Moving on up

We live in an older residential neighborhood, the kind of place where people begin and complete their lives. Young families start out here in two bedroom homes. Older people move here when they become empty nesters.

And then, there are our neighbors. I may have mentioned that flanking us on either side are less than desireable tenants. You know them, they are the kind that don't mow their yard and think that mattresses are perfectly acceptable items to be stored outside. They keep their garbage toters at the curb instead of tucking them away at the end of pick-up day. They leave their Big Gulp cup on the front porch for an entire season. I could go on and on.

Recently we noticed the neighbors to the right starting to move. We knew something was up whenever we saw them emptying out their mobile storage unit. (A "vintage" station wagon that hadn't moved in over a year which they had begun using as a closet of sorts.) Cynical and I joined in the hallelujah chorus and began making big plans for how wonderful our new neighbors would be. Maybe it would be an elderly lady who baked bread fresh every day and was so generous, putting a loaf on our doorstep every morning. Cynical would mow her yard and she'd help him cool off with freshly made lemonade. Maybe it would be another young couple, one of them just having started to knit and in search of a knitting buddy. We meet every afternoon the back yard for a margarita and some yarn talk.

That's not what we got. Instead, we got well, our new neighbors. The husband told me when I introduced myself, that he "loved to enjoy life", which Cynical translated as "I like to drink beer in the backyard mid-day while not wearing a shirt." The woman, well, she was shall we say less than neighborly. We had high hopes when they began clearing the yard and doing some what we assumed was landscaping.

We were mistaken as they were simply preparing to build what I can only describe as a chicken wire fence to house their two dogs and "lawn furniture" (aka old windowless car and five-gallon buckets.) I became even less enthused when I learned that they were, well, shall we say very hospitable. When I say "hospitable", I mean they "enjoy life" in the backyard until well after a respectable bedtime along with 10 of their closest friends AND their children. Unfortunately our bedroom is on that side of the house. We so love opening the windows each spring listening to the rustling leaves on the trees, enjoying the cool breeze. Now we are lulled to sleep by her foul mouth, children scampering and bouncing a ball repeatedly against the "garage", the revving of a motorcycle and the smell of burnt chicken and dog crap.

This has further lit Cynical's burning desire to move. Seeing a former client visiting our dear neighbors only added gasoline to this fire. I fear he's right and perhaps we should move up the timeline, but I also know in reality that we need to be patient, wait this out and attempt to stick it out until its feasible.

Until then I may have to start on a beer gut, add some colorful words to my vocabulary, and do some "landscaping" of my own to fit in.