Trophy Wife, part 2

I wrapped my 3 year old goddaughter's birthday gift in paper covered with pictures of alcoholic drinks. (The night before, I realized it was the only paper we had and it was too late (i.e. I was too lazy) to go out and get other paper.) I tried to disguise this with a gift bag - narrowly managing to find one that wasn't Christmas or new baby themed (only just).

I did at least manage to take out the bottle of wine for her Mom (she was about to live through a party with 3 year olds!) before I gave it to her.

Hmm, I must have put my *appropriate* wrapping paper next to my Mother of the Year award...

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The monkey and I went to the party (the husband had to work) at the beach/marina. I managed to lather the baby up with sunscreen, but somehow thought I'd be fine... Midway through the party I realized I was burning a bit. I thought about sunscreen then, but realized I couldn't reach my back (I was wearing a sundress) and would just have weird tan lines then. I'm burned to a crisp! My husband looked and assessed the damage as 1st degree burns over 30% of my body. It's really attractive... And dehydrating (I wake up feeling hung over without drinking every morning).

Must have stored my sunscreen next to my common sense. Or was it next to the medal for setting a good example for my young child?

I'm going to argue this isn't so bad an example. She can now see how painful and damaging a bad sunburn is without getting one herself! Yup, that's it.

Note - this award will come in the form of a sunburn tattoo. My sister in law looked at me while assessing the burn and said - were you holding the baby a lot on this side (indicating my right). Yeah, I guess so, why?

Because you have a handprint on your arm.

Oh good.

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And this time the award goes to my neighbor (for once it's not me!)...

My husband came home from work on Thursday morning exhausted. I suggested he go take a nap and I'd head to Target with the monkey for... oh, something. Who remembers what my pilgrimage to Target was for now? I didn't want to drive his truck to the store, so I pulled it out of the driveway and put it on the street to get my car out. (I reasoned I could leave it there because he'd be leaving in a few hours anyway. If I put it in the driveway, we'd just have to switch up the cars later.)

About 20 minutes into my errand, my phone rings. His car just got hit. He was half asleep upstairs and heard a loud crash. He decided to look out the window to see what it was, but didn't immediately see anything. Then he noticed a guy walking up our driveway. Ugh.

He heads downstairs to talk to him. Apparently the guy didn't even slow down (which he told his own insurance as well) thereby creaming the entire side of the car. He started making excuses to my husband (while admitting fault) that there were cars on both sides of the street and oncoming traffic. My husband, who teaches driving to fire fighters, said - so what should you have done? Should you have slowed down?

Ugh.

Our doorbell rang at about 8 the next night. It was another neighbor asking us to settle an argument between him and his wife. He insisted the guy had to be completely drunk to hit a parked car like that. My husband said - nope, stone cold sober. Just an awful driver (as his wife had said countless times when she brought his insurance info over. Always good to be supportive...).

And the award for worst driver (a stupid sign for your forehead to warn the world) does NOT go to me today! Woo hoo!

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UPDATE - Just peeled my shirt off my back from where the aloe had stuck it too my skin. Eww, eww, ewww! Ouch. And, oh yeah, EWWWWWW!!!! Paralyzed by the grossness, must go now.

Good fences make good neighbors and ditto to you!

Now that the weather is finally getting nice, it’s occurred to us that we need to start doing something about our TOTAL MESS of a yard. Seriously, the couple who owned the house before us were older and really didn’t take care of any outdoor maintenance (the indoor maintenance is somewhat debatable too, but let’s not go there) and there’s a lot of really basic clean up to be done to just begin to be able to see what’s out there. Then we can get into the REALLY expensive stuff…

Thus far we are living with suburban dream… Finding babysitters so my husband can cut down trees (he got to play with a chainsaw – one he borrowed from his Dad. I was thinking, good, now we don’t have to buy one. He was thinking – oh, this just proves I need to buy a more powerful one) and I can rake leaves in that big patch to right that separates us from the neighbors. It’s like trying to rake the forest. (Now, it’s not that big, we’re in Northern VA suburbia – we feel like we have a fiefdom at half an acre. It’s just not been taken care of in YEARS so it’s totally overgrown and hasn’t been raked. It’s bad enough trying to pull out all the downed branches from this winter. I’m pulling out completely rotten branches from the past 5 (10?) winters.) I feel like Sisyphus doing this (you know, you never make progress – you start to think you’ve made progress and it turns out you have to start over), but it has to be done. No, really has to. One neighbor has been complaining to us about this since BEFORE we moved in.

We started a couple of weeks ago and filled 38 bags with leaves from the back. (note – it’s April, right? The leaves are not falling off the trees. This is just the crap that’s been there FOREVER. Also, that was just from the small part of the yard inside the fence. I'm not sure how much beyond the fence is ours. What I used to proudly think was "possibly the whole wooded area!", I now really friggin hope is just a little bit past the fence line...) I started on the front (this actually was raked once in the fall) and so far have 10 bags filled and I don’t know how many loads of branches to go to the dump. The progress here is slower as I haven’t had as much time to devote to it and truly, I’m a wimp. Hubby probably did 30 of the 38 bags (ok, 35). And he’s been in the back trying to cut up the trees that fell and dealing with the dead ones that will fall rather than muscling through this mess.

So Saturday, as we were coming up for air on this project, we ran into our neighbor (the other side this time) and my husband asked her if she had an arborist she’d used to take down trees in the past. She said that there were several who’d worked in the neighborhood, but then said – you’re not taking down LIVING trees are you. Cause you know you’re not allowed to do that? (Great, we live next door to a 1950’s sitcom neighbor.) My husband said (with more than a hint of impatience and sarcasm) – yes, I’ve read the HOA documents. I’m talking about dead trees here. She joked – don’t make me come after you / report you.

Now, my husband was a bit tired given hours of labor outside and a bit overwhelmed with the remaining task and really – just in no mood! So he said – Ditto! And pretty much ended the conversation there.

You could tell she was a bit taken aback – so shortly thereafter she called me over to mention that they had an old baby pool we could use for the munchkin any time we wanted. And she called over to tell us how nice we all looked when we were headed out that evening.

The thing is – it’s not that she really says anything so egregious at any point. She just tends to be so… hmm, forceful. No that’s not the word – really, I mean over the line – in the WAY she says things. (How’s that for me being a girl? It’s not WHAT you said. It’s the WAY you said it!) For instance, instead of saying – hey, let us know if you ever need to borrow a tool, as we may have something . Or even – hey, do you guys happen to have a [insert totally random tool that I have no idea what it does here], as we need one? Instead she said – we should get together sometime and make an inventory of our tools so we each know what the other has (for our master inventory). Umm… OK.

Basically, I just think she should do some Jeopardy training – you know, learn to phrase things in the form of a question.

We certainly don’t want neighbor issues (that’s a headache that’ll last YEARS if you start it), but sometimes it does feel that good fences make good neighbors. Despite our “fiefdom,” our neighbors sometimes do feel too close. Ironically, the neighbor on the other side who WANTS our trees down asked if she could have some removed when she’s having some done on her property. Maybe we should let the two of them negotiate…

How do you negotiate the neighbor minefield? What are the weirdest neighbor requests or comments you’ve gotten? And how the heck does one rake a forest (short of a blow torch, as my husband has suggested this a few times…)?

Mayberry aka my Grandfather should have lived here

So I stopped home at lunch today and as I was getting out of the car, I heard my name being called. I looked around wondering where it was coming from (sort of took me by surprise) and saw my neighbor standing by her car in the street in front of our house (her car had been parked there when I pulled in). She was calling over to ask me if it was "ok" for her to park their car in front of our house. Apparently they wind up juggling cars in the driveway quite a bit because they really only have a single entrance to their double driveway and have the extra truck, etc. She said that normally they park in front of their own house, but the snow really isn't cleared there, so it's been too difficult to do that and she just wanted to make sure it was OK with us. For her to park in front of our house. On the public street. That's not even a shared private drive, but totally common property.

It made me think of a complaint my grandfather had for years after my Grandma died. The neighbors across from him used to park in front of his house and apparently one time some ladies from church told them that they didn’t stop by because they thought he had company. (Whether that’s really why or not, who knows? Certainly, it should have only stopped them one time as he explained it was a neighbor’s car, but he always said it was an all the time thing). Anyway, my Dad always used to sort of chuckle about this complaint – I mean, you don’t own the street! And Grandpa would get more and more annoyed over the years (as senility increased). He’d threaten that he was going to call his younger brother, Bud, to take care of the guy (let’s see, Grandpa was 90 when he died, so “young” Bud was probably well into his 70s at the very least). Then one day Grandpa started insisting that he had, in fact, called Bud who had, if I remember right… stepped on the guy’s neck. OK, but ... his car was still there. Some people are so hard to intimidate… But I digress.

Our other neighbor has apologized for putting her recycling out on the side of the house that we see and mentioned that she's thinking about getting some curtains to block off her sunroom (which they essentially use as storage / a garage, as they don't have a garage) and asked how I felt about a certain pattern. I must have looked nonplussed when I said - well, it's your house. You should do whatever you like / whatever you want. She said - yeah, but you have to look at it from your kitchen window.

It makes me wonder whether the prior people to own the house were really horribly super picky or whether I'm just possibly the worst neighbor ever - as I would never think to get my neighbor's opinion on my drapery because they have to see it. It's SO nice it almost makes me wonder if I'm already doing something super offensive that hasn't occurred to me yet and they want me to make this type of offer back so they can tell me that I need to change things (like the trees that overhang our neighbor's yard!).

The neighborhood Christmas tea

So before we had even actually moved into the house, there was a note in my mailbox inviting me to the 7th annual neighborhood Christmas tea (!). I have to tell you – I grew up on a really busy street with no other kids on the block and no HOAs. My parents have owned (still do) that house for more than 40 years and when I was little, many of the neighbors were original owners. So we knew them all – I think we were a novelty – like standby / practice grandkids in the neighborhood (though I think most of their grandkids were actually older than us). But still, as it was a busy street and most of the families were older, there was never once a block party or anything like that. To be honest, I thought block parties were a made up thing on TV. You know, like how everyone sits on ones side of the dinner table in TV shows or the living room is set up so everyone faces one way? Block parties were a TV thing like that. (A side note – my parents also never complained about their in-laws. Both sides of my family are pretty nice generous people, so I think that made it easier, but I also remember my Mom saying, how could you ever have a real animosity for the person who gave birth to / raised the person you love most in the world? OK, so I’ve seen some of my friend’s mothers in law who perfectly answer that question, but still, I get her point. Anyway, as a kid I also thought that in-law jokes were just something for TV. Not something real or based on any actual animosity. So I was overall sheltered.)

Anyway, my in-laws neighborhood had a block party a couple of years ago – my first. Apparently, according to my husband, a block party veteran, it was a truly lame block party. No grill, no keg, etc. And here I was thinking I hadn’t missed out on anything as a kid. But, according to him, a “real” block party was much better and something worth going to. OK, I’ll take your word for it.

My only experiences with these types of neighborhood community events are the parties run by prior condo associations. While they are trying, the reality is that they often are pretty lame and lack real mingling too. I’ve usually brought friends and encouraged them to do their best to drink back my condo fees.

So a neighborhood tea – one held the week I moved in – seemed such a novelty! Where have I moved? Is this a good thing – a real community? Neighbors who understand that the word means more than a shared property line? Or a bad thing – have I moved to Stepford?

It turns out it’s the first – wow! I brought the munchkin with me as the hubby had worked the night before and gotten no sleep. She was the only baby, but they’d said it was OK to bring her along – and boy was she the hit of the party! Most of the people there seemed at least a little (to a lot) older than me. I’m not sure all their ages, but have to guess from the ages of their children (and grandchildren and great grandchildren). There were actually a good number with teenage kids (and at least one with a 6 and 9 year old. My Mom pointed out that I could have a 9 year old if I’d started really young. OK, maybe… But could we stop aging me?). They had tea and snacks and everyone was very anxious to help me get some as I was holding the baby – it was really very nice (as I’d been wondering how on earth I’d manage). As I was sitting, someone next to me said – I’m just dying for my turn to hold your baby. Well, how could I resist (I could finally eat the chocolate mousse cake then!) – and she went no fuss! She actually was OK being held by a few people – as long as she could pull off / attempt to eat their name tags.

They actually had a short program – first an icebreaker to introduce everyone and then someone gave a short presentation on the meaning of Christmas and bringing the light of it into our lives (getting beyond all our busy-ness to remember what it was about. This was definitely the neighborhood CHRISTMAS tea, not the holiday tea.). It was actually pretty nice – not overly preachy and pretty open. And, through the intros, you could see that everyone was pretty friendly and laid back.

I have to admit that it all seemed a little surreal – so much unlike what I’m used to. But all in a really good way. And not once did anyone bring up our leaves or our trees or whatever other mess we need to sort with this house!