It’s been a rough start to the year.  I’ve tallied up 28 miles over six runs (3, 4, 7, 4, 5, 5) since the 7th.  I’ve missed out on an additional 12 miles (a 7 and a 5) thanks to these super cold temperatures.  Man, 40 sure does sound a lot better than 28.  Eh, I’ll be there soon enough.

In the last post I promised a gripping tale of neighborly animosity.  Let me set the stage: There is one house on our block that always has lousy people living in it.  When we first moved in it was April and Mike.  April was a chain smoking cow who was humping some dirtbag who showed up every morning in a van ten minutes after Mike left for work.  She liked to sit on her front stoop, smoking and yammering on the phone, wearing shorts that would have been inappropriately short on a hot chick.  Their favorite hobby was holding yard sales.  These yard sales last from Saturday until everything had either been blown out of or stolen from their yard.  I’m not kidding.  Crap would be piled there for weeks.  In their backyard were two boats, a motorcycle, and a car with no wheels.

Eventually, they left, and were replaced by Nikki and Bill.  I guess they were nice enough, but they never did ANYTHING.  Nikki would hide in the house if anyone else was outside.  Bill never made any effort to say hi and would pretend not to see you wave.  He joined the army and they moved away.

And then, in November of 2006, the latest people moved in.  Because they’re still there, I’ll refer to them as Bar Hag and Girl Jeans, her 16-17 year old son (I don’t want any of you twits looking up her record or his my face dotcom web).  At first, there was nothing remarkable about them.  As spring rolled around, they even did some minor landscaping to pretty things up.  And that’s where the goodwill efforts ended.

I called her Bar Hag.  She’s probably mid-thirties, maybe forty.  Has the gravel voice and leather skin of a sixty-year-old man.  Works/worked as a bartender.  Naturally, she came home at 2:30 in the morning.  The problem was, she came home blasting either crappy nu-metal or hip hop.  Yes, thank you for the Fitty-Cent.  Good thing I only have to get up in two and a half hours!  Bar Hag also brought her “tips” home - and sometimes more than one.  They also liked to blast their music.  And then they would drunkenly yell at each other in the front yard, make out, and go inside.  One dude had the brilliant idea to take a leak on the side of her house, under full glare from her floodlights.  Another guy mistook the next door house for Bar Hag’s and banged on the bedroom window of the (at the time) single mother who lives there.

They’re just a wonderful addition to the block.

Then in June, the real war started.  I was sitting in the living room around 10:30pm, watching TV.  The lights were on.  I noticed some shadowy figures running through the yards across the street.  I knew the the people directly across from me were out of town, so I got interested.  I went into the bedroom, where it was dark, and watched as three teenage boys ran through the backyards and front yards, then gathered under the street light at the corner of my yard.  “Ok,” I thought to myself.  “It’s just Girl Jeans and some friends of his goofing around.”

As I walked back into the living room, I heard something smash - like a bottle.  I immediately thought they had thrown something at my house.  I ran to the front screen door (which was locked) and managed to get outside.  The kids were gone.  I grabbed a flashlight and searched the yard for broken glass, checked my windows, checked the neighbor’s cars… nothing.  One thing I did notice was that my house was the only one with lights on.  These kids obviously could see me when I was in the living room - my front window is 10 feet wide and 5 feet high.

While I was outside, I saw the kids coming back with a fourth on a bike.  I hid in the shadows and followed them back to Girl Jeans’ house.  I was hoping they would say something or do something to indicate what happened, but no luck.  I figured, must have been the TV, and went home.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where the egg hits the fan…

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.