Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Diary of the Pink House, Chapter 1

I live in Napa. I live in an established neighborhood. By established, I mean old. Old in every, way, shape and form. Old people, old trees, old houses, old roads. By neighborhood, I mean a place where there are houses next to each other, but by no means is anyone neighborly. Granted, I fall into that category as well. I come home, to my house on the street with no sidewalks, I go inside and I stay there. If I want to go outside, I go out back. That's the extent of my own neighborliness. I'll try to work on that. I'll ask someone for sugar someday.

I have these neighbors, and they live in a pink house across the street-without-sidewalks from me. Honestly I have not one clue who actually lives in that house. Different people, different cars, different voices every day. I'm ok with that, even though they're probably dealers...note to self - I should invite Gaylord over. Also, I probably shouldn't ask for sugar: my Intervention addiction taught me that though I think I know a lot about drugs, I actually don't, and "sugar" could mean something completely different in this case.

Today, a woman is "mowing the 'lawn'" with a weedwacker. It's an electric one, with a really, really long cord. It doesn't work that well and she restarts it constantly. In the grand scheme of things, at least she "mows" her lawn. I, on the other hand, love my forest of weeds (aka I'm too lazy to go out there and take care of my yard). For some reason, her "mowing" the lawn with that choice of gardening power tool doesn't actually surprise me. At this point, after 15 months of living here, I've seen it all. Painting windows instead of using curtains. Using a wine barrel as a stand for a massive swamp cooler. A young guy mowing the lawn (yes, with an actual mower) at 11pm, with sparks flying everywhere. Highly entertaining screaming matches. I'm really looking forward to the next 15 months...

Cheers to neighborhoods!

1 comment:

Peter Anderson said...

you should definitely go meet your neighbors. my life has been enriched by previous neighbors: torchy burns the bbq assasin, barbara the taliban cell landlady, and who could forget alex, the guy who tried to microwave his head in my kitchen. just sayin, you could be missing out...