What's That Now?

Since I no longer had my niece Kate to entertain this week, Jared and I were able to get back to working on my dining room.  The wainscoting is now like 25% done and the tin ceiling has been totally sealed with silicone.  Here's the wainscoting:

I'm getting so excited to have the room done that I sent some pics to my family to brag a little.  Some of my siblings had some nice things to say but my dad just asked why I sent him a picture of some buckets.  This insensitivity came despite the fact that I have been very engaged and supportive with all the pictures he has been sending me documenting his drive cross country with his boyfriend Alan, which I might add look mostly like this:

What do you want?  Some people are jerks I guess.  Anyhoo...  While I was inside doing the ceiling silicone but mostly doing my homework instead of helping work on the wainscoting, Jared was outside cutting wood and making a buddy.  This buddy lives kitty corner to the back of my fence in the following house:

This buddy also asked if he could step through the giant hole in my fence to go talk to my other neighbor who lives to the right of me (from this perspective, he would be the unseen house to my left), while telling Jared his theory for why the fence is broken.  I might add that he never thought to mention that maybe it's because the fence is old and shitty and wasn't replaced on time by the previous owner...  I thought it was kind of hilarious he wanted to crawl through the fence, and since I am replacing the fence this year, felt generous enough to let him use my gaping hole while he still can.  I asked Jared if he had a new boyfriend upon which, Jared agreed the man was just his type:  old, smoker, with a thick Rhode Island accent.  I replied I was glad I moved to RI so he could find his perfect mate...  I digress...

After talking to the Jared, the neighbor walked back home and in a bit, he was back through the fence again with a gift...  3 new raspberry starts, probably because he noticed I am working on expanding a raspberry bed right in front of the fence he just tramped back through.  Jared also mentioned at some point that he had learned from his new boyfriend that his wife IS MARIA'S COUSIN!!!   Yep.  That Maria.  The same Maria I have vilified for 2 years.  And man am I glad I wasn't the one out talking to him when he discussed my fence because it would have come out what I thought of Maria and Jared's boyfriend and I might not have had a chance to become friends.  I of course tried to stalk him for you dear readers.  But this is all I got:

That's the top of his head on the right next to the fence pole.  I had to take the pic through my living room window because I was naked from my shower, had clean underpants upstairs, and couldn't stand on my deck to get the better shot.  Plus, I was also trying to be covert and not let him know I was spying on him.  It reminded me of some other spying I used to do a lot of when I first moved to the Ocean state:

I might try to learn Jared's boyfriend's name, or I might just call him Joe 2.  I haven't decided yet.  Either way, I now have a new friend I need to be nice to and since that friend brought me some plants, I probably ought to send some cookies his way.  Maybe one of these days stupid Maria will show up at his house and Joe 2 can tell her what a nice person I am.  And maybe I'll finally be able to answer the question of what would happen if I saw Maria again.  Like specifically, whether I really would tell her what I thought about her while strangling her to death with my strong bare hands...  On second thought, maybe I better tell Joe 2 to keep his damn mouth shut about me...