Hi There, Neighbor!

We are having the weirdest issue with our next-door neighbor, and I'm not sure what to do about it. For some crazy reason, they keep parking their industrial-sized truck in front of our house.

Flashing back about 12 years, to when we lived in an apartment...We had a downstairs neighbor whom we called "ape-man", because he was 6'5", weighed 360 lbs, was very hairy, and acted quite simian--I suspect he even had one of those nifty tire swings in his living room. We had an all-out feud with this guy because he would often come home late at night drunk and crank up his radio enough to make the pictures vibrate against our walls. We would knock on his door (no answer, but he would turn it down momentarily), call the apartment complex, and, after months of enduring this patiently, we just started calling the police every time. The situation would have Fran in tears, frustrated that we couldn't get along.

We were so excited to move away from our apartment and get a new house. But one set of neighbors was very odd. We started calling them "the aliens" because they had two kids and one Halloween they all dressed as space aliens--the dad was about 7 feet tall and weighed about 100 pounds--he looked like a scarecrow on stilts. But the thing that made them like aliens was their very odd behavior--they were some of the most anti-social people I've ever seen. During the process of moving in and adjusting to our new house, we would try and say "hello" but they would scarcely acknowledge us, sometimes scurrying into their home with their head down and eyes averted, flinching like a whipped dog. Fran would joke that if we spoke to them they would pass out. Their kids, who were elementary to middle school aged (old enough to know better), would not answer us or acknowledge us in any way (I know the "stranger-danger" concept, but for Pete's sake). And no, they weren't deaf or mute.

One time, the aliens' dog, who was part pit bull and very muscular, was running loose in their yard--they were in the back and I was in the front, mowing. At some point, this threatened the dog naturally, and she became very aggressive, crouching and growling in a way that was pretty alarming. She did the same thing to Fran, who was pregnant at the time, when she went to get the mail. Finally, Fran, thinking that adults could talk about something without touching off World War III, caught the wife when she was out in her driveway, and mentioned that their dog had been somewhat threatening on at least two occasions (later, we found out that it had gotten in a fight with another neighbor's dog) and asked her to asking her to have it supervised and on a leash (which is the law in our city, anyway). Our neighbor's response was to point at the animal, exclaim: "This dog???!!" and roll her eyes. Until they moved out about four years later, they barely spoke to us again, and were clearly annoyed with us.

My thinking is that, if the reverse had happened, I would certainly be defensive about it but I would let it go after, say, a week. Some people are just like that, though. They think any kind of disagreement is a grudge-match, and it's on for life. How do you diffuse that? And the thing we figured out about neighbor trouble in a house vs. and apartment is that when it's your home, these people are pretty much going to live near you indefinitely, so you had better learn some tolerance. After one week of us moving in, one neighbor put up the ugliest window covers available for purchase on the face of the earth. Did we complain? no. Another has ultra liberal political signs taunting us from across the street. I just laugh. Another has decided that aluminum foil would be a great accessory to one of their windows--It's Texas, it's hot--go for it and congratulations, Ghetto-Martha Stewart!

Lest it be thought that we can't get along, I've just listed the exceptions. When the aliens moved out (Fran says their mother ship called them in), we rejoiced. Fran made brownies for our new neighbors, and they have been delightful--we've gotten together for backyard cookouts and parties and stuff like that. We've been friendly with other neighbors around us and have very few problems...except for our neighbors on the left....

The couple seemed nice enough--the wife even went to high school with me. they are social, but on a certain level where they don't open up too much--almost as though they have something to hide. They have a daughter who is Ryan's age, and for three or four years we would invite her to Ryan's birthday party. Then we noticed that they weren't reciprocating at all--in fact, they would invite most of the neighborhood kids, boys and girls of all ages, except for Ryan, which we found very odd. Ryan was confused and felt left out, but Fran, who has that "mama bear" protectiveness about the situation, couldn't force herself to forgive the snub.

Later, we found out that the dad, who is in the movie business, had contemplated filming some sort of adult movie in their home (yes, next door to us--his wife mentioned to Fran that she had dissuaded him). So Ryan doesn't go and play over there anymore because that movie thing creeps us out. He doesn't understand this, and we can't explain it to him. He has made new friends in the neighborhood and at this age in elementary school, boys and girls don't really play well together anyway. So, there has been a little tension, although I would say that I just look at it with amused indifference and a little symathy to Ryan for not being able to hang out with some friends whom he likes.

The dad has tried our patience a little--he keeps odd hours, and goes through phases of firing up his ultra-loud Harley outside our bedroom window at 5:00 AM, running his table saw during Kaitlyn's naptime (which is understandable but still annoying), and bumping/slamming the liftgate on his bobtail truck at early/late hours of the day, right behind our house. And for the past year, he has been parking this large bobtail on our street (also against the city ordinances).

The thing that is driving Fran up the wall (and now me, because I know it stresses her out), is that for some reason this truck keeps ending up directly in front of OUR house. One of the things I like to do is sit in the front room, open the windows, and check out my trees/flowers/shrubs/birds/and the occasional snake outside my window. What I don't want is to feel like I live in a trucking terminal. What I really don't want is my wife stressing out and running out the front door with a machete' to "take care of this once and for all".

I kind of understand what is happening--their cars don't both fit in their driveway, so they have to have one parked in front of their house. And, if they don't leave room for the mailman around their box (the mailman drives through our neighborhood and won't get out of his truck if the mailbox is blocked), they won't get their mail. So the only alternative is for them to park further down the street (ie. in front of our house). But they've not taken time to make any explanations or apologies or ask for permission. And, yes, it is a public street, but it's still rude.

Now, for a pile of disclaimers: This isn't the focus of our life. It's just annoying. If this was the worst thing that ever happened to me, I would be jumping for joy. On a scale of annoyance from 1-10, this is about a 3 for me, but Fran is starting to take it very personally and uses words like "inconsiderate, 'a-hole', and (#$@( truck." I hate it when she uses words like that. Plus, I get to drive away and don't have to look at it all day like she does. Over the past year, this has happened with a frequency of about one full week each month.

So, normal humans would probably just say something, but you have to just go with me on this that, due to our clearly strained relations with this couple, they would probably freak out over being confronted on this. I consider myself to be pretty diplomatic, but this looks like a minefield to me, and just doesn't seem to be worth saying something and touching off a feud. We even tried subtle hints like waiting until the truck is gone for a little while and parking one of our cars in front of our house to block the way. That works, until we need to move the car for some reason. You would think they could take a hint, right? You would think they would ask or comment in some way when we see them, right?

One option is to call the police--they are not supposed to have this type of truck on the street in our neighborhood. I have a problem doing that, though--especially without talking to them first.

The recent event that brought this issue to a head was when one of Fran's friends mentioned to her "You know, I didn't recognize your house without that big white truck parked in front of it." This just provoked Fran into a frenzy. It was the last straw that sent her on a mission--now, she is on a mission to run a blockade in front of our home to keep the evil truck away. Maybe this will cause a discussion at some point (Fran is certain that they know we don't appreciate it and just don't care that it bugs us).

I probably won't confront them with it unless I absolutely must, but we are ready in case the subject comes up in any way--we are going to say that we don't mind their truck every once in a while but hope that it isn't going to be all the time.

Why can't we all just get along?

Fifteen Years

Yesterday was a crisp, October day just like the day we were married in 1991...The years just seem to have flown by.

There was lots of controversy back then--we were very young, so we were trying to make everyone else happy on our wedding day. We had a formal ceremony with 250 people in attendance at a church. A choir sang the chorus that the nuns sing at the beginning of "The Sound of Music"--Guess I never thought of the irony until now...

Gar was the best man--Nancy was the maid of honor. They hardly knew each other then, but eleven years later and after a series of left turns, they ended up marrying each other--weird, huh?

We went away on our honeymoon to Cancun--we went on a snorkeling trip and I saw a moray eel eyeing me from about about two feet away. The place where we were snorkeling? AKA The Island of the Sleeping Sharks. It was great--I did my first (and last) "tequila shooters" on a sailboat cruise across the lagoon--luckily, I didn't fall off the boat.

Yesterday we had a nice quiet celebration at home with the kids. I broke out our wedding pictures and tried to get them interested, but they both wandered off after about 1 minute. Ryan did manage to pause in front of one posed portrait of about ten people and ask "Are all those people dead now?" A kid's perspective of 15 years...

I got Fran some Cadbury chocolates, sapphire earrings, a blank recipe book (she loves to cook and make up gourmet recipes, which are almost always incredible). I got her some other stuff, too. The significant thing is the really nice card that I got her. After I gave it to her, I had to comment "Sorry the front of your card looks like a scene from 'The Mothman Prophecies!' "

She replied, "You think everything looks like the Moth man! I swear, that movie freaked you out!"

You know what? I think she's right--I never realized how much that movie traumatized me.

We were supposed to go to Hawaii--we would have been there last week when the earthquake hit, so I guess that's some kind of weird good luck, from a slightly twisted perspective.

We've had lots of laughs and a lot of good things happen. I hope others can have the same happiness that we've had.

What's past is prologue. 

The Messiest Office I Have Ever Seen...

Surreptitiously snapped as I slinked by the open door...

Judge not, that Ye be Not Judged...

North Texas experienced a pretty traumatic case of a missing boy recently. The 2-year-old was playing in the front yard and just disappeared. Authorities searched the area thoroughly for two days, and were about to declare that it was likely that he was kidnapped, when a helicopter spotted him from the air. He was leaning over to drink out of a cattle pond. He had been wandering around for three days through the countryside, spending the night alone--he was in good condition besides being a little dehydrated.

Naturally, since we also have an adventurous two-year-old, we were very annoyed with this story. It outraged us that these parents, even in the country where they weren't worried about child abduction, would just let their two-year-old run wild and unsupervised long enough to get away like that. We try to keep a constant eye on our Kaitlyn, who always seems to surprise us.

She always seems to be testing her boundaries, which is a very common thing for this age. I laughingly call it "testing the tensile strength of the earth", because it is commonly destructive.

In no particular order:

1) Scooting an oak chair across the kitchen floor so she can climb up and "pet the fish" (Ryan's pet, Marlin, who is still alive and well and has so far avoided any unwanted contact).

2) Dumping an entire freshly-made pitcher of sweetened ice tea on the newly-mopped kitchen floor

3) Getting her head stuck for about a minute inside our entertainment center while we frantically and gently tried to retrieve her. Direct quote: "It was dark and scary inside that cave!"

4) Playing "Will it break?" by dropping certain toys off the second floor onto the tile below.

5) Assaulting poor Ryan at every chance by walking up nonchalantly and clobbering him.

6) When I tell her I'm going to read her a story, she grabs 7 or 8 books and screams if I stop before reading them all...

7) Total number of Fran's headband-thingy's that she's broken: 40

In other words, little miss Kaitlyn takes every opportunity to have an effect upon her world.

Last week, after they found the missing boy, Fran was making French toast for breakfast. She always makes a double-batch and freezes some of it so Ryan can have French toast for breakfast during the school week, which is a nice treat.

Fran was busy cooking and had turned on a cartoon for Kaitlyn to watch. Ryan was in the living room building something with legos. I was upstairs at my desk reading. Apparently, Fran asked Ryan to step outside and get the newspaper, and Kaitlyn said "I can do it!", which seems to be her trademark slogan these days. Fran told her "No, honey, we'll have to go get it in a minute." and went back to cooking.

A few minutes later, something caught her eye outside.

It was our daughter, wandering out in the middle of our neighborhood street in her pajamas and bare feet!

Fran screamed, threw down her spatula, and ran through the open front door. Kaitlyn was startled, and, likely sensing that she had done something wrong from the horrified look on her mother's face, reported "I'm getting the mail!"

Fran fran straight into the street and scoped her up, then realized that there was a garage sale being hosted across the street. About a dozen people were now curiously watcher her raving in the middle of the street in her pajamas. Of course, she was scolding Kaitlyn and was very agitated, but grateful that nothing had happened, especially in light of the fact that there were cars coming and going for the garage sale, and that she might not have been spotted if Fran hadn't randomly used her "mom radar". It really made us shutter.

Later that day, we got heavy duty chains for all of the doors so we can be certain that she doesn't get out again, but I'm curious as to what will be next...

Highlights from the Week

1) Being 100 calls and Emails behind for four days due to last week's craziness. Everywhere I went, I was late. Everything I did, I was behind. Everyone I was trying to help was mad at me for taking so long to get to them. Still not caught up.

2) Working with another guy in very tight quarters yesterday for a couple of hours. After a period of listening to him sniffling, etc. I asked him "Are your allergies bothering you?" He answered "Nope. I'm sick as a dog. I'm sorry, but you're going to get it, too. Look on the bright side, you would have gotten it from your kids if you didn't get it from me!" Nice.

3) I plugged in my new cell phone to synch it to my computer--turns out it actually went and got all of my contact information. This was quite unfortunate. Now, my phone has 3,000 numbers stored in it including people who are dead and mis-entered stuff that I could never delete from my database. Now I can't delete them from my phone...

4) Two nights ago I was putting the kids to bed, and, while we were saying our prayers, we heard and felt a big "BAM!" against the side of our house. I finished putting them to bed and then headed downstairs, where I saw Fran headed around the corner outside carrying a baseball bat. Part of me wanted to see her use that if she caught someone...

Well, other neighbors were coming out of their house because they heard and felt something slam against their house, too. We finally determined that someone, somewhere, hit something big. Funniest explanation: One of our neighbors said "I just figured that my air conditioning has been running so much this summer that it finally just exploded."

Yesterday morning I could see that someone nailed a retaining wall about 1/4 mile away--there was a huge pile of stones. I guess that was it.

5) I was getting help from an online chat support line from a certain large, Austin-based computer company which will remain unnamed. The support guy was from India. During the support session, during a time while something was downloading, he asked "Do you mind if I look at the photos on your computer?" Creepy, huh?

I did fix Fran's computer, finally, and had to reload a bunch of software. I'm using it right now. The funny thing is that her keyboard is laid out differently, and there must be a key whose function is "highlight one or two lines you've just typed and delete it irretrievably". The problem is that I'm going too fast and can't figure out what I'm doing to cause that--but it's happened five different times during this post.

6) Frequent readers might have caught a brief, mean-spirited rant against the novel "A Room with a View", which I posted in a moment of weakness and took off less than 24 hours later because I felt guilty. Well, I finished it this week and it ended up being great. The first 100 pages, like so many books I've liked, were so slow I could hardly stand it. but it ended up being great. Next stop? Not sure...

Men with Guns

The sun was just starting to come up as I shifted in my position against the small tree. I felt the smooth, wood stock of my shotgun--the barrel was still cool. I could smell gun oil, and I anticipated the bitter smoke from the gunpowder that would float in the air once the gun had been fired a few times. Under my feet was the powder-dry, foot deep, rich, brown dirt which had been recently turned over in the field. Discarded ears of maize were scattered among the rows--I wondered what it would be like to go out into the field and pick up an ear--what would the grains feel like? Could I peel them off the cob?

The shotgun started to feel heavy in my arms. It was loaded, and it was unsafe to set it down, but eventually I balanced it across my lap. My fingers absently moved the safety switch back and forth as I waited in the dark for the sun to come up. Incredibly, one of the guys had already popped open a beer.

For some reason, I had a little time getting "into" the hunt this year. I just felt detached and distracted. I even sat still, watching the sun come up, and questioned, for the first time in years of hunting, whether I was perhaps doing something unethical. I decided to put those people who would say so in the same category as those who object to shopping at Wal Mart--unless you don't eat meat and have a full understanding of migratory patterns and carrying capacity of ecosystems...well, you know what I'm getting at. I guess I never resolved if it was indulgent to shoot animals for sport.

My goal for the trip wasn't to effect maximum slaughter--I wanted to catch a cup of coffee in the cool air--just so happens that in Texas in early September, you can only feel cool air at about 5:30 AM. And if you pay attention, you can sit and watch the transition of a starry sky to an orange sunrise. You've got a couple of hours to be alone with your thoughts as you spread out from other guys--you can see them lined along the field, but you aren't close enough to carry on a conversation.

My luck was wonderful--I had lined up in a natural break in the field, and the majority of the doves that flew across the field went to my little corner in a predictable pattern. I have an unexplainable gift for seeing that area on a field, and I always have from the first time I went hunting when I was younger. By midmorning, I had the most birds by far and I started to slow down and take only spectacular, show-off, high-percentage shots in front of amazed onlookers who were starting to hate me because I left nothing for them to shoot. I finally stopped shooting and went over to stand with friends as they continued hunting. Little did I know that things would slow down and this would be the only productive time of the hunt.

I touched spirits, briefly, with my inner Hemingway and recharged myself a little in the outdoors. Is that so dangerous that it requires firearms?

800 lb. Gorilla

I promised it would be an awful week--one worth running away from...and it didn't disappoint. Seriously, I could write a book about this week. For the record, this blog contains fictionalized accounts of events interspersed with reality and my filtered insight mixed with hyperbole to help make a point. Now that I've made that clear, I would like to further state that my blog should never be referred to as "Exhibit A" in a court case...

There are about four different groups of people thinking that I am referring to them, or thinking that they know what I am referring to--in the words of the ape-faced Carly Simon "I bet you think this Entry's about you, Don't you? Don't you?"

Now, I'm going to ignore the 800 lb. gorilla which this week represents and move on to something that happened today....

Ryan has been playing soccer again this year, and he has really developed into a fun player to watch. It's a little frustrating that his best friend is the star of the team, and I end up sitting next to his parents at every game while their kid manages to weasel goals every game. Last week, Ryan's team was down 1-0 and Ryan came on fire, scoring two goals to bring the score to 2-1. He disrupted the other team's efforts, assisted on goals with beautiful passes, and played very aggressively. Somehow, his friend still managed to score three goals in the final quarter, surpassing Ryan on his best game ever and taking the wind out of his sails and a little bit of swagger out of his celebration (it didn't necessarily have to be that way, but this kid is that way...).

I took Ryan to the park today to practice, and started teaching him some techniques--then it flashed back to me. I remembered my dad teaching me the same exact technique thirty years ago.

I must have been in second grade, and I decided that I wanted to play soccer because the kids at recess played soccer every day. We had rusty poles in the schoolyard and the field was filled with weeds that were barely mowed. Half of the soccer field was so filled with tall weeds that it was too scary to play on--we just played some sort of half-court soccer of our own devising. It was during one of those games that I somehow caught the ball in the air.

Now, I think our group didn't know too many of the rules in soccer, but everyone knew that you couldn't grab the ball with your hands, so they all pointed at me and shouted "Hands!" I was mortified and ashamed for breaking a cardinal rule. So naturally I immediately wanted to join a team...okay, I don't know how that works, but I did.

Here I was, a proud member of the Devils. I still have a team picture somewhere...And I didn't know anything about soccer. Neither did my dad--I'm not sure how he managed not to know, but whatever--he still let me join.

We also got the crappiest, non-regulation excuse for a soccer ball available at the local K-mart for $3.99. It was a continuous, rubber ball and just had the black and white parts painted on--it was kind of embarrassing to take my ghetto-ball to practice. And I had very crummy, stiff cleats which I loved so much that I would wear them everywhere. I had to walk to practice, so they would wear down on the sidewalk. I would wear them to school if I could get away with it, and I ended up scraping the cleat part down to a smooth surface until I would just slide around on the grass, worse than if I was just wearing regular tennis shoes.

My dad is an engineer, and a really nice thing about engineers is that they think that they can just read the User's Guide and figure anything out, so off goes my dad to the library to check out books on playing soccer. Here were the steps to kicking the ball, laid out like the steps to the cha-cha. My dad studied them as though he was taking the bar exam.

We went to the schoolyard, which was across the street from our house. The idea was that we were going to kick the ball against the wall, wait for it to bounce back, and then continue kicking it so I could practice controlling the ball. My dad was ready to try out his new "Kick the ball like Pele'" technique, and he really dragged it out forever like he does lots of things. We must have stood staring at the pages of the book for half an hour while the ball sat on the weedy schoolyard. It was like Christmas morning--I was so excited to learn how to play soccer.

It was then that my ever-pessimistic Dad turned to me and said "I'm not sure exactly what is going to happen here. This ball could go sailing on top of the roof for all I know, and then we won't have a ball to play with anymore!" I remember being very worried about that prospect, and scared that I would lose my ball. It also had a seductive pull, kind of macho and destructive, like blowing up a model plane with fireworks or putting pennies on a train track. I had to watch.

As suspected, a person that had to check out a library book on how to kick a soccer ball didn't exactly have the capacity to drill the ball over a thirty foot wall, but he did pretty well. And I learned the technique and practiced and practiced against that wall, which was composed of small, loose stones embedded in concrete. It was possible, with the right angle and the right amount of force, to slam the ball hard against the wall and dislodge stones--another destructive macho thing which I geniunely loved to do.

In fact, one day about a year later I did send the ball sailing over that thirty foot wall (our school janitor, Mr. Brumble, retrieved it for me the next week--Incidentally, he was the source of my first cigarette when I was in kindergarten). And I ended up having the most powerful kick on every team I played for until I was in middle school. I never scored a goal in my years of playing, because I was parked in the backfield defending the goal and advancing the ball up the field (In frustration at never making a goal, I did make a great shot from midfield one time that the goalie barely saved)--I was a fantastic defender and our team ended up in first place several years.

More importantly, learning how to kick a soccer ball is a happy memory of my Dad that I can call up in my mind any time I like. This was a time when things felt normal, before the storm began--for some reason which I can not figure out, over the next couple of years our home seemed to deteriorate into an unhappy and unsafe place to live, and all of us kids have had to deal with those memories in different ways. A very frustrating thing these days is my parents' stance that they were the most wonderful parents in the world. They weren't. Sometimes, just to counterbalance this absurdity, I feel like I'm making them out to be the worst people in the world. They weren't that, either. But they did some pretty heartbreaking things which I took (and still take) pretty personally.

But a new chapter of my life started when I started looking at things a little more objectively and stopped taking those things so personally, and started doing my best to move on from those painful times. Reading over my own entry here, it is poignant to me that this happy memory is still ringed with a little cruelty and fear, but I can call it a happy memory if I want to.

Today at the park, I taught Ryan the "secret soccer kick" that my dad taught me from that book thirty years ago. He was grinning from ear to ear as I dove around trying to stop his rocket-powered goals. He was excited, just like I was, and it nearly brought tears to my eyes to realize how much I love him. I could put myself in a seven-year old body and feel the lonely despair I had begun to feel at that age--I hope Ryan feels joy and happiness without that twinge of fear that colors most of my childhood memories.

I picked up the phone to tell my Dad about teaching Ryan "the kick" I'm sure he would remember teaching me--I think we could count the times he checked books out of the library on one hand, and this was one of them. I wanted to tell him that I had recalled a happy memory--maybe it would make him feel good about those old times. Maybe he could cling to that. Maybe it is something to build on.