Who are the people in your neighborhood?

I’m sitting here on the edge of my bed looking out the window. Yes, sitting. My hips are burning with pain from laying on my sides most of yesterday and all last night. So, I sit for short periods of time as I’d like to maintain my cervix of steel honor.

Where was I? Oh yeah, staring out the window. Being locked up in my bedroom most of the day means that my only contact with the outside world comes from watching these odd people who inhabit the same little town as I do. I’ve, meanly, named the three people who lived in the homes across the street from us: Crabby Old Lady, Hippy Dippy Dude, and Crazy Lady.

Crazy Lady is back from her winter away in Ohio (The house here was once her mother’s house and she couldn’t bear to sell it, or something like that.) and is the source of great entertainment and head scratching. The other day she walked to the grocery store at the end of our block wearing one high heeled boot and one sock. It was in the 40’s and most, if not all, of the snow had melted. Apparently this meant that one shoe - one sock season had started and no one notified me.

Hippy Dippy Dude used to be a drummer for some rock band. He told us of his travels one summer day while James and I put in a new mailbox in front of our house. He ended up here after a drug and alcohol binge that left him not knowing where he was but that he remembered something about Bob Dylan being from here (close enough) and buying the scariest looking house on the block. He used to get by doing odd jobs for people around town, but now he seems earn money by renting half of his house to another handy man dude and, allegedly, selling pot to people who make frequent, quick trips into his house whether on bicycle, foot, or car. He doesn’t discriminate when it comes to age, either. High school kids and geriatrics and everybody in between. He only emerges in the winter to shovel his walk and check his mail. Once it warms up he can often be seen wandering the town aimlessly with one of his dozens of cats in tow.

Crabby Old Lady died last summer. Her house is now occupied by squatters from the house next door to ours. Thankfully they only brought a fraction of their light up and inflatable Christmas decorations with them to the other house. The little yellow house is home to the younger set of adult children of the people who own the house next door. White trash doesn’t even begin to describe these people. I am sure Crabby Old Lady is currently rolling over in her grave while honking the horn that was attached to her scooter.

These are just the people across the street. On either side of us are completely different flavors of crazy. The White Trash Family next door were described a bit in the previous paragraph. On the other side is the creepy dude who looks over our fence to ogle me in the summertime. I need to come up with a better nickname for him since whenever James and I talk about him we mention him by name. He was/is married to the people we bought our house from, they live in the house on the other side of him. Whether or not they went through their divorce or not is up for debate. We often see the woman over for what we lovingly call “bootay calls” even if that means she parks her car right in front of the area James had shoveled out for us to walk from the road to the sidewalk. What a girl want, what a girl needs, right?

I had started this post to talk about the 2+ feet of snow that we got this past weekend. The snow storm that both James and my brother were convinced wouldn’t happen, and even if it did snow that it would melt as soon as it hit the ground. I’ll save that post for tomorrow when I’ll try to have some pictures (from out my window) to go along with it.

Right now, I’m waiting for my mother to arrive, she was supposed to come back yesterday but I told her no way in hell would I allow that. The kids all had school canceled and instead of taking the kids out in the snow, we’re watching people dig out. Oh the things we Minnesotans find entertaining.