A Happy Not-Yet-Friday! (It's Friday for me ::smug::)

Okay, so this office special is seemingly random. Okay, not seemingly, it is random... but go figure, one cannot always control what comes out of one's head... and the first thing that popped into my head when I was drawing (after I finished a rather cheesy looking replica of an Ingres pencil portrait replacing the people's heads with cat heads... but I won't get into that today) was the memory of my sister's sheep when we put Bob the Llama into the enclosure with them the first time.

They were terrified; except for 'Pruneface' the sheep. He liked Bob. He hung out near him all the time. But Bob, being a snooty, popular sort, didn't like any of the sheep; and spurned them on the most part. Instead, he buddied up with Chewy the pack goat, and the two of them would pal around in the fields, and every day, I'd drive up to see them both sitting in the shade of the oak tree side by side. The sheep had long gotten used to Bob, but still did their own thing on the most part. Except Pruneface. He hung about nearby as if the spurned loser that nobody wanted in their clique. Poor guy.

Sometimes I miss my sister's farm. Not often, but I find myself missing Pruneface, whose trust in me was hard-earned, but precious; because I had worked so hard to get him to let me pet his pruney sheep-head. I miss the Shetlands too, especially the little ones... and the goats. I really miss Bob sometimes, and his weird kazoo noise and floopy llama-lips. But mostly, I miss the self-sufficiency of collecting beautiful aracauna eggs... the wood fires after the stove got hot, and the privacy of the place. I wish sometimes I had that sort of acreage again not just for the sake of having a horse of my own at home, but also so Simon and Flower can run until their little wheels wear off and I don't have to worry if they're going to get squished by a tourist in an escalade who's renting a nearby cabin.

We get real characters up where we are. Recently, we've had a snotty little spoiled brat whose mother rented her a cabin up the street so she could 'quietly study for college' while she taught at Windells; a camp for boarders and BMXers that's near where we live. She's a ski-champ; and a total spoiled-rotten brat, it turns out. The moment she had the cabin, the owner was phoned by all of the surrounding neighbors complaining about the speeds at which the girl and her family and friends were driving down the gravel road, the hoards of cars crammed into the parking area when she held parties (which was against the renting rules) and all manner of other issues. We're not close to the cabin, so we only noticed the cars going by at breakneck speed, arcing gravel and dust behind them in great clouds, and nearly squashing Simon once. She was supposed to be there alone according to the cabin owner, who lamented all this to me this week, but then mom appeared to 'visit', she came to stay, with the girl's friend, and then her son, and her son's friend. This cabin is SMALL. It has one room with a double bed and a loft you can barely stand in. That's it. All of these people wormed their way in. Unbelievable.

Whenever the cabin owner went to confront her about breaking the rental rules and neighbor complaints, her mother was there to defend her daughter's behaviour. "She's a good girl, she's a good girl!" The ski-champ could not handle even the smallest confrontation, and would collapse into hyperventilation, and her mother would resort to panic; "She's got Hyperventilation problems!" she would cry. Wow. How does she handle ski competition? Hyperventilating down the hill? Please. The cabin owner was having the worst time trying to get this pack of stupid people out of her cabin before they destroyed it. They finally left yesterday... Thank heavens. The neighborhood is breathing a collective sigh of relief.

The problem is that people who come up to a neighborhood like ours to rent are up to have a good time. They have no sense of responsibility, no sense of ownership; they don't care because in a week or so, they're gone. So they are loud, dirty, obnoxious, entitled, speeders, destructive, pushy and all number of other things to make us resentful of them; even if they are the bread and butter of a recreational community like the villages of Mount Hood.

And now it's 4th of July weekend. I can look forward to driving home in a gridlock of RVs, SUVs and Subarus with stuff strapped all over them; heading in my direction; all crammed with people who don't really think about the fact that this is a community, not just a resort. I suppose it's the price I pay for living where I do. But at times like this, that 20 acre farm sure looks good.