Nectarines are swell... and other crap

Story #1: Nectarines are swell
Sunday afternoon my wife peeled and cut up a nectarine, but for some reason she didn't like the taste. Seemed fine to me, so I finished it off. Of course, about an hour later my throat was swelling. Not swelling shut, but it's like the soft palette gets inflamed or something. This is the problem I have with apples as well. I can eat apple sauce and apple pie, but give me a raw apple (usually with the skin still on) and my throat gets all kerfluged. It makes it uncomfortable to swallow food and it sucks. And depending on how much I eat, it can either take a hour for the swelling to go down or a day. Well, I ate an entire nectarine, so it took about 24 hours for it not to feel like I was swallowing fine sandpaper.

I think it's something that they spray on the fruit to fight off bugs and disease. I told my boss about it yesterday in passing and he said 'yeah, about 10 years ago the same thing started to happen to me. Unless the fruit is peeled, my throat gets all swollen. The interesting part about this conversation, is this is about the same time I started having problems. I remember eating an apple at work around 1998 or 1999. I didn't wash it (cause I was a stupid bachelor) and the next thing I knew my throat was nearly swollen shut. I could still breathe fine but swallowing food took effort. That lasted about 2 days that first time.

The interesting thing about this is that my wife had peeled the nectarine. However, the skin of an apple and nectarine are much different. Nectarine skin is much more porous, so I'm guessing whatever insecticide they use gets absorbed by the fruit itself. Just the though of having my daughter eat that crap scares me a bit. Guess we'll be getting organic apples and nectarines from now one since organic fruits don't usually get sprayed with stuff like that.

Story #2: Other crap...
So, Sunday morning we hopped into the van and were heading off to Waffle House because it sounded REALLY tasty. So we backed out of the van. That's when I noticed the toilet paper hanging off my car. I figured it was some teenage boneheads. I wanted to make sure that they hadn't done anything else to the car so I got out. Once I got around to the driver side that's when I saw it... smeared on the windows. Yes. It was poop. I don't know what kinda poop. Might have been doggie poop, but I've cleaned up after dogs before and, um... it didn't smell like this. So went to the faucet and put some water on the toilet paper and proceeded to clean off said crap. Some of it had dried pretty good, so it took some scrubbin' to get it all off.

I looked around and all the other cars that were out on the street (and in my neighborhood, that is about every freakin' house) and they all seemed to be fine. Just mine. And that makes this just weird. We pretty much keep to ourselves, so it bugs me that this happened. I have the feeling that my years is a 'through way' between my neighborhood and the 2 different neighborhoods which lie in my backyard. We don't have a fence like most of our neighbors, so it's probably just an easy place to cross.

But, anyway, it also bugs me because there have been several acts of weirdness that happen at my house. In the past 5 years, the following have weird things have occurred:
1) One day when taking out the trash I noticed a billfold in my big city trashcan that sits outside. It looked fairly new. I figured Maryann had it and didn't want it so she threw it away. Mine was getting crappy, so I figured waste not want not. So I opened it up and noticed it wasn't new. It had a persons license, college ID, and various other things. I asked a couple of neighbors if they knew who the person was. Turns out it was one of the kids down the street. Dumb ass had left it in his car, which was likely unlocked. He had just gotten his first paycheck and the silly fool had cashed it. Of course, the money was gone. But at least he got his library card back. But why did they pick MY trashcan. It's not like there aren't other trashcans sitting outside in my neighborhood.

2) Another time I noticed that there was a purse laying in the street. Turns out it was a small Coach purse. It was empty with the exception of a scrap of paper which had someone's work schedule on it. I asked several neighbors but it didn't belong to any of them. Again, why dump it outside of my house. My wife tried taking it to Plato's Closet thinking we'd get a few buck out of it cause it was a Coach purse. They wouldn't take it cause they said 'There are alot of counterfeits out there'. Whatever. This was the real deal with a serial number and everything. We ended up giving to her niece. Who knows if she still has it.

3) One day when I was leaving for work I noticed a red duffel back sitting by my garage. It had a bunch of baseball equipment in it: a baseball bat and catcher's gear. I thought maybe some kid dropped it when goofing off with his friends. So I left it in the front year, assuming that they'd pick it up that morning or when they came home from school. I got back from work and it was still there. Again, why did someone drop this random thing in MY yard. Anyways, I did find out that it belonged so some Catholic School. I found info on the school website and tried contacting the principal, athletic director and the baseball coach. The principal and AD never did contact me. But, about 2 hours after I sent the email I did hear from the baseball coach. He said he said, given the color of the shin guards he had a good idea of who's it was, but had some errands to run so he'd call me later and arrange a time to meet up and he could have the school's equipment back. Two months and several emails later, he finally got back in touch with me. He said he lost the original email or something. He had some errands to run that weekend and said he could probably meet up so I could give him the equipment. And of course, I didn't hear from him. After about 8 months of trying to get the equipment to him, I gave up. The wife was tired of tripping over it in the garage, so we gave it to her nephew. He's a big guy, and the stuff was seemingly for a small catcher, so I have no idea what he did with the stuff. At least the bat was nice. Maybe he used that. *shrug*

So, yeah... that's some weird stuff. That's all I can think of at the moment.