The next installment

I live in a bad soap opera...really, I couldn't make this up if I wanted to...it's the Beverly Hillbillies minus the Beverly Hills part, meets Guiding Light, meets The Burbs (Ok, no sense of community here and nothing at all like the movie...but I love this movie, so I had to shamelessly plug it!)

There's absolutely nothing I'd rather wake up to on a Tuesday morning than the sound of a police scanner, bellowing loud enough to break the sound barrier!  I mean doesn't everyone have this fantasy?  Yet, I was "the chosen one"...

I was nestled, all snug in my bed, while having visions of sugar plums dancing in my head (my version includes waking up to a clean house, where children are perfectly behaved, the laundry has been washed, dried, folded & put away, and I still look 20)....

It took a few minutes for me to gather my thoughts together.  Was I dreaming?  Was I honning in on an unfound psychic ability?  Was God trying to get something through my thick skull (damn, my parents were right all along)? 

Nope, yet again my neighbors are at the root of this!  You guessed it, the ones with the unique moving truck still parked haphazardly in their back yard...with lovely specimens of vegetation growing around it...picturesque, if I do say so myself. 

There was no way it was coming from inside their house....they must be deaf, which seems plausible considering how loudly they all speak.  I had to get up to investigate.  Could it be some riot where the police had to set up a base station right outside our home?  No, that can't be it, as no matter what happens around here the only response our PD can give you is "there's just nothing we can do about it."  They are simply in the community for show.

Upon further investigation I tracked the source down to their car.  You know, the one they park in the backyard next to their camper/truck?  They can't park it on the street like everyone else, because car thieves everywhere are Jonesing for a 1980, rusted out, muffler optional, tarp covering the window because it won't roll up, silver Oldsmobile.  Complete with, count them, 3 original rusted out wire rims!!  It's a car theft waiting to happen, I tell ya!

Now remember...it's 6:30 am.!!  On a freaking Tuesday morning!  Who on earth would be listening to a scanner at that unGodly time of day?  No one apparently.  Vehicle?  Empty.  Yard?  Empty.  Back makeshift porch?  Empty.  It's like a ghost town...minus the tumbleweed, add in the lush vegetation around the moving device.  These people are still having their sugarplum induced dreams!!!

Every day, all day, I have the pleasure to listening to "their entertainment"...that I've never actually witnessed them reaping the benefits of! 

I now know how the Koresh compound felt while having to endure Tibetan Buddhist chants, bagpipes, seagulls crying, helicopters, dentist drills, sirens, dying rabbits, a train, and songs by Alice Cooper and Nancy Sinatra...

There goes the neighborhood....

Let me preface by stating that I'm not a hard person to get along with...honestly.  Maybe I'm a little quirky, but I also appreciate that quality in others...to a point.  By no means do we reside in the 90210 zip code, or even remotely close; in fact, it's as bad as small town living gets.  But, the neighborhood used to be nice, albeit a melting pot  of quiet families.  Then along with fireworks, July 4th brought a new breed of neighbors.

I'm still  not 100% that this family really wasn't a government experiment gone wrong... 


We should have taken notice of the errrrr....unique moving truck...a pop up camper sans the top, and retreated immediately to the safety of our adobe.  Unfortunately for me, my husband was cursed with the 'too approachable" character trait.  What I thought was simply a random prison break test, was indeed the voice of our new neighbor, commencing his family's arrival to the entire town apparently.  Oh, if that was the only "skill" they possessed.


Our lives have become a not so funny plot of a b horror movie...and I'm hoping I'm the first to be put out of my misery.  I usually abhor making negative comments about children...but...  Let's just say if you've ever seen the movie The Ring, then you've met our neighbor girl.  She appears literally out of nowhere and proceeds to look through you, as if she's silently stealing your soul...never uttering a word.  Neighbor boy on the other hand is like a spider monkey strung out on a case of Mountain Dew.  Carrying the trash to the alley for pickup?  "What ya doing?"  Leavng the house with the dog on the leash?  "What ya doing?"  Outside washing the car?  You guessed it "What ya doing?"  I secretly think he's planning a career in extremely annoying journalism...and let me tell you, he will excel tremendously in that field!


While I'm at it, I've got to get my husband to take down the general store sign that we obviously have hung above our door.  Whether it's alumium foil, cigarettes, extension ladders, an endless array of tools, sugar and other random cooking staples, money, vehicles, our first born...our doorbell rings day and night with requests.  Now, I know our town doesn't have a grocery store, but it's only a short drive...we do it often! 

So, we have become modern day recluses, checking out the curtain before we leave to go anywhere, and even when the coast is clear, we run-walk(have you ever tried to go unoticed when you have 4 children) and look at no one, until we've made it safely to our van.


Now...I wonder what they're saying about us?  :)



Mr. Forbes Needs a Swift Kick

10/09/2010 -

The stars just haven't been in alignment for me this year, that's for sure!  It's been constant incidents, trials and tribulations, endless mountains to climb, letdowns, disappointments, and lessons learned...story of my life!

I've had plenty of time to find out who I really am though, and for that I'm eternally thankful.   Funny, after 36 years you would of thought I knew exactly who I was...wrong, so wrong!!  I had myself pinned down as a business woman, no nonsense, thick skinned, grounded, sensible, calm, and it turns out I'm none of those things; typical of a woman, right?  Ok, so the only thing I'm not is the business woman :)....oh, and calm.

Losing my career was a blessing, I never realized how poisonous it really was.  Living each day to make a billion dollar company another billion dollars richer...it's the American way...  Bringing home work and worries left no time to live life.  Family?  Didn't exist.  Sure I had a nice little 10x10 office...that's all I had, and I thought in my own little twisted mind, that this is what American dreams were made of!  I swear someone was piping sublimial messages into the office elevator music.

So, I've shed my "clacker" skin (The Devil Wears Prada reference), after all, who needs luxurious Italian leather kick ass heels?  (Shhh, I'm still prone to visit my closet to pet them!)  I've morphed into a "high maintenance hippy" as my husband affectionately refers to me. 

These days you're liable to find me playing with clay, fusing plastic, weaving, crocheting, wiping the drool off of beads,  and walking endlessly up and down home improvement stores looking for new uses for the manliness lined shelves.  I get to participate in flea marketing, thrift store marathons and the 3 o'clock line up at school. 

And this is only the beginning...