BINGO!

Sitting through ten games of regular bingo, ending with an eleventh — a Blackout game (covering the entire card), a 2-1/2 hour adventure, turned out to be more exhausting than scrubbing tiles and shampooing the carpet.

The fact that I was the second person to win — call out “BINGO”, didn’t lessen the pain of it all.

Prizes were Easter baskets filled with candies and various useful items.

I chose the basket containing a loofa, moisturizer, socks, lady shaver, and a salon quality cushion brush.

Inasmuch as the only candy my gut will somewhat tolerate is See’s, and only two or three particular types of See’s candies, I gave all the candy in the basket to Talker to give to her granddaughter.

If I'd seen the hair brush at the time, I'd have given that to her as well, because it's not something I can use and will end up tossing.

Attendance was good. There were residents at every table, about 20 or so and, for one reason or another, only four of us were wearing masks. So, in a day or so if I feel funny, I’ll be using one of those test kits the government sent.

My former friend The Seer was in attendance … without the resident who previously followed her around like a little lapdog — the guy referred to in the blog as Shadow.

The Seer once again gave me that woeful look like she wanted to be friendly; but too late now, so I chilled.

As mentioned elsewhere in the blog, the Seer changed, went to the dark side when she hooked up with Shadow. She became bitter, overly sensitive ─ imagining slights where none were intended, critical and resentful of others and sometimey .... as in, sometimes she’d speak, sometimes she’d turn up her nose and ignore me, sometimes she’d cut her eyes and give me the mad dog treatment, and not just me, but all her former friends.

We’d been such good friends for such a long time that I ignored the behavior, gave her plenty of chances to cut it out until she used up all her chances and I just no longer paid attention to or even acknowledged her presence.

I never learned if Shadow broke up with her or if she broke up with him but, towards the end, I did see him hiding from her.

He'd been sitting out front having a smoke, in a location kinda towards the edge of the property where he couldn't be easily seen from the gate on his and her side of the property. When I saw the Seer come through the gate opposite to their side of the complex, I put two and two together and came to the conclusion she'd walked all the way around looking for him.

When he saw her see him, coming towards him, he looked seriously displeased and began waving his hands in a go away manner.

After that, he moved his smoking spot to further down the street, by the bus stop, where he couldn't be seen from either gate. So, it looks like he broke up with her. They now avoid each other like the plague, and she appears to be lonely for the old friends she can't win back.

In fact, she was seated at the big table with one of the meaner more unpopular residents.

Being seated at the big table I took as an invitation for others to join them, but none did. We all chose small 4-person tables elsewhere in the room.

Some relationship damage cannot be undone.

So anyway, there was a break in the 2-1/2 hours and food was served (egg salad sandwiches, chips, sodas, fruit salad, cupcakes baked by The Baker), none of which I could partake of, but yet and still ….. 2-1/2 friggin hours was exhausting.

A resident that none of us had seen before showed up for bingo and it was funny how many called the Talker over to their table and whispered "Is that her?"

The "her" they were asking about is that Karen character. Evidently, many have heard of the Karen, but few have actually seen her, want to see her and were curious if the mysterious woman who’d shown up was she.

It wasn’t she, but I did get some quite interesting tea about what Karen has been up to.

After all that hoopla about calling the cops on Talker for making too much noise, Corporate getting involved, Karen made yet another complaint — saying that Talker was disturbing her peace by exercising at 3:30 in the morning.

That’s the same hour, the girl downstairs complained to management that I was disturbing her peace "bouncing a ball" .... 3:30 a.m. So I laughed and said to Talker, "Sounds like they went to the same school of crazy".

Inasmuch as Talker had replied to the accusation same as I did, that "The only thing I’m doing at 3:30 is sleeping", and because it was an illogical accusation, Karen was told that if she made one more complaint she’d have to move.

Not relocate to another unit, but move out of the community.

That seems to have tamed the Karen beast but, what she does now is a number of weird things. One is she listens for when Talker comes down the stairs. Comes outside and says things like, "I just saw your blonde friend go by".

She’s talking about Jan, the pained rock lady. Who, btw, was present at bingo, and is not doing well, not at all.

At any rate, as for what Karen seeing Jan go by has to do with anything, the Talker doesn’t know.

Talker also doesn’t know what was meant by, one of those times Karen came out when she heard Talker coming down the stairs and said, "You might think of moving".

Is that some kind of threat?

For a while there, Jan was back to painting rocks and had placed a few in the patch of dirt in front of Karen’s unit — one saying "Love thy neighbor" another "Be kind", and a few Easter themed rocks.

Talker came downstairs and, of course, Karen — hearing her coming down, had stepped outside, whereupon the Talker noticed all the rocks were gone.

"What happened to the rocks" she asked Karen.

"I saw some woman take them" she said.

Talker said to me, "I knew she was lying, so we watched her and, sure enough, she retrieved them from where she’d hidden them and we saw her put ‘em back".

Last bit of tea I got was that Karen had been continuing to follow and spy on Talker (that's probably why she steps outside every time she hears Talker come out. So, she can follow her).

Well, one day Red Light happened to catch her following Talker, walked up to her, got in her face and said, "Stop following my friend. Get back in your unit. Leave my friend alone!"

Karen turned around and hightailed it back.

Talker thinks Karen is afraid of Red Light.

Probably has never had anyone get in her face, confront her before.

Good to know that’s all it takes. Too bad Talker can’t do it for herself.

I’ll leave you with a photo of us winners — those of us who scored bingo and got to choose a basket.

Woman seated on the right, in the bunny hat won twice — two baskets.

Here's a closeup of the cute bunny hat, which (photo) she allowed me to take.

Woman seated on the left is the one residents thought might be the infamous Karen, but is not. She won the Blackout Game, went home with the big basket.