Crabby People

Boy people are crabby around here lately. Even the newspaper ran an article yesterday where the writer explained that being nice can actually get you a lot in the post-katrina environment. Everyone is just sick and tired of it all I guess. There is not much sympathy anymore for anyone -- maybe from around the country (except forall those who have forgotten by now that this ever happened), but there is no sympathy for each other. It's "move out the way or get run over" around here.

The day before yesterday two friends stopped at my house during their evening walk. They needed to use the phone to call the sheriff because of a domestic issue on the street behind our house. I saw him hurl a huge recyle bin at the hood of his girlfriend's car as she tried to leave. Later we saw the police talking to her and an ambulance came to check her out. Nice.

The holiday spirit seems to be severly lacking as well. It's nearly a week after Thanksgiving, and there are hardly any homes with Christmas decorations up. Most people in our area put up holiday displays that rival National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation movie. This year, folks are just too tired I think.

Yesterday, we finally mustered up enough energy to put up a lite-version of what we normally put up. Usually we put lights up over the entire house. I just don't think we could stand to spend one more minute up on that roof this year. We've been up there enough already! So, we put up our big inflatable Santa and a bunch of white lights in the bushes. It looks nice. I think there are only two houses on our street with any Christmast lights so far. Normally we have a competition in our neighborhood for the best dressed house over the holidays. Not a lot of competition for that this year, I'm afraid.

It does feel good to stick to routines a little though. I think people would feel better if they would at least make an attempt at their old routines. On the other hand, I don't even want to think about going Christmas shopping.