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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

You know, if I let my dog outside to bark, the neighbors would complain loudly. And rightly so. The sound of a dog barking is annoying and disturbing.
I wish our neighbors had dogs. It would make things so much easier.
Instead they have kids.
The sound of children laughing and squealing is one of the beautiful sounds of summer. Our neighbors don't have kids who laugh and squeal. They have kids who scream and whine and cry. Endlessly. And the parents don't do a damn thing. They don't comfort the crying child. They don't punish the whining child. They let the kids scream at each other.
It's a beautiful day. I went outside to work. Just as I'm getting my things together, the toddler comes outside and begins to scream. She continues to scream. The mother says something to the toddler. The toddler screams louder. The other kids begin to scream.
So much for sitting outside on a beautiful day. And yeah, I had my headphones on, but all I could hear was the screaming and screeching. Try to write with that background noise.
I came inside and turned up the stereo so I couldn't hear the screams any more.
It's horrible. There have been many beautiful evenings when we've had to close up the house because the kids are outside wailing. They wake me up between 7:30 and 8 like clockwork (who needs a rooster) because those kids greet the day by screaming at the top of their lungs.
As far as we can see, there is nothing abusive happening. The kids will be outside playing, the adult will turn her attention to something else, and that sets the kid off. But the adult does nothing. That's the frustrating part. The adult does nothing. Maybe they think scream therapy will help the kid with attachment issues, but it sure doesn't do a whole lot for being neighborly.
Mostly our neighbors are all nice people, and you can deal with the once a year fireworks at midnight at one house or the guy who seems to start his lawnmower the moment we have company pull in our driveway (because he's otherwise a good neighbor). But the non-stop screaming kids get to be a bit much.

Monday, July 14, 2008

I actually took time off. It wasn't really a vacation -- I didn't go anywhere, and I worked in the mornings -- but I kept my afternoons free and went downtown Thursday and Friday. It was peaceful. Now I'm so not in the mood to work.
When we go to the grocery store, there is often the truck bed of a tractor trailer parked at the end of the parking lot. We've seen it for years, but last week I finally had my camera with me to catch a picture of it.

That might be the most beat-up Tonka truck I've ever seen.

Friday, July 04, 2008

We're just chilling on the holiday. I had to work today to finish up a deadline. Our friends all had other plans or didn't feel like doing anything. Which is kind of okay with me. All plans tend to end with watching the fireworks and fireworks bore me. Oooooo. Ahhhhhhh. Zzzzzzzzz.
So I'm drinking champagne (well you should celebrate a birthday with champagne, right?), listening to baseball, and getting ready to watch 1776.

Monday, June 30, 2008

We helped my sister move this weekend. It was interesting, to say the least. I managed to do a perfect job. I went to the new house to move all the stuff that got dumped into the garage the night before, when they wanted to get bins and boxes out of the old house to make it easier to move furniture. Except they realized that they couldn't get furniture in through the garage with all the boxes there. So I worked alone, well, with the help of my nieces but otherwise alone, carrying boxes upstairs to bedrooms or downstairs to the storage room. I must have made 100 trips, or that's what it felt like anyway. But at least I didn't have to deal with my mom at the old house and help with the last bits of packing, and I didn't have to deal with the men and listen to their grumbling because my sister's boyfriend, who was also moving in, was hooking up his surround sound in the new house. Yes, while everyone else was moving furniture, he was playing with the speaker hook up. The guy made no friends that day.
My wonderful stepfather came into the garage on one of the furniture trips and saw how much I cleaned out. He said, "Wow, when they said you were staying here to move boxes, I didn't think you'd actually do anything."
My mom showed up later and pointed out my sister's new furniture, and said it was just like our new furniture. My sister has one of those sofa units with the wedge seat and the cup holders. Our furniture is the more traditional couch, love seat, and recliner. Our furniture is real leather; my sister's is the faux suede stuff. Yet I couldn't convince my mom that our furniture was different. She kept insisting that it was and that our love seat was one of those wedges that we just put against the wall since it wouldn't work in the room otherwise. Yeah mom, you saw my furniture for 10 minutes a few weeks ago, so obviously you know more about it than I do. This is typical of my mother.
It also bothered me how much my mom and stepfather kept talking about how my kids were so much nicer and so much better behaved than my nieces and nephew --while they were all standing right there. It's true that my kids are very different from my nieces and nephew, just like I'm very different than my sister and the husband is very different from the BIL. My my nieces and nephew have also lost their father to a horrible tragedy, have had their lives turned upside down in so many ways including leaving the only house they ever knew, and have a mother who is stressed beyond belief and has never been good at handling stress. So let's screw them up even more by telling them that they aren't as nice as their older cousins. I told the adults to stop saying those things, but they didn't listen.
But hey, my MIL is not much different. She called the other night to ask if we were coming out there for the 4th to watch the fireworks from her balcony. The husband is not going to be able to travel, due to a medical issue, but she wouldn't hear it. She asked three times if we were coming out. When the husband finally said no, she hung up on him.
Family. Although I wonder sometimes, do my kids grumble about us like this?

Thursday, June 26, 2008

I was talking to someone the other day and was told that I am a great person and have a unique personality.
Nice to know I'm a great person (although later in the same conversation I was told I still have my mean streak -- so perhaps I'm not so great a person?). But the unique personality comment has been bothering me.
Would you think being told you have a unique personality is a compliment or a slight?
I know I've got quirks that are really different and people look at me like I'm from Mars at times. There's the pizza thing, and the Thanksgiving dinner thing, and the can't stand being barefoot thing (I was invited to a foot spa party and I may be the only woman alive who thinks that's just nasty; my friends think it is the height of pampering), the hating to cook/garden/walk in the woods thing, and so on.
One of my friends said to me that what she likes about me is that I'm so comfortable with who I am and I'm not afraid to not follow the crowd. Except I'm not so comfortable with who I am most days. I'll stare out the window, being entertained by my birds, and wonder why I'm so freakin' different than everybody else.
So being told I have a unique personality hit a nerve. What in hell does that mean?