...and it continues.

Tomato Update:

Surprise! The two year old nuisance downstairs has been hard at work. I had moved the tomato plants up to our upper level deck to try to keep them out of her sight, but she found them anyway. I had nine tomatoes out there, just waiting until they went all red and juicy on me. Now, there are three. Initially, because I had already talked to the landlord and the parents and had been most assuredly assured that she would never be allowed out of their sight and up our steps, I thought maybe it was raccoons or something, and there were only two missing at that point. Then the other day I went out and found two of them on the ground next to the pots with suspicious looking teeth marks. These weren't animal teeth. These were kid teeth. Like she had plucked it off and bit into it like an apple. She didn't like the first one, so she tried another. WTF?!?!?!?! So, I talked to the landlord again who couldn't believe that they were the type of parents who would let their kid out of their sight. I also talked to the parents who said they never let the kid out of their sight. So, apparently the problem here would seem to be me. Hah! Yesterday the mother was doing laundry in the basement with the door to the backyard open. I was in the kitchen, and saw the nuisance trekking across the backyard (alone, I might add) to try to open the next door neighbor's door. Mom starts yelling for her to come back. Next she heads up our steps to our deck, at which point I went outside and scared the crap out of her, sending her back down the stairs screaming. No, I did not touch this child. Maybe I'm just scary. In my opinion, letting this kid out of the apartment is a hazard to her because we're on a busy street with all sorts of riff-raff drivers, and to all of us as well. Don't tell me you never let her out of your sight, because that's obviously a bald-faced lie. Just to clarify things, when you are in the basement and your kid is outside - if you can't see her - she is out of your sight! I'm so angry about those tomatoes I could just spit.

In case that isn't enough to convince me that I'm right to never have children, there was just an interesting episode downstairs in their kitchen. I really don't try to be nosy, but if our windows and theirs are open, I'm at their mercy and hear everything. Now, I'm not above using what I hear in a blog post, but really, I didn't go looking for this. I was sitting at the kitchen table having a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch when I hear the mother start shrieking and wailing. "Oh, Emily, how could you!?!?!" Then the nuisance starts wailing because she's been yelled at. The incoherent wailing goes on and it becomes clear that the nuisance has drawn all over the kitchen table with permanent markers and ruined it. The mother goes on to say that she will not be getting any more permanent markers until she is five! Well, way to solve that problem, mom! You go! Ummmm...are you aware that fine companies like Crayola make washable markers? They're made just for two year olds who have no impulse control. You should really look in to that. Maybe I'll put some in their mailbox, you know, 'cause I'm nice like that.

Now, see, this is really bringing out the worst in me. I think I'll go knit some socks.

And So It Begins...

We have lived in our current place for a year now. This has been the first time in six years that there hasn't been some unbearable issue with the other people in our building, and it's been wonderful. All that has ended now. A new reign of terror has begun.

We live in a duplex, and this has worked out pretty well. We weren't friends with the two girls who lived downstairs, but we were friendly and everyone seemed happy with it. We didn't bother them, they didn't bother us. Sadly, they moved out last weekend. The new tenants are a husband and wife and their two year old daughter. They just moved in yesterday, and already our life has been adversely affected by them. We are great respecters of space and property. We don't mess with anyone else's stuff. We expect the same in return. I don't have very much hope that this will be the case.

I'm not going to rant about the state of children today, or the parents who seem to bear no responsibility for their children. That's a page for another day. And as a preview, it would be a very long page. However, my thoughts about that do have some bearing here. The child in question is two, so I hold nothing against her. At that age, the parents should be the ones responsible for their behavior.

It starts out with the child running back and forth across the length of the building, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Then she gets out in to the communal hallway, runs screaming up the stairs to our front door and starts trying to open our door. I hear the mother telling her to be careful on the stairs. Not, "don't bother those nice people," just "be careful on the stairs." No, I have a better idea. Why don't you come get your shrieking kid and get her away from our door. The door opens directly into our living room, and silly us, we like a little peace and quiet in the evening.

Next, I hear someone on our back steps. It's the kid. These stairs run from the back yard up to our back door, where we have a private little deck. This is where my tomato plants and herbs are growing. It's private. It's ours. Not anymore. This child is out there completely alone, digging dirt out from the planters with the tomatoes. Who the hell lets a two year old run around alone in the backyard? Where the hell are her parents? This may sound extreme, but if anything happens to those f***ing tomatoes, I'm going to lose it. Seriously.

I'm trying to be understanding about all the noise related to moving, because I know that's difficult. But the moving truck sitting in the driveway beeping (you know, that obnoxious beeping that you get when backing up? They weren't backing up, they were just beeping) under our bedroom window at ten-thirty last night? Not cool.

They have apparently decided that they want the parking spaces we've been using for the past year. Now, I don't really care which side of the flipping driveway I'm on, but is there absolutely no courtesy anymore? Ask. That would have been polite.

They have decided to keep the communal front door locked when they are home, which appears to be all the time. How do people pay rent when they don't have jobs? I really would like to get on that train. I don't care about the front door except that the lock has no key. When I park on the street, I can't get in to my house anymore.

There are two storage areas in the basement. One for us, one for them. We don't have a lot of stuff, but it's there in a small, yet obvious pile in a corner. I went down this morning to find that they had piled ALL THEIR SHIT from floor to ceiling in our storage unit. I can't even see my stuff, let alone get to it. There isn't a speck of anything in their storage unit directly to the right. What kind of people do that? "Huh, someone else's stuff is here. Oh, well. Too bad."

I'm just at a loss. I don't know how other people can behave this way. I don't know how to talk to them about this with out starting an on-going feud. I just want a little respect from these people. Is that so wrong?

...speed update...

Kate's world on high speed summary (if that's at all possible for her). Pictures to follow later.

Before: Better Half with a moustache and beard (as I met him) / After: Better Half with a naked face. Week-long freakout when I see a stranger in my house wearing my husband's clothes.

Before: Another summer with cute 'n sassy chipmunk, answers to the name Pimpmunk, highly entertaining to entire apartment building / After: Smear on the driveway next door. Immortalized in my flower garden by the upstairs neighbors. Broken pottery shard headstone says RIP Pimpmunk.

Before: Reasonably tidy house / After: Warm weather and cold weather clothes half packed and unpacked (and strewn everywhere) because the stupid weather won't make up its mind.

Before: Sharp sticks and scraps of wool / After: Felted chicken that fits in my hand. It's wee, and I knit it with nary a pattern!

Before: Seemingly endless days of bachelor living with cats / Soon to come: Kate and Heather together at Alex's house. Bwaa haa haaaaaa.

Please don't be my neighbor!

I live in a college neighborhood. We share a parking lot with the building next door. There are probably nine or ten cars in that lot. Our lease says that snow removal is provided, but frequency is not specified, and the plow service isn’t the most customer friendly game in town. When it snows, maybe half of the tenants bother to shovel. It snowed again this weekend. I like snow, I do. But shoveling for three days straight can take all the fun out of a snow storm.

My stupid (I’m sorry, she IS. Quite. Stupid.) neighbor came over while we were shoveling this weekend and sniveled about her bushes. We were putting snow on them see, and they DIE off every year. And she’s talked to our landlord, and asked him to talk to the plow guy, and WHAT can she do to get us to stop ruining her bushes. This is the same hedge that she hacked to hell last year, and called it pruning. I’ve seen pruning. That was not it. This is also the same woman who had a bonfire in her backyard last year. Her yard is about 15’x15’, and surrounded by trees and bushes. It is also closely bordered by other houses (including hers). A bonfire. See what I mean about stupid?

She went on to tell us that other people dumped snow there too, AND some college student parked her into her driveway causing her to miss an appointment the other day, AND she’s tried fences but the students just tear them down. There was a pause for breath here, and I must have had a look of some sort on my face because she whined “and I don’t WANT to move, I LIKE downtown”. It wasn’t a childish whine either – it was the grownup version that sets your teeth on edge. I wanted to charge her an hourly rate for therapy, but instead just said “Hmm” and stared at her with my best “go away please” eyes, adding an “I can’t control the other tenants” grimace.

We apologized. We offered to shovel the snow off of the bushes. She punctuated our conversation with “I’m just trying to work this out” and “it’s just… you know…”. And the whole conversation would start. All over again. I got the impression that she’d come over for a confrontation and was disappointed that we were so accommodating and apologetic.

It’s not just bad yard habits, whining, and her rude approach to problem solving that gets on my nerves. Her son fired his b.b. gun through the butchered hedge last year, almost hitting me. She heard us yell “hey, stop shooting!” and made him come over to apologize. We talked with him about safety- the possibility that he could hit people or their cars, and the fact that we're not crazy about guns. She gave us a sucking-lemons face over that one - probably because it's a conversation she's never had w/ her kid. "I just let him shoot at pigeons, he understands that." she said. Okay, I'm not a FAN of pigeons, but have you heard of paper targets lady?! I’m sure their bonfire blackened lawn hides the bodies of multitudes of dead city birds. Eww. We did thank the kid for coming over to apologize, and acknowledged that it was a hard thing to do. He was squirmy and uncomfortable, and took off almost before we finished speaking. She made the lemon face again as he ran up the driveway and around the corner. We stared back. Somehow, she’d made us feel like we were in the wrong. There is nothing to say in situations like that. You just say Thank You even though you don’t mean it, and pray not to have to interact again.

I was remembering this last conversation as she finally walked away and left us to our work. If she was watching out her window again, she saw my mouth moving as I removed remaining snow to appropriate areas. Hopefully she thought I was singing shoveling songs to myself.

We Miss You, Kathryn

Does it seem that time passes far too quickly these days? There's never enough time.

M's grandmother died last week, and her memorial was on Monday. We will all miss her straight-forward, no-holds barred, outlook on life. Her honesty was something that is often missing in the cautious, PC world of today. I hope wherever she is, she has a good book to read, and company that isn't annoying the shit out of her.

Connecticut is no longer an option. M was notified the same day his grandmother died. Timing is everything.

Upstairs Girl was out in the back driveway entertaining us the other night. She had on a lovely black formal dress and brought her cd player with her. The music was a lovely screeching, moaning atrocity. She danced around in the driveway with two things similar to fans. They weren't completely fans, they were more like wings, with webbing between the slats. I can't even begin to do justice to the spectacle.

Pet Burial?

Another Memorial day weekend has gone by. Here it is, June 1st. We had a fairly uneventful weekend, visiting with each set of parents for a bit. The only excitement was provided by our charming neighbors upstairs. There was some strangeness going on in the backyard, which I'm far too nosy to have ignored. They had scraped back the mulch and were digging a hole about three feet deep. There was a suspicious black plastic garbage bag next to the hole. After the hole was filled in, and the extra dirt taken out was tossed over the fence, a lovely "rock garden" was displayed over the top, and a poem was read while everyone held hands in a circle. My first thought was a pet burial of some sort. When I asked our landlord about it, they had no idea what I was talking about, but they were pretty sure no one asked them if they could dig up the yard. Anyway, Upstairs Girl told them that it was just a rock garden, that they had dug a hole and filled it with rocks to "support" their creation, and that the whole reading in a circle thing had been them "blessing" the rocks. Apparently the landlord believes this crap. So, what was in the garbage bag? And did I mention the black cat with them on a leash?

Hopefully we will get some info on the possible job for M soon. Sure would like to move out of here...

Hello?

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing out here...

I must have dozens of blank books and journals that I have always fully intended to fill. They're still empty. I'm hoping that having this will encourage me to write down the things that I feel are important to me. Even when it's just a list of complaints. Believe me, there will be complaints. It's not about having other people read it or getting any feedback.

I live on the beautiful coast of New Hampshire, where I have lived off and on for over twenty years now. I love to cook, and I am trying to become better at it. I also love to knit, and I'm trying to get better at that too. For anyone else who knits, socks make me angry. You know what I mean.

Being from New England, I am of course a Red Sox fan. And yes, I was a fan way before they won the World Series. Not like some people I could name. I'm also devoted to the Boston Bruins, and I don't care what any of you have to say about that. We will dominate again some day. I hear they're looking for a GM. I don't hear my phone ringing, people! And I'm glad Joe Thornton and Johnny Damon were traded. Who needs them?

I currently live in an apartment with my significant other and the Insufferable Horror. I will post a picture when I can, and you will see what I mean. We will be moving soon (oh, please, God, let us move) as the tenants upstairs who shall forever remain nameless, are unspeakably impossible to live under. Note to tenants upstairs: Who the hell needs to wear clogs on hardwood floors at two in the morning? I'm really pleased that you no longer have a job, but really, are you doing it on purpose? Am I taking this too personally? Is your seven year old actually on drugs, or does he just sound like it? Does he ever stop running? When will you be getting him his own little pair of clogs?

So, obviously I will try and come back and add more as needed. I hope this works! HK