settling of scores.

I must begin with an apology for the lack of posting recently. Woodstock campus was thrown amuck last week when 13 computers blew out and off the network all due to a faulty 'airport' wireless connection somewhere on campus. Of course, that wireless port was ours and considering our lack of technology skills, it was an accident (at least on my half of things). As a result, Midlands Duplex has been unplugged for the past week and it was quite nice to drop out of the system for a while.
As of today we are back in action.

Following are the events of last Sunday.
After feeding the coolie a banana and unloading the food from the absurdly large metal crate he had just carried to my house on his back; distributing majority of the weight over the small span of his forehead, he downs three glasses of panne (water) and is out the door.
Thing is, he must not have closed the door completely. Perhaps if he had, or if he had just been ten minutes later, the day would have ended up much differently and maybe, just maybe, my heart would go back to normal.
As I am in the kitchen putting the museli and oatmeal digestive into the cupboards, the ginger and sweet potatoes on the rack, and the garbanzo beans in the fridge, I hear Nan rummaging around with a bag in the living room..

me: "what should we have for dinner?"
-no response
"are we almost out of tp, I think I forgot to order some"
-no response
"Nan, is there any room outside on the drying rack?"
-no response
"what the hell, why are you ignoring me?"
-no response

At this point, I am sure I must have done something horribly wrong and was receiving the silent treatment as punishment. Venturing out of my new found lair in the kitchen, I leave prepared to apologize on hands and knees for whatever it was I had done wrong.
The second I step through the doors into the room, I can sense something is off. two primary factors tripped this brilliant revelation .
Firstly: it was silent, eerily silent- far too silent. Secondly: there was not six foot blonde Scandinavian anywhere to be found.

Glancing down, I find the root of the problem: one quite large and overweight alpha male rhesus mackaw monkey forcefully digging through a bag of art supplies- in our living room.
For a breif moment we made eye contact. Him looking like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and me like a handicapped deer caught in the headlights.

Obviously, this is not the monkey in my house. But he did look like this..

I cannot be entirely sure what happened next. My heart started to beat somewhere around 250 beats per minute, and I immediately began to sweat. Sensing my bodily changes and responding to my shouts of 'nan.....NAN...and a quite creative string of obscenities, he decided it was time for action.
There was a lot of screaming, arm flailing and kicking that ensued. Somehow, I must have managed to at least look a little bit intimidating because he bolted to the front door. It is far more likely that I resembled a tantric schictozphrenic octupus and he felt the urgent need to gather his friends and have them get a load of the spectacle.
As he finds himself at the door, aware that this is final chance to be in contact with the crazy lady and therefore he should probably man up and at least do something threatening to assert his alpha male dominince, he bares his teeth while leaning forward with his shoulders square as if to say 'bring it'
and oh did I bring it. I dead sprinted to the front door, kicked him and slammed the door in his face. Problem solved. I thought.

Sadly, on account of the two pots of coffee and care package full of Korean candy I had consummed prior to the incident, my heart continued to beat at a much higher than average pace. Going outside once I had my breathing under control, I surveyed the scene realizing my favorite scarf from the leoprasy mission which had been nicely draped over the clothesline was no longer there. Turns out the monkey had the last word. Searching both in the top most brnches and down the cud- even considerably away from the house, it was absolutely no where to be found. 
At least for a few days.

Nan was the one to spot the scarf Thursday morning high in a tree. We figured it would be no big deal, that I could climb the tree after school and it would provide us with a few laughs and ultimately be a success. This is not the case.
I have attempted three times now, to retrieve the scarf and it is proving to be impossible.
The looks are deceiving, it looks as if the scarf is on a branch just ten feet away from the fence. This might be true, but in the expanse of that ten feet, there is a 30 foot drop straight down the cud.
After much deliberation I have decided my options are:
1. Take a running leap off of the fence and grab onto the tree limb from which I can easily climb up to the scarf. Problems here:
-if I miss the tree I will either fall down the cud or impale myself on a nearby tree
-even if I do get to the limb, how will I get down?
-I have a fear of climbing fences ever since I broke my arm climbing one...how the heck am I supposed to leap off of one?
-I am not a monkey and would likely not even come close to catching the branch.

2. Get to the base of the tree and climb up. This seems simple enough, but the problem is, my scarf is on the lowest branch, 25 feet up from the ground. This means I would have to shimmy my way up the tree, having no branches or limbs to help aid in my journey. Problems here:
-I am not a shimmeyer, every year during the rope climb in elementary P.E. class I ended up either injuring myself, crying in public, loosing an entire layer of my hand skin or was at home 'sick'
-I do not have super human grip considering I am just an average person
-I do not have anything closely resembling 'hops' so would not even be able to get a head start

3. Get a ridiculously large pole or branch and try to fish it out. Problems here:
-any branch that large is also very heavy and awkward to maneuver
-After searching all over my lawn and down the hill, I wasn't able to find anything long enough, other than a bit of our Christmas tree from last year, which I tried tossing like a javelen to the scarf, I also tried throwing a few rocks: no success.

After a morning of failed attempts, I decided I would just take a few pictures and blog about it, hoping that some epiphany would strike me while reflecting on the situation. It has not. And, on top of everything, after sucking up my fence climbing fear in order to get a few photos in, I tumbled down the cud, almost breaking my camera, ripping my pants and severely bruising myself in numerous places. I didn't even make it to the base of the tree...

I guess I will just have to leave it as it is for now, hoping that the monkey will feel sorry for me one of these days, forgive me for kicking him, and will nicely put the scarf back on the clothesline.