Memorial Day Weekend

As I type, it is nearly 1:30 in the morning. Tuesday morning, and the holiday weekend is over. After all the rains we had last week, two streets in the middle of our town were washed away, cattle and horses were left stranded in high water in the center of a major highway, and we discovered that the roof of our house needs to be replaced after some of that horrendous rain leaked into our kitchen. Ironically, the second and third floors of our home were just fine, but the kitchen got a bit wet. I've called six roofing companies and we're waiting for them to call back and put us on their schedule for estimates. This roof is about 22 or 25 years old now, which is about the life expectancy for a shingled roof in the Texas sun and heat. Until we decide on a roofer, my husband and our handyman put up three Smurf-blue tarps to cover the parts of the roof that leaked.  Not exactly a Victorian touch for this hundred-year-old house, but as long as they keep out the next round of rainstorms, who cares what color they are.

All weekend long, we were anticipating the blast of fireworks. Nothing. Not one little firecracker until about 10:45 last night. I had taken Savannah outside for a last visit to the grass and I was waiting for her to do what she needed to do in the grass by our walkway.  Since the sonic-boom fireworks on April 27th which caused Savannah to disappear for 12 days, she has not wanted to walk anywhere near the road since she found her way back home. I've been walking her in the backyard, and in the small patches of grass behind the garage, and in the quiet of the night I've taken her by the walkway leading up to our driveway.

I was outside with Savannah for about 10 minutes last night. As always (since April 27th) she was clearly stressed out and shaking, but valiantly trying to find the perfect spot in the grass. She finally did, and I brought her back in the house. I locked the door and went upstairs as Savannah settled herself in her bed in the breakfast room. No sooner had I gotten upstairs and my husband and I heard fireworks exploding from across the road... the same neighbors who set off the massive M-80 blasts that sent Savannah running into the woods that night in late April.

Five minutes after the first half-dozen explosions from across the road tonight, my cell phone beeped with a text message. It was from the firework-loving neighbor, telling me "We'll be having fireworks for the next 15 minutes."    I immediately sent a text back to her, saying that I had just been outside with Savannah and had come back into the house two minutes before she started setting off the first round of fireworks.  I neglected to say a lot of other things... that she still has no idea how the April firework fiasco has changed our dog, how badly I was injured when I fell to the ground after the first M-80 went off, and how Savannah can no longer go outside without shivering and shaking and stressing out.

No matter how much I try and make peace with this house and this location, I just cannot seem to follow through. When we were in Canada recently (or on any of our trips for that matter) I don't give a thought to looking in my shoes for scorpions or watching for tarantulas in the garage or on the porch, and I certainly never think that a snake might be dangling and then falling from the ledge over the door (as happened the other night).  In all the places I've lived over the years, I've never had such ridiculous encounters with insects and reptiles and wildlife.  I have never gone camping in my life but sometimes living in this big old house is what 'real camping' must be like. This house is just surrounded by every flying, crawling, slithering, creeping thing that Mother Nature has dumped into the state of Texas.

Well, I'm thanking my lucky stars tonight that I wasn't out there walking Savannah five minutes later than I was, because if I had been, that first firework blast from across the road could have sent her running for the hills again, once more knocking me to the ground as she bolted. As it happened, Savannah must have run out of her pillow-bed when that first blast sounded and when Gary and I came downstairs, she was sitting in the pantry and just shivering uncontrollably. Gary sat on the floor with her for half an hour, until the fireworks had stopped and this poor dog had calmed down.

I've tried to make a silent peace with that neighbor these past few weeks... not going over there to bring her cookies, but just telling myself that the April firework situation was just an unfortunate incident and we have Savannah back now so there's no need to hold a grudge. Well, screw that. After tonight's fireworks, and after thinking that they must have known all day long that they were going to set off those fireworks tonight, why couldn't she have let me know earlier in the day?  I would have had the TV or the radio on in here so Savannah wouldn't have heard the blasts so clearly. And I certainly wouldn't have taken her outside at 10:40 at night if I'd known that they would be setting off the damn things at 10:45.

And yes, maybe I'm being unreasonable, to think that the new neighbors should even care about the effects of fireworks on our dog.  Just because I would be more respectful of them and their pets doesn't mean that I should expect them to have the same concern.