Go play outside, son

One of the major reasons we decided to buy a house was because we wanted to give our son some room to run. We were living in a townhouse and the only patch of grass was about as big as a car, and the neighbor's dog always crapped in it. They only picked it up if we all happened to be outside while the dog was actually going. Otherwise, they would dash back in their house and hide, perhaps hoping that the dog poop fairy would come and clean it up for them. Eventually my husband started picking it up and re-homing it on their porch. Another neighbor bought a box of coctail umbrellas and festively placed one in each lawn crap.

Of all the homes we looked at, this one has the most land. Awesome, you say. Not so, I correct you.

The entire septic system had to be replaced. It was SUPPOSED to be done before we moved in. Naturally, they started right AFTER we moved in, around Christmas. Nothing says "welcome to your new home" more than the melodious sounds of a backhoe grinding up your front yard every day for weeks. I wanted to jump out of a window. In another lucky break for people who hate us, the ground froze, so they had to halt production until APRIL. Leaving us with a front yard that is the exact opposite of the grassy playland we had envisioned for our son:

Also, it reeks of sewer gas.

What, you are wondering about the back yard? That is where they dumped the dirt from the front yard. Great for little children. Mud as far as the eye can see, and hundreds of jagged rocks just holding their breath and waiting for a tender child to trip and land on them:

I still let him play back there.

What's happening, hot stuff?

Make a comment! For real, I don't care what it is, you can tell me about the weather in your town today, or how your paperboy always throws your New York Times into a puddle. I changed the comments filter so anyone can post, you don't need an account. At least, I think I did this. I am like an octogenarian when it comes to computer savvy.

What's up, one eye?

What's that you say? This is the laziest picture I have ever posted here? The perspective is horribly off, the doorknob is on the wrong side, the colors are lame, and the grass looks like a fungus? I respond: suck it, blog critics!

It's hard to give a good description of a house, because most houses are basically the same. There is a roof, door, some windows, and maybe a plant or two by the stoop. There are castles and shacks, but most of us in the suburbs live in some variation of the colonial theme.

HOWEVER, there is one house in this neighborhood that stands out. I hope it goes up for sale just so I can be creepy and poke through the mls pictures of the inside. The realtor would definitely have to use a flash, owing to the particular defining feature of this house: It has ONE window. For real! ONLY ONE. And this is not some huge, modern wall of glass window either, it is about the size of a porthole. Imagine how freaky that looks. Where on other houses are more windows, there is just plain old wall. It makes me feel like this house was in a horrible accident and all its windows were sewn up. It's like a cyclops. (Okay, there is one on the side also, so that makes two total. But one window per side? According to my research, which involves staring at people's homes as I drive down the street, that is grossly below average.)

Go ahead and count how many windows are in your house. If you don't have time to count, just estimate. What? It's more than one? You win!

I have been working up some theories about the occupants. They could be:

1. Running a meth lab.

2. Vampires.

That's pretty much all I've got so far.

Neighbor meeting fail

This weekend was so nice. Husband fired up the grill while son and I took a walk. We were playing near the sewer drain (not the most stellar parenting, but Nort likes to throw little rocks in it) when I see a man power walking up the street. A neighbor! An opportunity to make another connection in this community! He was wearing a University of Connecticut shirt (tucked into very high waisted blue sweatpants, so maybe this failure isn't so devastating).

I smiled and said, "Hi! Big win you guys had last night!" I am referring to the NCAA tournament. For those of you who don't know anything about college basketball, it is the tournament to determine the national championship- 64 teams enter, one team leaves. (I mean, they win. The other 63 teams just lose, they aren't killed or anything.)

Unfortunately, I mixed up UConn and UNC. UNC did have a big win, and UConn had a horrible, embarrassing, season-ending loss to Michigan State. Just the kind of thing you want to bring up in order to endear yourself to a strange UConn fan.

It is the equivalent of saying to someone, "Congratulations on your big promotion!" And they respond, "I just got fired you idiot."

He didn't call me an idiot, but he didn't hang around getting to know me either.

King of the douchebags

The man we bought this house from is a pretty big jerk. He threatened to pull out of the deal every two minutes and threatened to sue us every once and a while just to keep things spicy.

Now I find out that in addition to being an annoying jerk, he looks like a jackass. I know this because he plays an obscure sport for rich people (he is, I further learned, a club "pro" at this retarded sport) and he was recently featured in the magazine published by the national association of (let's pretend it's croquet, so I can just type that instead of being vague) croquet players. This magazine is addressed to "or current resident" so we keep getting it.

And there he is, grinning out at me from the pages of this glossy magazine like an arrogant wiener. He seems like the kind of guy who brings up his croquet prowess within the first three minutes of meeting people in order to impress them. Then he would challenge you to a friendly game, using the full croquet set he just happens to have in his car trunk, and nail your ass to the floor. I also think he's the kind of guy who would use pickup lines like, "if I wrote the alphabet, I would put U and I together." wink, wink.

In an effort to be fair, I will say that he does not actually have snaggle teeth, even though my nearly spot-on illustration above might lead you to believe otherwise. However, he does have those creepy ears.