It's Time

It's time.

Time for decorating a gingerbread girl for the second grade hallway. (Each second grader received a gingerbread cutout to personalize. Mary called hers "Holiday Glam".)

Time for Electric Bethlehem. (As ever, our house is the least decorated on the block. But I'm okay with that.)

Time for family rooms to be finished. (I think the paint color may work out okay after all, now that the new curtains are up.)

Time for Gingerbread House Wars. (It started out with the store bought kit, but Maggie's beau wanted to be able to eat it, which, no, those kits are NOT for eating. So I pulled out stuff for him to make his own.  And the smack talk began.)

Maggie's beau used scissors to cut the gable ends of his house.  There were several failures before he was successful. He made a beeeellion crumbs.

Maggie and her friend "Notorious." They were serious about their house.

They were slamming each other and trying to steal each other's decorations. 

Notorious and The Beau tried to look like they were about to brawl. This photo took several tries, as every time they looked at each other, they busted out laughing. 

Time for hellacious messes left after Gingerbread House Wars are over. (To be fair, they did clean it up pretty well. I had to wipe down the counters again, but it could have been so much worse!)

And you? What's it time for at your house?

It Has Begun

I know I said I was done showing you glittery things. I lied. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Electric Bethlehem!!!

Friends, that isn't even the half of it because I am standing in my cul-de-sac taking the picture so you are missing the five houses there. My house with its candle lights in the windows and the two bushes by the front door with white lights looks like a showgirl from Peoria. You get the analogy, right? Peoria doesn't have showgirls. I had to explain this to my children. I don't know. Maybe it's not such a great example. Whatever. You get the idea. When you drive through our cul-de-sac--which by the way is the only one in our neighborhood that looks like this--we look like non-participants by comparison.

Anyway. If you want to stop by and visit, you'll recognize my house right away. Just put on your sunglasses before you turn into the neighborhood.

Another Letter, But This Time It's Official

We got a letter from our HOA last week stating that there had been a complaint about our lawn. It further stated that we were not in compliance with covenants if our lawn/weeds were overgrown and that we should take immediate action before the HOA was forced to take action at our expense. It then went on to say that if we had already done something about our godforsaken wilderness, abandoned lot that looked like squatters had taken over, statement to the neighborhood that we obviously descended from white trash and my lord what's next a couch on the lawn?, our lawn, that we could disregard this letter.

Don't you love that? Here, folks, read this letter that points to a passive aggressive streak in one of your neighbors. Then think about the ways that the HOA can reach into your wallet just because it can. Then feel shamed because obviously you are not worthy of living in this neighborhood. And oh yeah! Never mind.

ARRRRRRGGGHGHGHGH!!!!

Would you like to know what's wrong with our front lawn? Well, I'll tell you, but you have to keep it quiet. It's shameful. It might cause you to think less of me. Are you ready? Okay, here it is: dandelions.

Now, before you run away from your screens screaming and wailing and gnashing your teeth or doing an online search for sackcloth and ashes so that you might properly grieve this horrendousness, (Don't mess with me today spellcheck, I am totally declaring the wordness of "horrendousness." And, by the way, I'm declaring it for "wordness" too. So just shut it, spell check!) let me state for the record: WE HAVE DANDELIONS. Oh, Sweet Mother Jumper do we ever have dandelions.

But!

We have been working on those dandelions. We, and by that of course, I mean my Beloved, religiously spray them with killer and make them get all twisty and brown. Then we mow them down. We have even taken a bid on getting our front lawn re-sodded. But let me tell you what we, and by that of course I mean any of us in this household, DON'T do:

*We don't spend our kids' college funds on getting new grass. (Okay, so maybe that's a bit of hyperbole, but the bid still came in in the thousands. Thousands. For grass, people. Right now, we are just not willing to do the sort of fuzzy accounting that would justify it.)

*We don't go out and spend our time on our knees trying to dig dandelions out of the Indiana clay. We might spend time on our knees praying for sanity to deal with our neighbors--or even sanity for our neighbors--but we just aren't going to do that.

*We don't tell our children that they cannot play on the grass because then it wouldn't look nice and might be a violation of The Covenants. Yes, our front lawn is patchy. I'm sure some of it is due to children playing football and such on it. I'm also pretty sure that this lawn was utter crap when we moved in, after it sat neglected for two years. We have kids. They play. Our lawn will always reflect that. Thank God.

*We don't spend our waking hours critiquing the neighbors lawns.

Does our lawn look good? No. It's not what we'd like it to be, but it also, if we let it, would consume time and/or money that we aren't willing to invest in it right now.

Is it the worst on the block? Probably. But it doesn't look like an abandoned lot. In fact, once the dandelions get mowed, it doesn't look too bad. It's still patchy, but so are some other lawns.

Are my neighbors busybody crazies with too much time on their hands? I'm going to jump out on a limb here and say, um, Hell. YUP! I would respectfully submit that they put their rather large noses to work somewhere else.

Perhaps instead of lamenting the state of the lawn 15 yards to the south, they should start lamenting the state of some of the neighborhoods 15 miles to the south. Perhaps they could put their considerable skills to use in schools that never have enough help and kids who never have someone to listen or advocate for them. Perhaps they could work in a shelter for folks who don't have a home, let alone a lawn. Perhaps they could use some of the time that they spend worrying over the state of neighbors lawns volunteering with the Red Cross where they could worry over people who really need some worry and concern.

And perhaps monkeys will fly out of my butt and sing Jingle Bells. I know that they will not do any of those things, because those are hard things. It's hard to get involved in the lives of those who have less. It's messy to jump in and do the hard work of helping others and become involved in their lives. It's easy to sit on your highly manicured lawn and look down your nose at other people. Happens all the time.

Blogger was broken for a couple days last week and so I was unable to blog about this when I had a full head of steam. That's probably a good thing. It allowed me some space and perspective--two things that are almost always a good thing to have. I have to admit that I didn't have any grace. I immediately started to rant about this neighborhood and its relative unfriendliness and its competitive nature. I might have called the neighbors names that rhyme with "witch" and "hatspit" crazy. I bemoaned the fact that we have worked hard on improving this house and making it a nice place to live, but none of the neighbors would know, because none of them ever come over to chat when we are outside. I was full of self-pity and ready to heap abuse on my neighbors. But blogger was broken, so I couldn't.

And now, even though it makes such great blog fodder, I declare this the last post I will write about these neighbors. It doesn't do me any good to continue to focus on this stuff. I will continue to wave and be friendly. I will continue to pray for all the families in this neighborhood--especially when I don't want to. I (Beloved) will continue to work on the weeds and improve the lawn. And I will start to look for the positives in my neighbors. Short of murder--or something really funny--you'll not be hearing about them from me again. It just isn't worth it for me.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sit on my patio in my back yard. It's beautiful and lush and full of flowers. It's a pretty and serene place. And none of my neighbors can see it! Bwahahahahaha!!!

The Writing Is On The Wall Window

Okay. I am convinced. It is not me. I am not the crazy one. Nope. That honor belongs to one of my neighbors. I mean, I sort of new that she was a nutbar, but I thought that I might have contributed in some way--through something I did or failed to do-- to any drama that may have occured. Now I know. It's her. It's not me.

One of our neighbors is selling their house (thanks be to God). It has been on the market for a while. They have reduced their price, but as far as we know, they haven't had any serious interest. Interestingly, the For Sale sign coincided with a marked increase in my prayer time. Every time I see it, I offer up a little prayer that it will sell quickly and that a normal family will move in. (I know we are not normal. But it would be good if the family moved in understood that no one is really normal. Also, it would be good if they didn't think they cornered the market on mad parenting skillz.) My prayers have even gone so far as to include a neighbor that we could, oh, I don't know, be neighborly with. I may also have requested a little girl Mary's age so that she doesn't continue to think of me as her Cruise Director--solely responsible for finding her fun.

Anyway! While I was off getting a hair cut on Saturday, the Nutbar's husband, who isn't really a nutbar himself--who does, in fact, seem to be a nice guy, albeit a rather spineless one--knocked on our door. When my beloved answered, the Nutbar's husband (henceforth referred to as NH) rather sheepishly stated that he had a favor to ask, and further stated that he wished he didn't have to ask it.

Now, it is my opinion that if you wish you didn't have to ask something, well, you probably shouldn't because A) you are not convinced about the thing which you are asking and will wind up looking like a wishy-washy fool, or B) you really don't have any right to be asking in the first place.

So NH asked if we would mind wiping off the writing on our windows because even though we "made our own way in this world, as had they," evidently the people coming for a showing of their house had not. Whatever that means. In my case, I took it to mean people that would be just as high maintenance as the ones living there now. Who knows, really? This was all Nutbar's doing poured through the filter of her husband's mouth.

Let me back up. A few weeks ago, I finally got around to cleaning up and organizing the mudroom. In that time, the children discovered that we had Crayola window markers. These write on windows and come off easily. We haven't used them much--mainly during football season. Anyway, they were spirited away with much whispering and planning. Sean had his name written in big letters on his two windows. Maggie had drawn flowers, rainbows, and other things of that ilk, along with a few sayings and several names (including those of her friends and cousins) drawn in fancy, curlicued handwriting. If I had my druthers (control freak that I am), they wouldn't have done it (because that sort of thing, even though easily cleaned, gives me hives), but they are kids, it was harmless, and that is, in fact, what the markers were designed for. There was nothing offensive on the windows. And nothing was going to stay up there forever. Most things had been up a week or less. While you could see the writing on the windows from the outside, short of being able to read Sean's backwards name, you couldn't really tell what the rest was. Mostly what you saw were hearts and flowers and rainbows.

So. Enter NH on our doorstep asking my beloved husband if we would clean our windows off because they have a showing. My husband asked NH if he thought our windows detracted from the appearance of his house and NH's response was "no." My husband--who it should be noted, has a very good spine and is in no way wishy-washy--replied that our daughter would have a fit if we cleaned off her windows while she was gone. After all, her cousins had just written their stuff only a few days earlier. He stated that he would be willing to open the blinds so that the writing wouldn't be seen as easily. A nice option, I thought, considering we didn't have to do anything. (Let's not even get into the fact that we couldn't imagine asking something like this of neighbors ourselves when we were selling our house.)

When I got home, Patrick debated about whether he should tell me because he feared that my brain my ooze from my ears I might get upset. In fact, I laughed. I was so taken aback by the request that at first I thought he was joking. My next impulse, and the impulse I acted on, was to take the window cleaner and some paper towels and go clean the windows.

"No way am I letting them blame the loss of the sale on me!" I muttered. "Boy howdy does Nutbar ever have some brass ones," I thought. Although I probably didn't say "boy howdy" and I'm fairly certain that whatever I might have called her in my head, "Nutbar" would have been a very large step up.

I cleaned off Sean's windows and then headed for Maggie's room. And there I stopped. I refused to clean off the flowers and rainbows and hearts and names. The more I thought about it, the crazier and ballsier the request seemed. I furrowed my brow, scratched my head, listened to my conscience, and then I turned around and left Maggie's room without touching her windows. They'll get cleaned in a few days. When we're ready.

It did enter my head, because I am evil, to take the markers and draw a giant arrow using all the upstairs windows and have it point to the neighbor's house. On the downstairs windows I thought I might write "Nutbar!" Of course I didn't, but it has been fun to contemplate...

It's been a long time since I've had any neighborhood blog fodder, which, while not so great for the blog, has been pretty nice for, you know, living. We have sort of kept our distance from certain folks, which has kept any drama to a minimum. I can only hope that my prayers will be answered in short order.

Stick A Fork In Me. I'm DONE!

*******ALERT********
This is not a happy post. I am usually much more positive. If you are looking for something that is more typical of me, I suggest you go read another of my posts. Tomorrow, I will be more myself. I promise.
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Apparently life on our street was all rainbows and puppy dogs and unicorn farts before we moved in. It seems the children all got along, never fought, and there was never an unkind word spoken or a disagreement of any kind. Never! In ten years! Now, since we have moved in, it would seem that children are brawling in the streets and cursing like sailors. And my children are the apparent ringleaders.

Or so a neighbor had the nerve to say to my face.

This would be a great place to live--if it weren't for all the CRAZY ASS NEIGHBORS!!

My fingers are shaking and I can hardly type a coherent thought, so I am going to quit. But I do feel a little better now that I've vented to the universe.

Now I'm going to prove the neighbors right about just what a horrible parent I am by consuming a glass or two of wine while I fold 8 loads of laundry that have been sitting in my laundry room for the better part of the week. You wait. The next report will be that I am a drunk and a horrible housekeeper.

Well. I own up to the latter. These nutbars just might turn me into the former...

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Please? I mean really, won't you be my neighbor? Pretty please? I make great cookies and I'll share!

*Le Sigh* It has come to this. I am asking complete strangers on the innernets to please come live by me. Kinda seems like a random roll of the dice would give me a better shot at finding people who might like me and my family and MY DOG. Again I say: *Le sigh*

I don't think that some of my neighbors have enough to do. Because they seem to have an AWFUL lot of time to keep track of how I'm raising my family, how I'm maintaining my home, and just exactly what I'm doing or not doing to keep my dog under control. And they are quite happy to share their views with me. Lucky me!

I am so done listening! If I hear anymore, I am going to give them the name and number of homeless shelters and let them know that I'm sure their help could be used there, but as for me and my house, we're just fine, thankyouverymuch.

I don't think any of my neighbors even know about my blog, much less read it. But! If you are my neighbor and you should stumble upon my blog, please know that I am happy to be in this neighborhood. I will be pleasant and polite to you even if you aren't to me, because my mother raised me that way. You should also know that I will parent my family, maintain my home, and manage my dog the way I see fit. Chances are pretty good that it is not the way that you parent your family, maintain your home or manage your dog--and that is okay! Vive le difference! Live and let live! It takes all kinds! And other trite, but often true adages! I won't comment on how you do things. Won't you grant me the same courtesy?

And if you aren't my neighbor and you read my blog and I haven't scared you away, wanna move in next door? I promise to be nice, randomly give you plates of baked goods, and always say "hello."

Also? If you are moving into our neighborhood, my family will make your family look AWESOME by comparison...

Okay. Rant over. We will now return to your regularly scheduled blog.