Crochity, Cantankerous and Ornery

Meet the three dwarves they don't like to talk about.

Those are the words of the day. I didn't start using ornery on Jacob until later in the day when all my reserves of patience had been used up, but don't you know, once I did he repeated the word back to me perfectly. Now every time I tell him no to something he's gonna point and tell me to stop being ornery.

Early this morning Jacob and I were awoken by Stella pounding away on something metal in her back yard, for what purpose other than to wake us, I have no idea. When we went out to walk the dogs, she started to come over and I said to Jacob, loud enough for her to hear, "Look, it's the alarm clock lady." She didn't like that. She wanted her caulk back. I guess she'd asked Zach to caulk something for her the other day and he hadn't quite gotten around to it yet. She said, "That's the last time I'll ask him to do something for me." I want to believe she meant it like, the poor dear, he is so busy, I shan't trouble him like that. But I can't avoid the fact that it came out more like, rotten, ungrateful neighbors can't even help an old lady...

The she told me how the back neighbor mowed down the field behind her house for her and how she joked with him that if other people aren't going to help take care of it, then he'd better put up a no-trespassing sign. I laughed and started to walk away and Stella stopped me one more time. "Don't you pick up their crap?"

"Oh, well, if they go in the woods, like where no one walks then I don't, but if they go on someone's lawn..." I trailed off cuz she didn't look happy.

"Well where's your bag?" She demanded.

"Um...it's in my pocket." I lied and walked quickly away before she could see I was sorely lacking pockets.

I was so bleary-eyed from not yet having coffee that it took me a minute to realize by bringing up Zach's inaction in the caulking department, and the neighbor's activity in the mowing department, she was making a clear distinction - Us:Bad, Neighbors:Good. And when she joked about the no-trespassing sign, she was threatening me with expulsion from her land should my husband fail to be the fix-it man next time her roof starts leaking. Geeze, whatever happened to simply loaning a cup of sugar from time to time? She may be all of those words, but boy is she good.