Define Normal

Remember how I told you earlier this week I got a flat tire somehow on the way home from dropping Kitten off at work and I didn't realize it until about 20 minutes before I had to be at my job? It was pouring down rain and I was pretty sure my life couldn't suck much more than it did in that moment? Normal neighbors came to the rescue. I think I mentioned that. They saw I was in distress and the guys came over and changed my tire for me so I didn't have to mess up my work clothes. Very chivalrous, right?

I had promised them if they told me what kind of beer they liked I would totally go get them some as a way of telling them thank you. I don't think they believed me. While I was relaxing that afternoon, getting ready for my night shift at work the girls ran up to the gas station to fill up the air in the tires and they picked up some beer for them as a way of saying thank you. I didn't know this until I noticed that the truck was back in our driveway and they were nowhere to be seen.

Turns out they were making friends with the normal neighbors. They got a full round of introductions and how everyone was related to everyone. They got stories about babies and grandbabies and children and the whole nine yards. I think we are now able to recognize who is who when we see people coming and going. I always thought that they had a lot of friends. Turns out they just have a really, really big family.

Tonight we were sitting on the front porch watching the stray cats wrestle over the food we had put out for them when Mrs. Normal Neighbor and her daughter, Fate, came by. Fate had her newborn with her so we could coo over how cute he was. Actually, for a newborn he was pretty adorable. I think most of them look like aliens, but he actually looks like a little person. She laughingly showed us how his hairline is already receding (poor little dude). We also got a rather strange story about how the baby sucks on your lip if you give him kisses. It made me giggle.

Mrs. Normal neighbor started talking to Kitten and Oscelot about something, I don't know what. I think about her auto detailing business. Fate pulled me aside to ask what kind of flower my hollyhocks were. I was explaining to her about them, then she obligingly let me lead her around the front yard, telling her all about the flowers I was planting and the ones I wanted to plant. I told her about our plans for the house, like repainting it and refinishing our porch by the end of the summer.

Somehow we got onto the topic of our crazy neighbors. We aren't too fond of them. Turns out she isn't either. We were talking about how the houses two and three away from us were a mess. It was funny. We talked about how we cant seem to get a normal set just next to us to save our souls. I confessed I had hoped for a nice couple, or an old lady or maybe (because we saw some) another pair of lesbians. That would have been really nice.

Fate got on a tangent about the house three down from us. They have a fenced in front yard but its like a chiken wire type fence, not a chain link or anything decent. Their front yard is full of crap. Now, I can understand some kids toys but their yard is piled with them. I don't mean there are a lot. I mean they are literally all over on top of each other. Plus the yard is full of other miscellaneous junk like old tires and holiday decorations never put away. Honestly, its an eyesore. (one of the three renters left on our block too- suprise!)

While we were talking about it she told me this story about a house she had lived in before in another part of town. Apparently their neighbor was a hoarder. You know, like the ones you see on television? She did that, and apparently this stuff spilled out of her house and onto her front porch. Fate said that she had no room for trash so she just threw it in her back yard. She and her roommates complained to the health department, but nothing was done about it. The house continued to become more filthy and Fate got to where she felt like it was a health and safety hazard to allow it to continue.

Now, I must preface this with: I in know way condone what she did next. I do, however, think that it was hilarious. Fate went to the health department, snuck one of tehir complaint forms home, scanned it into her computer and made some sort of fake order of inspection. She got all dressed up, grabbed a clipboard and put a bunch of papers underneath her fake order and then went to this lady's house. She gained entry to the house under the auspices of being a health department official! This lady actually let her in! Then she "inspected" the house and told the lady it had to be fixed or there would be all kinds of pentalties, including her possibly being evicted from her house. It worked. Now, it was pretty mean, but honestly, I thought it was rather clever, and funny too. Of course, that's my sense of humor, I suppose.

After we had laughed over that and how she was contemplating doing that to the neighbors down the street, we switched over to relationships. We were leaning against my truck looking up at Kitten and Oscelot and she asked me how many people we had in our house. She thought four. (why did she think four? I'mnot sure. Kitten postulates she thinks its the Lifeguard. I thought maybe she had seen Black Magic coming and going while she still hung out with us. I didn't have the nerve to ask...As it is, neither of them have been over in a month or so...) Anyway, I corrected her and told her that there was just the three of us. Then she asked if any of us were dating, or if we all lived together or what. I tried as best I could to explain the nature of our relationship. Fate just kept nodding her head. She was all "that's so cool," which I thought was adorable.

Then she launched into a story about how she used to date girls. I got the whole rundown about her being a bisexual and how she had been with eight (wow, she keeps track) women and how she thought the emotions were way different with a woman than with a man. I agreed on that one, but I also told her it can be totally crazy. We laughed together over my description of our household when all three of us are on our cycle. Its pretty bad sometimes. She continued, telling me all about this girl she was with, number 8, and how she was totally crazy about her and she had ditched her long-term boyfriend to be with her. I got all the gory details. Then she told me about how Number 8 had cheated on her, with a gay guy no less, and how she caught them cheating at a tanning salon. (another reason I am so never going to a tanning bed in our town, outside of the ill health effects!) Anyway, she told me that after that episode she decided she'd rather be with guys because there's less emotion involved, and she doesn't have to worry so much. As she put it "I can go to any restaurant in town and pick me up a nice tube steak- but finding a great girl...that's real hard" I tried not to goggle, because I'm sure even in the twilight it would have been obvious.

I tried to cover up my discomfort by looking upwards. She noticed, and pointed out to me the big dipper and the little dipper. I was actually kind of impressed she could find them. Its hard enough to see the stars in the middle of the city, finding constellations takes talent. Then we got on the topic of lunar and solar eclipses. She postulated that if the world ends, she figures it will either be the sun or the moon crashing down on top of us. We won't even have time to worry. Then we were joking about how we were preparing for the zombie apocolypse (btw- if you come to our house, the password is brraaiiins...I mean, raspberry jam). She laughed and said she thought that would be fun, because we could toally like shoot the zombies in the head or get them with axes and no one would care. The police (she said) would be looking on, all "Good job. That was a nice shot. Get that machete back."

Then there was a very abrupt change to the topic of how fucked up her family is (her words, not mine). I won't go into a lot of detail, but you know, her family is almost as messed as mine is, in its own way. I was trying not to laugh a couple of times. I think my favorite quote was "You know, my sister makes me cry all the time. She's always talking about how hard she has it. But she has a job and a car and a house and everything. She's got a boyfriend, even though he's a douchebag, at least he helps her. Here I am, wanting a job and not able to find one, my car broke down, and raising two kids by myself while living with my mom and dad! Who has it bad? You tell me!" I did respect her more after that though, because she does want to do well for herself, she's trying. She's just not succeeding.

After that Mrs. Normal Neighbor came over with a phone call for her, and we bade her goodnight. When we got inside I was regaled with tales from the girls about Mrs. Normal Neighbor. It was definately interesting.

I will say this, though, I am grateful to have at least one set of friendly, normal-ish neighbors. They want to get along. They're polite. They wave hello and goodbye. They don't get all up in our space if we don't want them too. I mean, chances are they are at home right now talking about their crazy lesbian neighbors and how all three of us were dating each other all at once. I'm sure they think we're a little odd too. At least we keep our house clean, try to keep the grass nicely mowed and we don't do stupid shit like break into other people's houses or driving our cars top speed into the phone poles on our block. (that happened last summer. Not fun)

So that's the story on our Normal Neighbors.

In other news, I told my mom about going back to school today. I got just about the response i thought I would. First she asked if I even thought they would let me in. I told her I was already admitted. Then she asked if they would let me take classes since I was in default on one of my student loans. I told her yes, as long as I made payment arrangement, it was fine. Then she asked how I thought I was going to pay for it. I told her I qualified for some grants, and some loans and also, the classes were inexpensive enough that if I chose to go part-time, I could make payment plans (Local CC calls it E-cashiering) and it would be fine. Then she asked me if I was just going to quit my job and leave Kitten and Oscelot to support me, and how unfair was that, and didn't I think of anyone but myself and I was going to end up leaving my household destitute. I couldn't work and go to school, of course I couldn't, I would flunk out. Just like I had before.

I didn't bother explaining that this time I wouldn't have to work 40+ hours to support my partner, because my partners are good people. I didn't explain that I failed because I was starving and my life was coming apart at the seams (this would imply she didn't notice the last time). I didn't explain that I actually can balance work and school because I had managed to do it for four semesters before the one bad one I had. No...it seemed like a waste of breath.

I have, sometimes, this disconnect from reality. For some reason, I thought she would be happy for me. That she might say so, especially since up until now she has made it a point to nag me about going back to school every time she sees me. I thought maybe she would tell me that it was great I had two loving, wonderful partners who wanted to help me. Even a "you can do it, I have faith in you" would have been really nice. I kick myself for wanting it, because I had discussed telling my mom with the girls last night and we all agreed that she was going to be unsupportive and probably critical of me going back to school. Why, oh why, my friends, do I still insist on thinking I'm one day going to wake up and have a sitcom mom who wants to cheer for me and wants the best for me?

I told Mrs. Boss about it today. Her and Mr. Boss have been really supportive and happy for me. She ahs already offered to accommodate my schedule as much as I need her to (I don't, I'm taking classes on my days off. I'll have all night on my work days to study, since she already gives me a fantastic schedule.) Mrs. Boss says she thinks its sad that my mom feels like she has to keep me down because I want to achieve more than she has, more than Punk has. She says if she were my mom she'd be fighting tooth and nail to make sure I had every possible opportunity to make something more of myself than she had. I thought it was really sweet. I told her so. Honestly, even though she's only ten years older than me, I feel like she does the stand in mom thing a lot. She's a good boss to have, because she actually cares about her employees lives, and wants us to be happy, successful people.

It does, though, irritate the hell out of me. I mean, honestly. My mom sings Punk's praises every time she talks to me, even though I don't want to talk about him and I've told her so. This last time she was telling me how proud she was that he is holding down steady employment (he's had the job for a month). I mean, he's 28 years old. This should hardly be an accomplishment worth cheering for. Especially since he is still using her as a banker. She pays his bills. He doesn't even have a place to live. he got rid of his last apartment when his roomies moved out and he's couch surfing right now. I get frustrated. I remember when he got his GED, she asked me what I was going to get him. I told her I was planning on sending him a card. She asked how much money I was going to put in it. She was shocked when I told her I wasn't. Her response was "You got money when you graduated high school." Yeah. When I was 17, and going off to college. Not when I was 26 and not doing anything but living off my mother. Maybe I'm mean about this?

Sometimes I think that my resentment of Punk clouds my judgement. Don't get me wrong, I think its great he has a job. I was glad when he got his GED. I just- - I'm not sure its something that should be counted as a major life accomplishment. I feel bad sometimes because he's sold himself short. I know that you know I am a smart girl. I'm not kidding when I say Punk is way smarter than I am. His IQ higher. He always tested higher than me in grade school. There's no reason he couldn't have been everything he wanted to be. The thing is, Punk choose to be nothing instead. He's made a ton of bad choices, many of which contribute to me not wanting to have him as a part of my life. But, I don't know, I've mentioned it before, i harbor a little bit of anger towards him because despite of all of his bad choices my mom treats him like he's the better child. I know for a fact he's her favorite. It bothers me. Its not even that I want to be the favorite, so much as I just wish she treated me with the respect Ifeel like I've earned as an adult.

I'm whining, aren't I?

I should stop.

So that's me tonight. A talk with normal neighbors and a rant about my family.

Same ol' same ol

Have a good one friends.
AGxx

What I've Learned From My Neighbors, Part 2

This is Jade, you read about her in Part 1 of this post.


I'm hoping you found this morning's post entertaining and informative, because I wasn't nearly done when I had to stop and run off to wrok this morning.

In case anyone is interested, work was lovely today and I actually had decent guests who took good care of me. It has been a plesant change from the last two weeks. It was the most fun I've had on the clock in a while. Incidentally, I local restaurant blogger came in today and sat in my section. This is his digital shout out, if he come by. *waves* You were awesome, thanks.

So, without further ado, more things I have learned from my neighbors.

1. Stealing and Selling Scrap Metal is a Great Form of Income- Unless Your Wife Rats You Out. The neighbors who lived next to us prior to these guys (you know, the one who sort-of mowed my lawn) discovered after the lawn mowing incident that between the lawn and the garage sales they were not going to make enough money. We started seeing him hauling a lot of metal goods around his back yard. This isn't suprising, we recycle, a lot of people in town do, and they pay you a decent amount of cents to the dollar by the pound for scrap metal and aluminum cans. This is convenient to us because not far from our neighborhood is a scrap recycling place.

What we didn't realize for a while was he wasn't coming by this metal honestly. We found out one night as we were crawling into bed. Kitten and I noticed there were little beams of light outside our bedroom window, which is creepy, so we had a peek. It was the local PD. Turns out MowerMan had been stealing scrap from the place up the road, and other places, and then selling it back. It was working out well, I suppose he thought. We noticed the police checking things out and then they went to the front door. Now, I know it's totally classless to spy on your neighbors through the shades while they get arrested. You know what? I don't care. It was funny in a sad way. We saw him sneaking out the back door while his wife answered the front one, claiming he wasn't home. I don't think the PD bought it for a minute. So they note they are going to be in the neighborhood for when he gets back.

MowerMan's wife wsn't too sharp. The minute she shut the door she got on her cell phone and called someone, I think her sister, and started shouting about how he had gotten caught and the police were on to him and he had to sneak out the back door to get away. She also mentioned how she hated our city and wished they had stayed in the country. I'm sure you will gather, her windows were open. I'm pretty sure that since we could hear it in our house, the police could hear it too. When he tried to sneak in later that night they caught him. Alas, he got out on bail somehow.

2. You Don't Have to Be a Responsible Parent if Your Neighbors Are. My newest neighbors haven't been a real treat, to tell you the truth. I wanted to give them a chance, really. Early on, before they had used up their trashcan welcome, I wanted to think they were just a nice, struggling couple who were doing tehir best to get by. I was wrong. Anyway, this was my first clue that maybe, just maybe, they had ridden the Dingbat Express into town with our former neighbors.

Kitten works early mornings, I think I've mentioned. She and I share a vehicle. When the tags expired on my old truck I got rid of it because it got, at most, 13 miles to the gallon. That gets expensive. We'r ein the market for a new car, I like the Prius, but I digress. I drive her to work. That's the point. So one morning last summer I get up to take her to work and we step out on the porch and there is a child outside. He has one of our (very angry) stray cats clutched in his arms and he proceeds to tell me how much he likes our cats. Its 5am. I asked him if his parents knew where he was. He tells me his parents are Neighborguy and Neighborgal and they live at and he tells me thier address. I tell him I know that, but do they know he is out of the house. I can see Kitten, who doesnt care for children, glaring at me from the truck. She's going to be late. I send him back to his house, and when I see him hit the front porch and reach for the door I get in the truck and drive away.

When I return there's no sign of him. I wake Oscelot up at 7 to take her to her (now former) job at Bread World and go out to feed the cats. Now there are two children on my porch. He's gone and gotten his two year old brother. They sure like our cats, they tell me. I tell them they need to go back home. He again parrots to me the name of his parents and his address. I walk them to their front porch and take Oscelot to work. No children when I come home.

Later that day Neighborguy comes over and tells me that the neighbors on the other side of us had called child services and the police, because evidentally the kids had waited until I was out of eyeshot and gone over to play with the other neighbors dog. When the other neighbors found them they took them inside and fed them breakfast while they called the police. Turns out the kids couldn't get inside, they had alarms on the locked front door to keep the kids in. They didn't think to lock the windows, which the 5 year old tore out, and escaped by.

I felt bad until this became a repeat occurence for them, their children constantly escaping from the house to get into our back yard, the neighbors' back yard or some other place they found interesting.

3. Corrolary to 2-Neighbors Double as Awesome Daycare. Neighborguy is unemployed. Surprise. His girlfriend/wife/whatever, does however work at The Devil's Warehouse (walmart). She works the evening shift and he has to go pick her up when she gets off. Like us, they only have one car. Several different times Neighborguy would come over at 11 or 1130 at night and wake us up to see if we would go over to his house to watch his kids for an hour or two while he went to get her. Obviously we said no. One, we get up at 5 most days. Two, why does it take 2 hours to pick up your girlsfriend from her workplace 15 minutes away? Three, they invented carseats for a reason. Just sayin'.

4. Neighbors Can Also Serve as an Excellent HyVee, Netflix or Other Store, When Strapped for Cash. Since he has moved in, neighborguy has come over to borrow the following:
1. Aspirin
2. The phone (at least once a week)
3. DVDs (we told him no on that one. He finished the request with "all of ours are all scratched up, damn kids")
4. Milk
5. Hot dogs
6. Baby Tylenol (we don't have any)
7. Cigarettes
8. A lighter (Hey, want to sit on your porch and talk to me while I smoke?")
This is just a partial list, but you get the idea. You'd think he would figure out he was annoying us. Apparently not.

5. Old Grudges Can Be Buried by a Crazy Neighbor. The people who live to the left of us are an interesting sort. There are always people coming and going, they have a lot of barbeques in the summer, they get a different car about once every two months. I don't mind, they keep to themselves. They always ask permission to get into our back yard if the kids throw their toys over the fence. Once they apologized for one of the kids throwing a roasted hot dog in our back yard on the Fourth of July.

We don't really relat to them, we haven't bonded, but we stay out of each other's way and life is pretty simple for us. We nod if we see each other coming and going and we don't complain about the noise from their summer parties because they don't mess with us, and ont he rare occasion we have groups of people over, they don't bitch if our friends park in front of tehir house. Its all about neighborly respect.

When MowerMan tried to break into the house on the other side of our Normal Neighbors and didn't succeed, he tried the Normal Neighbors house. We had no idea until the next day when Normal Neighbor Guy came over to tell us. He told us to lock up and night, that he'd be watching, and offered to lend us a gun. He worried about two women living by themselves with 'that crazy loose in our neighborhood.'We told him we had our own. But it was a nice gesture.

The only time we had any problem with them, and it wasn't a huge one, was when Guitar Hero lived with us. For those of you unfamiliar, Guitar Hero lived with Kitten and I for about 4 months between December after our marriage and March of that following year. We were doing it as a favor to her. It backfired. No good deed goes unpunished. This is an axiom we lived by at the time. She parked in front of Kitten and I's truck frequently, because she got home before us most days. In the winter she became lazy and didn't want to mess with asking us to back out for her when she wanted to leave. So she would back through the neighbors front yard instead. We were sure they would notice. We did. Plus the tire tracks in the snow didn't help. We told Guitar Hero to desist, to no avail. The Neighbors never said anything, they just lines the side of their yard with little stakes. I don't blame them in the slightest. We told her to knock it off. She did, literally. She took off her rear view mirrors trying toback in between the stakes, our truck, and a very large bush on their property. She stopped after that.

Anyway, we didn't feel comfortable with the whole situation, but since we don't talk very often we were unsure of how to proceed. I thought maybe baking cookies and leaving them a note. Kiteen said to let it go. So we did.

Earlier this summer one of the neighbors on the right side, about three hosues down, was messed up on something and sped out of his driveway, jumped the curb to our street into another one, turned around in oncoming traffic and hit the electrical pole directly in front of our house. We lost power. I was on my way home when it happened. When I got there, Kitten was sitting on the porch with our normal neighbors talking to them about what happened. They saw it becase they were on their front porch.

We all bonded while we watched them replace the pole (we wanted to not be in the house if it fell)and I offered an apology about Guitar Hero and the yard. He waved me off, noting that he had moved out and we were well shod of her. She was nuts. Did we know she would cry so loud at night they could hear it on the back porch if her window was open? Yeah, we did. We were glad she was gone too. He smiled and asked us if we had noticed how many "goddamn crazies" lived inthe rental houses next to us. We agreed. He expressed a desire for those houses to sell to nice families or nice girls like us. Too right.

6. Cute Old Ladies Can Hae Whatever They Want. Always. Before our crazy neighbors the house next door was inhabited by a semi-homebound lady who had a bad leg. We calle dher Neighbor Lady, because in the 5 years she lived next to Kitten, she never mentioned her name. She didn't bother us often, but if she came over it was usually to buy (we never took the money) a cigarette until her son could come take her to the store. Honestly, as bad as her leg was, if she needed one badly enough to hobble over to our house, she could have it. Once she borrowed our plunger. We told her to keep it. She was a nice old lady, she kept to herself, her yard was pretty and she always had flowers on her porch. She didn'thave many visitors, but they were always courteous when they were there and we were in the yard. A few years ago Neighbor Lady had to be moved into a retirement community with healthcare because of her leg. I wish her all the best, I hope she's smoking with the nurnses and living our her old age in style. I miss her. I would have let her have anything she wanted, she was so polite. Why can't we have neighbors like her again?

So that's life with the crazy neighbors. I'm sure you'll get regular updates when our new ones move in. Lord knows, there's probably one blogging about how his three crazy lesbian neighbors dug a huge whole in the front yard last week and haven't done anything with it.


Treasure your Neighbors, Y'all
AG

PS- as I am sure everyone knows, I do not own Netflix, HyVee, or Walmart. Also, Walmart, as far as I am aware, is not actually owned by the devil.

What I've Learned From My Neighbors

I think I've mentioned before that Kitten, Oscelot and I have a home in the downtown area of my city. Since the early nineties there has been a sort of rebirth in the neighborhoods surrounding out downtown and the housing priceees have gone up, the neighborhoods have gotten cleaner and historic districs have been created. The end result, for the most part, has been that relatively low income homes that were pretty unsightly have been turned into nice family homes that have a certain degree of maintenance required by the city, so they are a lot nicer now.

Our neighborhood is one of those neighborhoods now. We became a Historic District at teh beginning of this past year. Outside of the massive increase in property taxes, I actually like the idea. For the most part homes in our neighborhood are owned by the people who live in them, and there has been an extensive amount of improvement to these homes in the last five years. I've actually started to agonize over the need for new siding on the house.

The exception to this we live in the home we own rule are my neighbors to the right. For three solid houses we have renters living next to us. Now, I know you can have nice renters. I used to be one. Trouble is, the guy who owns the houses he rents does not keep them up. We call him Slumlord. He also has all the houses available for a Lease to Own option, which means the renter has to pay a down payment rather than a deposit in hopes of one day owning the house. He rents them to people who could never afford to maintain them or pay the meagre rent. (I think its like $400 a month, next to nothing) When they break the lease he gets to keep the down payment. Its a great deal for him. We hate it.

The result of this let anyone rent so I can take their money policy is we have had some really interesting (and by interesting I mean trashy) neighbors. Now, as a mature adult, I figured I knew a few things about the world, that is, until I mived in with Kitten and met the neighbors. I see now, I've been going about things wrong for quite some time. I thought I might share with you a few of the things I have learned from the people who live in the rentals next to me.

1. If You Really Love Your Spouse Scream Obscenities At Them I honestly didn't know that people actually still did this. If you love your spouse, you should be telling them how worthless they are on a regular basis. You aren't doing it at the top of your voice, you don't care for them enough. Personally, I've learned dropping the c-bomb is a great way to tell a lady she's special to you and that telling a man he is as worthless as some part of a horse or other beast of burden is a real compliment.

2.If You Really, Really Love Them, Do it In the Front Yard Apparently this is the next step up in improving relationship dynamics. (I have to confess every now and again Kitten and I will peep out the windows when they really get to yelling at each other.

3. Possession is Not 9/10ths of the Law About two years ago we had a calico cat show up on our front porch with a broken leg. I took pity on her because she was starving and I put out some cat food. Not suprisingly, she stuck around just like Kitten said she would. A few weeks later two more showed up, a smoke blue bobtail and a creamy-orange bobtail. Both of them had bones poking through their skin and could barely move around the porch. I'm a sucker, so I fed and watered them. (The short version is, we now feed a whole host of strays) Anyway, so we named the grey bobtail Jade because she has pretty green eyes, and the cream bobtail Creamsicle, for know discernible reason I can recall.

Yesterday Oscelot was sitting ont he porch talking to a friend of hers on the phone when our neighbor from two houses to the right interrupted her conversation to inform her that both of those cats belong to him, technically. Jade is supposed to be called Star and Creamsible is supposed to be called Snowball. Oscelot asked him if he was sure, since these cats had lived on our porch for two years and showed up starving. He affirmed they were his. She asked him if he knew that Jade had had kittens and that we were paying tohave her fixed once she finished nursing. He said it was nice of us to take care of his cat like that. Oscelot cooly informed him she was pretty sure that Jade belonged to us now, unless of course he wanted to take her home and take proper care of her. He said no, she was his cat, but he just lets her run around and do whatever she wants. They like to be free. Moron.

I'm working on finding her and Creamsicle homes as soon as I possibly can. They deserve better than my porch and definately deserve better than the meth lab that jerk calls home.

4. Garage Sales Are Not a Viable Form of Income The Neighbors before the ones we have now (whom are, big surprise, moving out soon)were unemployed. They were unemployed the enitre time they lived in the hosue next to us. I wondered aloud several times how they managed to get together the down payment on the house and how they paid their rent. Turns out the guy living there told us that they were allowed to take the house unemployed because they paid the down payment plus three months rent in advance. Once their first three months was up Iwatched eagerly to see what would happen.

As time for the rent came due, I was shocked to see that everything from the inside of their house: furniture, children's toys, dishes, cookware, EVEN FOOD FROM THEIR CABINETS was out in the lawn with a giant "Yard Sale" sign in front of it. It didn't do them much good. The minute they made enough money to get a pack of cigarettes they left the house (Kitten and I were on the Porch) some people drove up and selected some items, but since no one came when they yelled at the house they put the box of stuff in their car and drove off anyway.

After five successive months of garage sales new techniques would have to be employed.

5. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. When Garage Sale Neighbors gave up on the garage sales they moved to other strategems. For example, he brought his newborn over to Kitten and I while we were on the porch and takled about the responsibilites of parenting. Then he asked if he could mow our lawn for $20. We told him no, we didn't have the cash onhand. (True, and I like mowing, because I like being outside.) He smiled happily and said we could pay him by the end of the week, he'd go get the mower.I called after him helplessly to please not blow grass into my flower beds.

He did a terrible job, there were huge mower sized tufts of grass along the entire perimiter of our property. There was geass in my flower beds. The mowing was uneven. I took Kitten to work the next morning at 4:30, she had an early shift. At 5 am, just after I had pulled off my hoodie and was crawling back in bed, he was beating on my door, demanding his $20 and telling me what a good job he did, and how he would weed-eat and weed my flower beds for an additional $20 for each job. I dug in my purse for $20 and I told him no thank you, I would take care of it myself. And I sure did. After I re-mowed the lawn.

When he moved out and our new neighbor moved in, I was delighted. This guy and his wofe seemed normal, even if his children were a little exuberant. I noticed when they began the move in that they were setting trash on their front porch. I told them kindly that if they wanted to they could use ours until their trash cart came. Me, of course, assuming they had trash service and it hadn't been dropped off yet.

Kids, its been almost a year, they still don't have trash service. STILL! About six months ago Oscelot made a list of all the local trash services and how much they cost and gave it to neighbor. Five months ago she called Slumlord and told him about it. He didn't respond to her messages. Four months ago she took one of our spare recycling cans and took all his trash out of our dumpster (it was our entire dumpster too. Know how we know? We don't use diapers.) and chucked it on his front porch. When he came out and started to yell at her, she told him off and then told him unless he was going to pay us for our trash service, and she meant the whole damn bill, he better stop using our trash can. He stopped.

They are clearing out of their house right now, his wife left him for some other guy, and I'm not suprised to see that they have trash all over their front and back porch because they have no place to put it. Serves Slumlord right. (I might even call the health department.)

Right, so that's a start anyway. I have to go and clean myself up for work, but I'll be thinking of you, and my neighbors, today. I'll have a second installment later on tonight. By the way, the picture at the top is Creamcsicle, isn't he cute?