This. Means. War.

I had this neighbor, Charlie, as a child who drove my parents nuts. He was the one that when you had a tree, and the leaves fell onto his side of the fence, he'd rake them back onto your lawn. He'd keep a running written tally of which neighbor had what garden tool, for how long, and he'd be reluctant to ever assist you in a project. We've all had neighbors like this - but I swear, he loved me. Doted on me. And when his daughter passed away from luekemia, (I look a good deal as Madieline did) I was the only one allowed in the house.

I kind of thought that Karma would reward me with a neighbor that treated Charlie much the way I did, with patience and kindness, and a healthy dose of cheap, easy jokes.

That's not what I got. I swear, the Hatfield McCoy thing may just be a-brewin' a new.

My next door neighbor loves loves loves to hassle me. He pulls in, and gives me the finger. He's got two ugly, nasty yappy little beasts he calls dogs, an uglier wife, and a desperately bad relationship with anyone in my neighborhood. His trash, on windy days, ends up in my yard, constantly, and yet, I just throw it out. He's planted trees on the property line of MY yard, yells at me about MY dogs, and to retaliate, I've taken to vacuuming (central vac is soooo cool!) at about six am, on the Saturday's when he sleeps with his windows open.

But this time, he's gone too far.

THIS. MEANS. WAR.

One of my (admittedly idiot) dogs had taken a pillow, one of those neck roll ones, which is stuffed with this white, gauzy filler. Enough mind you, to coat, say, a good stretch of the back yard when all's said and done. Being rather late at night when I got a very hungry H home, I fed him, walked the dogs, (2 miles) bathed the child and popped him into bed. In the dark I go out, and attempt to retrieve even some of the offending out of season dog made snow. I got the front yard accomplished, before I succummed to exhaustion, and our first misquito infestation.

The next night, I complete the entire yard. Front. Back. Side. Two hours of raking, bending and swearing, three blisters on my hands, and one on an ankle, and it's done. Success is mine!

I go out an hour later and find more. MORE of this shit. All over the side yard. And I'm thinking: dogs are in house. So is small child. There was nothing left to blow in the wind.

On more careful examination, I now see the pattern - he (Kevin, should you be wondering) took the time to place the fluff in rows on the lawn. Rows. If you go through the trouble of picking it up, why on God's great green Earth wouldn't you just throw it away?

I marched over to his house, rang his obnoxious doorbell, set his dogs to yapping, and asked him. Politely. Well. It was frigidly polite at least. His response? Why should he pay to have the trash guys to take my trash?

Are you kidding me?? Are you fucking kidding me?

I was so flummaxed I simply stared, turned, and walked away. Stepping on one of his precious ON MY PROPERTY wee trees he's got planted, for a privacy screen. Then, I moved the "offending" (his words, not mine) playset, (with the help of my awsome neighbor, who also hates K) into complete line of sight of his tacky little deck. I'm considering further measures, involvoing sugar water, and his foundation (we've a real issue with ants out here, what a pity) but why stoop to his level?

Instead, I've gone one better.

I called animal control. About the out of control barking. (hmmm...should I mention that I'm on a first name basis with animal control? didn't think so either)

I also called the housing athority , about his illegal shed. (yes, we are not allowed to put up sheds that are larger than a certain size, and his is bigger!!) And ratted him out about not registering his dogs with the town.

And lastly. The next time his trash ends up in my yard, I'm sending him a bill. You know, so I don't have to pay for MY trash guy to take out HIS trash.

Ever notice how when you've got company coming, particularily ones that have never seen your house, that's the day that one of your dogs (one of the BIG ones) will throw up on three floors, and have an accident on the rug?

I swear, it never fails. I should be just polishing this or that, and maybe, throwing the three overflowing baskets of clean, To Be Put Away Clothes into the oversize closet I had built (maybe, for just this purpose?) but no. I'll be on my hands and knees, cleaning up ... well, I don't want to know what, so I'm assuming you don't either.

Also, I've noticed, that I can fit into my skinny, low riding jeans, (with a bit of help...think, crisco, and a tall building) but they are on, and I've managed to add a belt. A pink one.

Which is going a bit against the grain for me - ever since I turned 30 (which wasn't last year...but I won't tell you just how long ago that was) I Gave Up Belts. Want to find my waist? Fine. I'll bend over, and you can draw a line in the crease. Just....pick the one closest to my middle.

Today, however, it could be the weather, the kickboxing, or all those calories I wasted getting up and off my soapbox; it could be seeing a guy pal I've not seen in a while, and want to impress upon him that I didn't have the baby and Go To Seed, I've wrangled the unsuspecting jeans and belt out of my closet (tripping over some of those baskets, if you must know) and while I wouldn't say I'm headed for a Gap Ad anytime soon, I'm not sure I look as fat as I thought I might. (read: there is nothing too noticable hanging over the jeans..nothing that is, that I can't tuck into them when seated) -

In short?

Spring has arrived in New England.

In all it's belted, skinny jeaned glory

Contrary to what YOU think...

Contrary children are merely one of life's joys....or so I've been told. Until, naturally, I realize that some of the contrariness came to him...er...genetically.

Take for example, today: he didn't want the smoothie to have just bananas and strawberries, but peaches and blueberries too - or, now that it's made? maybe not. Maybe, we were just better off with strawberries and bananas. While I grind my teeth, and swear, just inside my ears, where only I can hear it, I whip up another one, just like he wants. Because, afterall, how am I supposed to get my tiara back?

(please hold, another waffle needs to be made...if you want music, hum to yourself)

This is all before we even contemplate the decisions we must make that are fraught with peril...what goes in the lunchbox, which blanket must we have for naptime...which always includes about ten minutes (we don't have, of course) to debate the merits of said items.

While pondering this, I ordered a snotty coffee, from starbucks, as it's right next to work. A Grande Carmel Latte, with skim, and whipped cream. When it arrives, with the milk overheated (read: scalded and smelled funny) sans whipped cream. Did she not hear how I ordered it? Can she not see that I need it to have skim milk, heated to 160 degrees, not 180, with the damn whipped cream? isn't that what I said?

And it hit me, like the proverbial ton of bricks -

Hunter really is his mother's child. He likes things how he likes 'em, and that's how he want 'em.

Come to think of it?

I'm good with that.

Now. I'm off, to heat up the syrup for the waffles we're having for dinner.

Someone likes to have it warm. With just a hint of butter on the waffles.

(in case you care? it's not me)

I'm Convinced....

...that I should move to Texas. Into a trailor park. And not take off the wheels.

Because then, when I wander, half dressed, shoeless and chewing tabacco into my local 7-11, I'll actually win when I buy my daily lottery ticket and six pack. Not just the weenie prizes either, the really big ones, the Fuck-Off Prizes. Oh, I'll tell the press that I'm going to become the world's greatest philantrhopist, right up there with Brangelina, Doing Good will be my motto - only first? I'm going to Do Good For Myself for a change.

I'm going to book that massage I've wanted for eons (but I bought child sneakers instead, as someone's feet grow faster than crabgrass on a hot July afternoon) and go to the dentist. I'm going to hire someone to turn my barren, sad excuse of a lawn into a beautiful, gorgeous landscaped project, with trees that replenish the earth, and in their ensuing health and shade, kill off the baby stupid trees my neighbor (and I use that in the strictest sense - he really does live next to me) planted, on my property line. That is, if I don't run them down with the lawnmower I'll finally buy, the ride on kind, you know, by accident.

I'll give to the big contributors that participate in the Grand Scheme of Things: the Cancer Society, the ASPCA, and build a new home for the groundhog - maybe he'll convince Spring it should arrive a little earlier out here, if he had better digs.

I've noticed that some people have won in New Jersey, but not the Fuck-Off prizes. Only the Blip On The Radar, I Had To Share It With Seventeen Other Winners prizes. I don't want those. Sharing is great, in the abstract, but honestly, as much as I tell Hunter how great and wonderful it feels to share, I think he suspects I might be lying.

I think even he gets it that sometimes, just occassionally, you want stuff all to yourself.

Wondering how this came up?

I was. I mean, I had fed him, gotten into some cozier clothes, and headed over to the town hall, where I found out that I missed the big town meeting and open hearing for the gravel pit some idiot wants to put up behind my Other Neighbor's house (this neighbor, I like) ....and I've seen the guy that wants to operate it, and I wouldn't let him near my kid's sandbox, much less dig a big fat hole in the earth, so he can make money off destroying everything aound out here. I've considered going so far as to plant box turtles, which are endangered (this would be their natural habitat anyway) out there, if only I knew when the EPA was doing their walkthrough. And then, I got to thinking how one of my fellow town dwellers managed to snare this contract's okay by buying off one of the senators and I thought, well, shoot, if I had the money, I'd buy off officials to my advantage. So he could stick his plan in his pipe and smoke it. My house would be saved from losing it's value, and being covered in dust.

Plus also, the town would love me. And then, I wouldn't have to buy a lawnmower. People from all over would line up to take care of the hard to do chores around the house (snow shoveling, also leaps to mind here) as thanks for my saving the town from a hoard of stupidity, dust, and massive amounts of heavy truck traffic on our roads.

Just think.

All this could happen, if only I moved to texas, and took up walking around barefoot, chewing tabacco, surveying my life from the inside of an RV, with the wheels still on.

I'm not even sure I'm breathing anymore.

I used to babysit for this family, who in turn, became my surrogate family, when mine was falling apart.

I found out, that my mother told this woman, who opinion of me I've always held sacred, that B and I were already married when we had H. She told everyone that. Then, when she hosted my engagement party, several months before I was married, in my hometown, all these people came, and only I found out later that she kept calling it another reception.

I'm so hurt.

And humiliated. No WONDER people kept questioning me about this nebulous other ceremony my mom kept referring to.

All this time, she kept feeding me this shit about how we should always come home first, when anything happened, and here she is, lying about my life because she was embarrassed? I could just die. You know, I was 26 when I found out I was expecting H. My family was not welcoming or even kind, and I was practically disowned until naturally, H got here, and then, it was as if I'd totally imagined the nasty comments, the slights, the lost friendships, and lost family. I finally built some dams over that hurt, and some bridges - only to find out that she's been lying all this time.

I suppose I knew that my family was embarrassed - my sister certainly never made any secret of it. But my mom?

Maybe I shouldn't care, this was years ago now; but I do.

How could she do this to me?

Closed doors

I drove by the first house I ever bought today; the one that's going to auction. The one that used to be his mother's, and still, even when we lived there, was. I went through the list of things we changed - which is nearly everything, literally, there is possibly one wall that remains standing that is original - how the house had changed us. Sitting at the curb, I took in the overbearingly large dogwood tree his mother planted, and didn't want us to trim. The cabinets she'd had hand done for her, thirty years prior but didn't want removed. How a battle ensued over everything - from the roof, with forty years of water damage, the incorrectly done electrical units, the unusable bathroom on the second floor, the torn linoleum in the kitchen. How I lived in the eight by ten foot dining room, vacuuming out japanese beetles from the bed everynight before retiring.

Let us not forget the horsehair plaster. The damn plaster that continued to settle, in it's inevitable way, for months after the work had been halted, the contractors no longer letting themselves in at six am, while I lay like a zombie, no longer caring if I was all the way tucked under the sheets anymore. I managed a smile, at the layers of wallpaper we'd removed, how I'd painted three rooms, late at night, as I could no longer stand to look at the walls. Taking in the downstairs, once I got past the threshold, was certainly not an easy task - those rooms still hold ghosts I'd thought long extinguished. But the hardest, was the upstairs. I passed the shelf where I'd had the family pictures displayed, stopping, with such tell-tale clarity, that something had occured, after H was 21 months old. The children in the pictures stopped growing. I think I wanted them to stay little, with their memory banks yet unfilled, to snatch back the time, and the unpleasantness, that occured in that house.

To be honest, I'm not sure what prompted me to wander through that veritable house of horrors; each room with a distortion mirror, that only reflected the memories I'd long since tried to banish. Maybe, that's the point: I've never fully gone through them. Letting things go, as my mom would say. I peeked into the room that was my children's, back when I had two children, both of whom I adored, loved with an abondon I'm not sure arrives for anyone but your children. It's fierce, and protective, and bigger than me. I painted that room, half pale blue for Fox, half pale pale pink for My Riley Jane, split down the middle of the window - so sheer were the colors, that most people knew there was something different, but couldnt' quite pin down what it was. Peering in, I could hear their laughter, and the cries for me in the night; smell their baby scent, hear their quiet breath as they slept. That's the hardest part of this whole raw deal: Riley. I lost a child.

And then, I stepped into what used to be my master bedroom. I turned in a complete circle.

Walked out. Closed the door.

Left the house. Locked the door. Drove away. Not once did I look back.

Some things, I think, are meant to stay behind locked doors

Chaos Theory

My parents are coming out to visit, tomorrow - and while I'm thrilled, I'm in a total snit...the house looks like shit. I realize, most people will tell me that a clean house is not a sign of good parenting, and that being fur-free is really saved for those that....ummm...don't actually own pets, (which clearly is not me) but I would like to, I don't know, eat at the big table. Find matching socks already in my child's drawer, so my parents don't have to watch, in terrified horror, as I dig through a huge basket of unmatched socks, in various stages of the Bleach process, trying to find some that qualify as Close Enough to be considered a true pair. Have towels that are dry to offer my guests, instead of handing them one of the five Hunter needs to use every night, just to "warm up" prior to donning his jammies. (I was always under the impression this is what that odd thing called a robe is for, but hey, what do I know? I'm just the mom) - and the big table? Littered with easter candy, toys, and the tic tac toe game that came with fuzzy chicks and bunnies.

I could totally clean that off...if you know, there wasn't that Scatter Down Theory working against me. You know the one: to move the game to it's rightful home, I'd have to move the blocks down to the basement, dust off the shelf, and then, once in the basement, I'd need to vacuum before putting the blocks back where they live, so they're not totally, disgustingly coated with fur...to clean the bathrooms, I already had to pile up the dirty clothes in the hallway, to dust the bedside tables, I had to take all the books downstairs, and then clean off the shelf they're supposed to live on, as it was in the My Policeman Game Tableua......so you can see my dilema.

Maybe, I should just book us all into a hotel, and tell them the house is being fumigated. One with a pool perhaps...no wait, that would mean I'd have to shave. Find the suit by digging in the attic for the summer clothes that are not currently in the closet...

yes. I realize exactly how pathetic my life is, just by rereading the snippet above. The funniest part? All these people that think I'm sooooo organized, and uncluttered, because I can do it to their houses.

I also totally realize that most of this issue I'm having is just that, my issue, but well. It's not my mom that's coming, it's my dad, and my step-mom, and I feel sort of as though I need to prove that I've got it all totally under control. I just wish I knew how to make it all look like a breeze, and not as though I took over a headless chicken's body.

Which means, I need to put on my Supermom Cape...if only I could figure out where I stashed it

I sat to write some letters today, the real kind, on paper, with a fabulous pen - only to find that the tip has been mashed into oblivion, by someone who insisted they use it for stenciling. For the record, I suppose I cannot be too upset - I couldn't get the words to come out right anyway. One of my bestest pals in the world, lost one of hers, and I'm finding it difficult to be so far away, when in reality, I want to be there - I need to be there, if for no other reason than to bake something fattening and elaborate, drop off a deeply fried, cheese laden meal, and sit, on the couch, next to her, while she tells me all the stuff she needs to say.

And, since I cannot be there, I am so grateful that her lovely, lovely boyfriend is.

Damn damn damn. Easter is harder than it looks.

My eggs were perfect little specimens. Eggland's Best, if you must know. 18 beauties snuggled deep in their cups, just waiting for the right moment to turn from gelatinous mess into the Ultimate Hard Boiled Egg. I lovingly placed them ever so gently into the bottom of the largest pot I have (a real new england lobstah pot) and when they sighed from being blissfully covered with cold water (absolutely necessary for the appropriate boil) liberally salted (to avoid crackage due to extreme temps) and heated to a Rapid Boil, I covered their uncracked surfaces with the lid, and watched, as they turned for slow twisting eggs, into hard, fast, tight little turners right in front of my very eyes.

You'd have thought, after all this, (okay, so it was maybe, 20 minutes total) I might have noticed my fatal flaw: the fucking eggs are brown. BROWN. Everyone knows you cannot dye brown eggs.

This is what I get for gloating this year.

Buying the eggs early. Making sure none were already cracked. Desperately attempting (and succeeding!) in the avoidance of the dreaded Double Boil (where you boil the eggs, and amidst the dying process, your small child cracks one as it decends into a glass of food color only to find that the white is cooked wonderfully, but the yellow? well. suffice to say, all the undyed eggs go back into the pot for an extra boil. I highly recommend not eating those) ..... only to peer into 18 orgasmically uncracked (ok, I don't get out much, I'll try harder...but go with me here) eggs and realize that they are....UNDYABLE.

The worst part of this whole scenario is that I discovered this after I told the small child we were ready to dye them.

Plus also, I hate hate hate the smell of hard boiled eggs, and now it's permeating the house, by way of dog gas.

(what else do you do with them, I ask you - other than feed them to great danes???)

To top this whole thing off, we have the Easter Egg Hunt at karate tomorrow, and you know that someone will be totally unable to keep the secret this his mother has yet again, fucked up the easter eggs. Hopefully, he'll not use that word, but well. You get the point. How stupid does one have to be to screw up easter eggs? I've only been doing this, what, 30 plus years?

Evidently, one of the holiday's I excell at is the Fucked Up Easter Egg. So far, in his mere five-ish years on the planet, I've managed to screw up the eggs each and every year.

Sigh. Just do it.

Just strip me of my Mother Of The Year status. I no longer deserve to hold the tiara. (it does come with a tiara, yes???)

Mood:not at all eggstatic