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.

Oh hi, my blog looks like crap

I was TRYING to give this wasteland a spring-y makeover, but instead I made it look like birthday party barf. I cannot give the matter further attention currently, as I see my son opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and closing our DVD player. (He is also announcing "OPEN!" and "CLOSED!" as he does it). Just know I don't think this is a finished product that looks awesome or anything.

The people that you meet, when you're walking down the street

My "neighborhood" is pretty much one road with like 45 houses on it. Even though we are without a doubt the youngest people on this street, I still want to meet everyone and be good neighbors. It's lonely when you move. I don't care, I'll hang out with 50 year olds and play Bunco or whatever it is that they do.

Unfortunately, it's winter and freezing cold and hard to meet people. Here is how we are doing so far:

• Neighbors to the right- came over to introduce themselves and brought brownies. Yay! This made me very happy, except they rang the bell about one minute before my son's bedtime. He kept yelling, "Brownie! Eat it!" and dashing about underfoot. They let on that the people who lived here before were rather snobby. I let on that they were repulsive housekeepers. I haven't seen them since, but I keep hoping to run into the wife again while getting the mail. Sometimes I hear the dad yelling at the two sons. He has powerful lungs.
  


• Neighbors across the street- I haven't met them, but my husband met the across the street husband while doing yard work. They had a nice conversation, and then my husband insulted him by saying, "so, how about that huge cell tower in your backyard?". We have not seen them since either.
  


• People down the road- while getting my new library card, the librarian mentioned that she lived on the same street and asked, "Did you buy the old Sullivan place?" with a tone like, "Did you buy the old Bates motel?". When I said, "Yes!", as in "Yes, and aren't I so nice and cheery and exactly the kind of person you would like to live down the street from?!" She replied, "Don't bother planting any flowers, the deer will eat them."

So, as you can see, we are fitting in just great here.

Weird blog behavior

My mouse poop entry showed up in a very odd place, below the post I wrote weeks ago. It's two down, if you like reading about that sort of thing. And I'm having trouble coming up with a reason why you wouldn't. Everyone loves rodents!

It really happens, watch out ladies.

For real. I didn't see it coming, but I am turning into my mother.

The other day I left the house in the freakiest assortment of ugly clothes you can possibly imagine. I was going out in PUBLIC to MEET someone and I just grabbed whatever outerwear happened to already be sitting around in my car and put it on. My hair was crazy, I had a giant zit, and I guess I thought "well I can hardly look any more horrible, so what will this giant puffy purple down jacket that makes me look like a man hurt?" Then, because it is winter, my ears got cold and I had to wear a hat made for my SON. It is a knit hat shaped like a pumpkin and I willingly put it on my head and wore it around for a good hour. I should note that this pumpkin hat also has a stem, leaf, and curly tendril sticking out the top. AND I WORE IT IN PUBLIC like some kind of mental patient.

My sister advised me, "You should always dress as if you are going to run into your husband's ex-girlfriend." If I had run into anyone who used to know me when I was cute and put together I probably would have pretended to be someone else. Someone such as my sister, cause we look a lot alike and who cares if people think she goes out on the town dressed like the michelin man in a child's hat?

Lucky for you, there are no photographs of this horrible ensemble. So I drew a picture to illustrate. The girl with no nose or eyebrows actually looks way nicer than I actually did.

I can't find the cord that connects my camera to my computer, so I think I may be drawing my blog pictures for a while. Try not to be impressed by the quality of this rendering. I am currently working on a picture of a drawer full of mouse poop to go along with my next post.

The people who lived here before were GROSS.

That title is not witty, but it is a FACT. We have spent weeks and weeks and weeks cleaning and everytime I get down on my hands and knees to scrub something I hate them more. I'm going to be brief because every time I think about these horrible people my blood pressure goes up.

And it's not like I'm some kind of fanatic for cleanliness either. I have very very very low standards. If there were a continuum of cleanliness I would probably fall somewhere below slovenly bachelor and above drunken fraternity brother. I don't pee on the floor, but I don't pick my socks up either.

This is foul, but it will give you an idea of how nasty these folks were: when we moved in, every drawer in the kitchen was filled with mouse poop. For real. And not like one brown spot where you're like, is that a mouse poop or a crumb of burnt toast? Piles and piles of crap. And some of it was all squashed up, like the mice kept walking around in their own feces for a while.

I hated the last owners so much right then I think I had a little stroke.

Lest anyone who comes over for dinner now feel compelled to bring their own silverwear, don't worry, I cleaned every inch and crevice of those drawers like my life depended on it. I employed a sanitizing steamer, cleaning solution that will burn the hair off your head, and steel wool. I scrubbed so hard that I stripped the finish off.

I hate them.

It's harder than I thought to draw a good picture of a drawer full of mouse crap, but I gave it my best shot.

Lord, I hate those people.