It's been a long time since I've blogged, for many reasons, none of which are interesting enough to blog about, so let's move on.
I felt moved to write today because it would seem an old character, well-known to every one of my readers (and you both know who you are) is back in my life. In spirit, anyway. If my life were a television show, this episode would be called "I will not become McCrochety, I will not become McCrochety, I will not...."
Since moving to our house in early April, we have enjoyed a McCrochety-free existence. We can now live our lives as we see fit without having to worry about someone banging on the ceiling downstairs. We can do laundry at midnight, we can use the meat mallet when we cook...it's freedom at its finest. Even Stella seems more relaxed; she hardly barks at all now, which makes me think she probably barked before just to irritate McCrochety. (Good girl.)
I knew the moment we pulled up in the moving truck that life would be different in our new house. We live in a cul-de-sac on a short street, and a gaggle of neighborhood kids had gathered right outside our house for a game of softball.
"It's gonna be a long summer," remarked one of the movers. Secretly, I was afraid he might be right, especially when they were there the next night, and the next, and the next. They seem to spend most warm evenings outside, actually, playing softball or basketball or practicing their skateboarding tricks.
It hasn't been bad, though. Our new town has a curfew, so the kids always go back home before I go to bed, and most of the time, they're not that loud anyway. Occasionally, someone will leave a candy wrapper on my front lawn, and there's one kid who I wish would either stop singing "Beat It" or learn more words than "beat it, beat it," but otherwise, they seem to be good kids. It's actually kind of nice to live among kids who would rather be active than hole themselves up inside playing video games all day and night.
But of course, there is always bad to be taken with good.
This past Friday night, my next-door neighbors had a party. Or, rather, the kids in the house had a party. I don't know if the parents were out of town or what, and I'm not even really sure who all lives in that house besides the owners and their teenaged son. (There seem to be a few 20-something siblings or maybe cousins in the mix.) So I'm not sure where this party idea began, but where it went was not good.
On the surface, it wasn't all that bad. No one was really outside, though there might have been some people hanging out in the garage. It was normal party noise, nothing upsetting. But then it carried on into the night. And into the wee hours of the morning. I closed my bedroom windows (which I hate to do when there's a nice, cool breeze outside), but then at 6:30 Saturday morning, I was woken up by drunk teenagers wrestling between my house and the one next door.
My husband and I decided not to make a big deal of it (although around 10 a.m., after they'd all gone inside, presumably to sleep, he decided it was high time to take care of all those pesky loose nails in our deck). It was one party, one time, and it wasn't like they were blasting music and shooting off fireworks at 3 a.m. -- they just should have taken it inside earlier and closed their windows. Which is what they did on Saturday night when they had people over again.
On Sunday, one of the obscure we're-not-really-sure-who-she-is residents of the house came up to my husband while he was washing his car in the driveway.
"I hope those parties didn't bother you," the girl said. Never one to make an issue of anything, he mentioned casually that he had heard the 6:30 a.m. wrestling match, and she reported that the police had been called at 11 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Saturday. So I'm sure her question was really not about concern for us but an attempt to find out whether we had been the ones who called the police.
We hadn't been...though I thought about it when bloodcurdling screams woke me up at 12:35 this morning. I'm still not sure there isn't someone lying dead over there. But during the loud parties anyway, I was glad someone else was willing to pick up the phone so I didn't have to be That Guy who knocks on the door and says to keep it down.
So while I'm glad McCrochety isn't my neighbor, I guess I wouldn't mind having him for my neighbor's neighbor.
