Of real estate and crazy neighbors

Someone asked me a few weeks ago to write about what’s going on with The Crazy Neighbors. Life got in the way, and I forgot. It was when I walked by the front yard the other night, and took note of the two “plants,” with flowers that light up, I decided perhaps it was time to get that update squared away.

The yard has more stuff in it, including fake flowers and plants, and there remains an occassional spoon or wayward statue – the little white pig with an affinity for SoCo gets moved around a lot, which leads me to believe there are plenty of nights filled with druken debauchery for our little porky friend, wherein he stumbles about the lot, landing where he may once daylight breaks. The perpetrators still don’t talk to us, but that’s OK. I don’t talk with them, either.

This leads me to the house-buying situation. Probably one of the most liberating pieces to buying a home is the very simple truth that all of it will be yours. You will not have to share a speck of it with anyone you don’t call family, and there is a better than average chance that when someone inside makes too much damn noise in the middle of the night, you can go right ahead and tell him to pipe the hell down and know that you’ll see results. It dawned on Scott and I that, after a year of sharing an apartment that’s all of about 800-square-feet, we’re about to have bedrooms, a basement, storage…a yard! A big yard! I mean, does it get better? Yes! It does! There is garage! Do you know how over parking on the street I am? City people actually don’t go places because it means giving up a parking spot. To be able to run to the store and come back unscathed is pretty liberating.

Sweetening the pot is the quiet we’re about to inherit. We’re not leaving the city, but we are headed to a neighborhood that is delightful and quiet. We were there last weekend and there was nary a peep to be heard for blocks. I mean, you could hear people cutting their grass block away and nothing more. I am an unending ball of stress these days, so is my husband, and I ache for weekends that are silent and include some sense of sanctuary from the day-to-day insanity. I’d like to wake up on a Saturday morning, walk out on my porch and drink my coffee in peace. I’d sooner stick hot pokers in my eye than voluntary head out to the suburbs , but I can see now why people do it. It’s tough to happily go back to the cacophony once you understand the benefits of hearing nothing but the acorns dropping from the branches off of the old oak tree in the backyard.

It’s going to be a long couple weeks is what I’m saying.