Finally getting a bit quiet in the neighborhood. Finally. The noise level rises sometime before lunch at one house across the street with (oftentimes) arguing inside their house, spilling out to their front porch. And it's not even the older woman and her son who argue...it's her grown children and grandchildren who visit and get angry with one another. Lots of traffic, so much so that some of the neighbors have asked if they're running a half-way house over there. Hmmm, not a good impression to leave, I don't think. 'Course it's not that way everyday, but often enough that I crave the quiet of sitting outside. I miss it. And at another house across from us on the other side (we live on a corner), the kids play outside after dinner and draw quite a crowd. And sometimes their dad puts speakers outside the front door and treats us to hip-hop. They had a yard sale recently, and I've not noticed the speakers since then. Maybe they sold them. I can only hope.
Yeah, I can be a grouch.
But the thing is that our house is loud enough inside with the kids talking ninety to nothing. I go outside to get a break from the racket. And gardening out there at sunset is, pretty much, not going to happen. There's a constant audience. And the kids at the second house come over every week to borrow something. I might have mentioned before that one time they knocked on the door, holding a pair of tennis shoes and asked if we wanted to buy them. What? Am I living in a wild nightmare? Was I asking for tennis shoes? When Gary looked at them in disbelief and said 'no', they set up a small table by their driveway, put the shoes on it and tried to flag down folks driving by. No kidding. Last week they wanted to borrow our lawn mower. Can't wait to see what'll be next. Oh no. Hold on. I can wait. And just think. School ends in a few weeks and the children will be home all day unsupervised. This story just gets richer.
If it was possible, I'd plunk a sign in our yard and sell this house. Financially it's not feasible, and sadly I'm not coping well with the constant activity and noise. Must find my sense of humor in this situation, but it might be difficult.
