this is an occasion for laughter. Because the next thing I know both Jake and UPS guy are picking up and propelling horse shit at me. I yell out, “Hey, what the hell did I do?”

And I get slammed two more times. And then we all look at each other and start laughing. Jake calls his dog over to him and grabs his collar. And then he turns towards the UPS guy and says, “I’m sorry about my dog biting you. Are you alright? Would you like to come back to my house and we can take a look at your bite? Maybe you would like to sit down and have a cup of coffee or something? You know my wife, Sharon, just made some awesome cornbread yesterday. Maybe you like to have some?”

And that is when I got a good look at Jake’s noggin and saw that he had acquired a huge red lump on his forehead from the header he took on his sidewalk. I had to clap my hand over my mouth because I had the strange and misguided idea that this was somehow really funny. I’m sure Jake wouldn’t agree.

I say, “Hey, I’m sorry for laughing. How about you all come over to my house and we can relax for a bit and calm down? And that is how I made my first couple of friends in the neighborhood. And I decided from now on I’m going to start making a more concerted effort to get to know my neighbors. And hopefully, I wouldn’t have to wait for another brawl to take place before I meet them.

It turns out we all had some things in common. Who would have thought? Not me. So, please take my advice, and don’t wait until people start throwing horse dung at you before introducing yourself to them. Life is too short.

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Hello Write On Followers,

I wanted to let you know that I am taking this week off and will be posting three of my most popular stories between Wednesday of this week and I will post a new story on Wednesday of next week.

Best Wishes, Susan A. Culver  Write ON 

To read more, enter your email address to Subscribe to my Blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Last night was the first night that I fell asleep and slept for five hours in over a month. I’m feeling better, less irritable. I have always had trouble sleeping since I was a child. I would fall asleep and then wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep or wake up multiple times. It is not a new problem. What’s new now is that when I wake up the thoughts, I have been having are disturbing. I obsess about the suffering of people here and in the rest of the world. I feel such a sense of loss and helpless to make things better. I have always been a proactive person. If I see a problem, I try to find a way to mitigate it in some way.

Kite photo by Bob Culver

These last several weeks, I have donated small amounts of money to Food pantries, animal shelters in NC, and the poorest parts of the country. I don’t know if this will make any difference, but somehow, I can’t sit by and do nothing. I would find it difficult to live with my future self if I just here and felt sorry for people and didn’t do anything. We live on Social Security, but our house is paid off. So, I’m able to do that small thing.

This week the weather here in the area of NC was schizophrenic one day 87 degrees the next morning 36 degrees, one day heavy rains and high winds, the next day sunny and pleasant. The unpredictability for me adds to my sense that the weather now is abnormal as the Corona Virus. You just never know what is going to happen next.

We retired to NC three and a half years ago. It is a small development with twenty-one homes. The people that live here keep to themselves. One or two of our neighbors will wave and say “hello,” but it’s nothing like the neighborhoods we lived in the past where you knew your neighbor’s name and talked to them or even became friends with them over time. People here don’t spend a lot of time out in their yards, although their plots are about an acre. You see them cutting their grass on their riding mowers, but they don’t sit outside on their porches and talk to neighbors as you pass by. I still wave at them when I see them and call out,” Hello, how are you.” Occasionally, someone will wave back. There are probably about eight or cute little kids under ten years of age that will say. “hello” but won’t engage in any conversation. I have always loved kids, so I miss that.

Tiny Blue Shoes by Bob Culver

We have a neighbor at the end of the street right next to Route 50. Her twins, a boy, and a girl were about six months old when we moved here. They are beautiful little kids. Now, they are about four. In the summer, the parents allow their kids to ride their bikes, take walks, and play out front with no clothes on during the summer.  This isn’t something I ever saw in NJ so, I have asked quite a few people here in NC if this was just a Southern thing, and they all said no. I know it isn’t my business, but one evening I was sitting on my back porch, and I saw the father of the twins taking a walk with his two naked than three-year-old children. And before I knew it, I yelled, “Put clothes on those kids.” The father shouted back; they just won’t keep their clothes on and kept walking. When did children become the bosses?

Anyway, since this virus started, our neighbors began emerging from their development cocoons. Not every day and not all at once. But, every couple of days, I see someone running, or riding a bike, or jogging up and down our small development. I sit on the front porch and yell out,” Hello, how are you all doing?” And sometimes they wave or yell back. “We are fine, thanks.” Last Sunday, my husband and I were taking our first walk of the day up and down our street, and we saw a kite flying high above the tree line. It like it originated from the farm on the other side of our development. Somehow the sight of that beautiful kite lifted my spirits. It remained up there for over two hours. It brought back memories of my own children’s childhoods when we would take them to Cooper River Park in NJ and let them fly their small kites. And it reminded me of my childhood when I would fly my Dime store kite in the park behind the public school in Maple Shade, where I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. Such happy memories. The site of that kite lifted my spirits and gave me hope that perhaps somehow, someday our lives would return to normal and life would go on.

Then three days ago, my husband Bob and I were taking our dog, Douglas, for a walk, and I noticed something blue on the ground on the corner of our front yard. I kneeled to take a closer look, and there before me was a tiny pair of blue shoes. Sitting one next to the other one upside down. It was such a whimsical thing to find, weird. So, I started imaging how they came to be there. “Oh, no,” I said some tiny little person; perhaps a well-dressed little alien has lost her shoes. I’m always thinking of stories I can write or paintings I can paint. It keeps me sane.

I look forward to the day when we get take a walk, go to a store, eat at our favorite restaurant once again without fear that we will touch something or someone, and it will be the end of us. However, I hope that my neighbors will remember that they came outside rode their bikes and took walks, and said,” Hey, how are you doing to their neighbors and didn’t turn to stone. I hope this small beginning will grow into a sense that we are a community, not just a place where we live. I will do my part and say. “hello, to everyone I see and ask them how they are doing. And perhaps someday in the not too distant future, I will invite all my neighbors over for a barbeque on a warm summer day, and we can’t get to know each other better and maybe, just maybe make some new friends.

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Good morning Write On followers, thanks so much to those who read my new blog story, MILLIES’S BENCH. If  you haven’t read it yet, please do. And if you missed any of my past stories. I would love if you read some of those. Please leave a comment and share on Social Media. Thanks so much, Susan.

Anyone who knows me even for a short time realizes that I’m an animal lover through and through. I have never met any kind of animal that I didn’t come to love with all my heart. From lizards, I had one whose name was Lenard, after Lenard Skynard. Oh, don’t let me get started with cats, a life time love affair. I have two at present. Sloopy a Scottish Fold, and Eve, a tuxedo cat. Sloopy just celebrated his 25th birthday, And Eve is nineteen.

I thought today I might share some pictures of the over thirty birds I take care of as a volunteer at ANIMAL EDVENTURE in Coats, NC. It is an animal sanctuary. If you live in the area you are more than welcome to come visit the more than 200 animals that live there.   The beautiful Cockatoo below is Montana. It took almost a year for Montana to “like” me. But, now we are friends. This beautiful parrot is Bodie, he is a Macaw. He lives with another parrot  called Moses. They have a love, hate relationship.

Over time, I would love to share more of my animal friends at ANIMAL EDVENTURE. This includes on of my best buddies Monroe a Brown Lemur,  and Leona another Lemur who is blind. A real sweetheart.