Our landlord sent an e-mail last night at 11:30 pm saying that he'd come by the other day and "you should really take care of the gutters, as it is your responsibility as a tenant and water backing up could go under the roof and ruin all the hard work that has been done on the house". Wait, the hard work you did on the house so you could sell it for a ginormous profit but then the market tanked so you ended up with us, renters certainly, but quiet, uncomplaining good tenants? And you would like us to assist in protecting your equity by pulling clots of leaves and the g-damned evilest spawn of a tree, the sweet gum seed pod, from your gutters on a pitched roof that you need to climb up on? This seemed unreasonable to me, as I have never been asked to do yard work for a rental property before and we are already raking, mowing etc.,which hello, is half the reason I don't own a house LandlordMan - cuz I don't want to be responsible for things like gutters. I searched the lease and it said nothing about yardwork, on either side. More importantly, I Googled the issue and find many people in America are cheerfully cleaning the gutters of their rental property and are not bitterly resentful like I am. He finished his e-mail with the cheerful rejoinder that he would take it out of our deposit if we didn't comply. Other people prosper under petty authority, I rankle and spit, to my detriment I suppose.
I went to work this morning, for the library was open. I was then sent home, because only essential staff were supposed to be there. Fine! Home to the husband and the baby who is just 23 pounds of pure walking menace now. They should invent a house where when your baby turns 1 years old it drops 3 feet and the bottom 3 feet is just padded vinyl covered over with plexi and the baby is in this pit and you walk around with your adult belongings 3 feet up, peering down at them like through a glass bottomed boat. I would clean the gutters for a house like that.

We went for a walk this afternoon and in lieu of an organized Day of Service act, took a garbage bag and picked up litter. According to the side of the road litter, Durham enjoys many frosty tallboys of Icehouse beer, packs of Newports and boxes of Bojangles chicken, every single night. Awesome.