I swear my neighbor is reading my blog. I wrote here about the view out my only south-facing window of my living room. My new neighbors must have read it because look what I woke up to today!
Those bushes simply cannot grow fast enough.
A car! A shiny, distracting car out my window, harshing my mellow! And there’s nothing I can do about it. It still runs. At least with the powder puff yellow MG convertible I could have reported it; it was mounted on cement blocks, obviously not going anywhere. The yacht “hidden” under the blue tarp was an obvious code violation for noise. It screamed, I AM A BIG BOAT UNDER A BLUE TARP!
“OMG, Skye! They’re reading my blog!”
“Who?”
“The neighbors!”
“So? You told them the name of your blog last night. You’re going to have to get used to the idea that people you know are reading your stuff. It’s not private anymore.” He’s trying to warn me. He knows my history. I have kept a journal since high school but would absolutely die if anyone read it. Obviously, if I am putting it out in the blogosphere I have come a long way.
Once I broke up with a guy because he read my journal. I went out to the Quick Mart, leaving him at my apartment. I came back minutes later because I forgot my wallet and found him with his head under my bed, searching for my journal.
“What are you doing?”
“I….um.…I’m looking for my shirt.”
“You’re wearing your shirt.”
I married Skye because I can leave my journal open on the counter in front of the coffee pot and he’ll move it out of the way to make coffee. Old Boyfriend would sip his coffee while he combed over each page looking for where I wrote about him and seeing if he could catch me in something he always suspected me of but could never prove. I hope he’s on meds for that now.
But I digress.
“Not those neighbors! The next door neighbors!” The Type A neighbors that do not like my dog. I call her “the Unhappy Princess” and I call him something my Admin won’t let me say here. It has to do with male anatomy. “The Walking _____”.
He talks on his cell phone and paces up and down the asphalt patch out our south-facing window, telling off whoever is on the other end of the line. “Well, that’s not f@#king good enough! Do it right or don’t f#@king do it at all!” he yells.
We can hear entire ream-outs. At first it was cool. Who doesn’t like a good cell phone eavesdropping on the new neighbors to find out what kind of people they are, right? That got old the first day hour.
My 13-year old was outside playing. I forced him off the screens and told him to go out but in a few short minutes he was right back inside. I said, “Go back out there, honey. Two minutes is not enough vitamin D time. Go! Go on!”
He said, “Mom, I came in because the new neighbor is out there on his cell phone swearing like a sailor.”
After the next door neighbors got settled into their new house and finished all the renovations, including painting the house grocery bag brown, the Walking ______’s cell calls became less dramatic. Now he calmly speaks on his cell. Right. Under. My. Window. At 11 p.m.
Then today I look out and I see that his spare car that was parked in front of our house, not his, has been moved to the asphalt patch out my window.
“Amy, you gotta look at it like the glass is half full. At least the car is in the way of him walking up and down the asphalt patch. He won’t be out there smoking cigarettes and talking on his cell.”
“Nope. I looked. He left a path. You know what he’s going to do? On nice days he’ll pace up and down the path. On rainy days, he’s going to sit in the car, unroll the window, turn on the radio, smoke, and talk on the cell.”
“No. He won’t do that.”
“Mark my words.” In fact, when it happens I will stand in the window and take a picture to mark my words with a photo for my blog. I love to be right but in this case I would love to be wrong.
“Hey, of all the vehicles that have been parked there, at least that one matches the house. Beige car. Beige house.”
“That’s all you have for the glass half full, Skye? They match?” He doesn’t understand my Rainman-ish nature. I can’t walk from the dining room to the back of the house without noticing that car in my peripheral vision. I will have to go sit in a corner and stim over the slightest change out that window, whereas he is oblivious to change. He didn’t even notice in our old house that I took down the wallpaper in our bedroom and painted it sunset yellow until I told him a week later.
“You can stay in the empty half of the glass but I like to stay in the half-full end….and drown there.”
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