When Snow White Gets Old (and Crotchety...and probably demented)

Townhome Twits
Episode 2: The Demented Disney Princess

This post is fairly rambly, but in my defense I did amuse the hell out of myself by creating a new creature word. You're welcome, and I'm not one bit sorry.

Kitty corner from our house there lives an early-retired woman who's last (patient) son moved out to California two years ago. And so she now lives alone. We'll call her Snow for purposes of this story.

Snow earned her moniker by perpetually leaving birdseed, bread, and other inappropriate offerings for the small wildlife in her backyard, which happens to face the woods (and therefore no one sees what she's doing).

She has charming landscaping and is actually a fairly decent neighbor in that she doesn't seem to care about my dogs barking, who's parking where, or whether renters are running a brothel out of their unit (more on that in another post).

However, while I served on the board she was a perpetual pain in my patoot. No landscaping/snow removal company was good enough (a complaint which was generally accompanied with racist remarks about the workers). She came to the one All Association picnic we attempted to have a few years ago (yeah, EPIC fail: our complex is mostly apathetic and/or unsocial) for the sole purpose of bitching out the property manager because squirrels and chipmunks were getting through the dryer vent grate, chewing through the dryer vent itself, and getting trapped in the crawlspace under her house.

I'm still creeped out by the idea of opening my dryer and finding ANY sort of creature looking out at me, cute rodent-ish critter or otherwise. It doesn't help that Husband EVER so kindly told me snakes would be in our crawlspace (because it's warm there) during the colder months. Asshole. This is why I still don't have an outside water source this spring..NO WAY IN HELL am I going into the first circle of hell to turn on the spigots if the potential is spiders, centipedes AND snakes. I watch too many creature features...the monster-mashup (SNAKIPEDER!!)...ugh.

So...yeah...she FEEDS THE SQUIRRELS. In eight years I can't honestly tell you how often she's bitched about creatures in her house/crawlspace, but she will NOT stop feeding them.

Did you know the phrase "bang like bunnies" is not really an exaggeration? Bunnies are ridiculously prolific, much to my dismay. Thor may be an old man, but he'll enthusiastically chase squirrels up at full speed up the hill to the big cottonwood in our yard, at which point the squirrel shimmies up the tree and chitters down disapprovingly (or tauntingly, if that's a word. It is today!) at his panting self. Of course, now that he's old and out of shape, if he repeats the performance more than once he either pukes, limps for two days afterward, or both. Sigh.

Bunnies, on the other hand, DON'T CLIMB TREES. Therefore, if he manages to get off the leash or away to chase them, he'll just keep going. I don't believe he can actually catch the little bastards, but I don't want a repeat of the bird incident, so I'd prefer NOT having 17,000 bunnies hanging around. I have no sympathy for her rodent problem.

This, by the way, was the same woman who marveled at my next door neighbor's tulips and lamented that all of her bulbs are eaten by the squirrels.

AHEM.

Before we went to Mexico I had a moment of pity for her: she found out we were going out of the country and responded in an...unadventurous way. Her advice can be summarized as: "they'll (she's not a fan of Mexicans, except when they grow gorgeous tulips in the house next door to me, apparently) all rip you off/don't eat ANYTHING because it'll make you sick/Don't drink even the bottled water because you know they just fill it from the tap" commentary. Sigh.

She also thinks the people who bring veggies/fruits/etc to our local Farmers Markets are both cheating (by not growing the food but buying it at a grocery store and repackaging it) AND contaminating it by using human waste as fertilizer. In this case "those people" refers to the Hmong families who are at many of the farmers markets around the Twin Cities area. Oh she's an equal-opportunity racist, indeedy.

I didn't bother to get clarification why they'd need to fertilize produce bought at the grocery store...I didn't want to encourage her.

I think it'd be sad, wrong, and frankly pretty pathetic to see a paradise like Mexican beaches through her prejudices.

Maybe I could get her to go into the crawlspace to check for Snakipeders and squirrels...and turn on my spigots while she's down there. Preferably before she's eaten by the SyFy-esq critters lurking under my house.

Xena Warrior Princess Trampled Tuesday

You guys, today I found THIS * and all Townhome Tales were totally diverted by AWESOME.

Let's just take a moment, shall we, and contemplate the utter fabulousness that would be if Xena, Gabrielle, Joxer, and of course Argo all came back to TV.

Sigh.


*(Should you not feel like randomly clicking Huffington Post links, Lucy Lawless has hinted at the possibility of a renewal of Xena, Warrior Princess on her twitter account.)

PS: Spellcheck recognizes Xena as a word. Win.

Ole!

(Disclaimer: I wrote this yesterday before we actually came home, and couldn't get good enough interwebz to post it...more to come!).

We're heading home tomorrow morning after a week of this:

to ishy 60 degree rain. Ah well, vacation was relaxing.

 

And as usual there are fabulous and "really? What the fuck?" moments, such as:  

• Met a couple from Toronto: the husband introduced himself as Homer Simpson. Indeed, he works in the control room of a nuclear plant. Excellent stories exchanged while the four of us burned in the pool. 
• Saw a very-much-in-love gay couple flirting in the pool, and thought yet again how awesome it is to live in a time when two dudes can snuggle and flirt in a resort just the same as a straight couple. 
• Was reminded (yet again) that contrary to my everlasting delusion, I am NOT a dolphin and the surf is not a fan of me. But the sand in my suit and water up my nose were both therapeutic, right? I got a body scrub from the waves for free? Yeah. I'm going with that. 
• 3pm siestas are the fucking BOMB. That is all. 
• In case you needed a reminder, burnt and peeling cleavage is not sexy. My boobs peeled off. Husband's face peeled off...I'm 80% certain I had the better deal there. No, wait. Only the drunks in the party pool wear bras on their faces...I still had to wear one when my skin hated me. Sigh. He wins. 
• Cuban cigars are tasty. 
• 20-something spring-breakers are both annoying (yelling at each other at 1am in the hallway) and entertaining (getting so stupid drunk by the party pool that the boyfriend had to carry her sloppy drunk ass back to the room). Even better: turns out they're from the suburb next to ours at home. Snort. 

And then there's this: 

I can't really express how much I needed a lazy, relaxing week on the beach/by the pool. I read a fabulously filthy book (must find the sequel when I get home) and a couple really good fantasy novels. Hung out with my hubby, ate way too much tasty food...and we've decided one week just isn't enough.

Next time, a fortnight.

Inappropriate Vacation Picture!

Due to some strange and fun mixup, Husband and I went back to our room* after dinner  in our fancypants Mexican resort and discovered this. 

Husband and I will be married 10 years this Halloween. While it's all romantic and shit to say "aww honey, it feels like we're newlyweds" we all know that's not true after a decade. Besides, we don't fight about stupid shit like wardrobe or household furniture mergers. We fight about important things, like who's snoring (usually it's Chewy, which we realize because the blissful snores haven't stopped while we snark at each other).  

Plus neither of us said anything about a honeymoon: just that we're celebrating Husband surviving his accident last fall. 

That cake was yummy and I ate it with no remorse for the couple who probably got a "congratulations! you survived!" cake and champagne. Because really, that's just as fitting. 

*iphone changed "room" to "tomb" twice while I wrote this post. I am amused and slightly unnerved. 

Merida, she is NOT (a teaser-trailer for the Demented Disney Princess post)

This is not a real post. I'm going to sunny gorgeous Cancun tomorrow for a week with the recovering husband (dude, after the horrible fall/winter we had, it's time for a fricken cocktail on the beach!). Depending on his vice-grip on the iPad, I may or may not have an opportunity to post rude pictures from my balcony.

By rude, I mean sun/sand/ocean postcard-quality pictures (or the blurrier kind, which is more likely, although whether the PICTURES are blurry or it's just my drunken eyeballs...well, that may be up for debate). I do not mean the sort Go-Oogle* uses to say I'm too lewd. 

I'm a little ADD this afternoon, counting down minutes until we leave, so this post is likely shit. Sorry!!

Anyway, since we'll be gone** and my posting opportunities will be stymied, I'll wait to post anything on the Demented Disney Princess until I get back. Although she HAS made a point of looking ever day at my next-door neighbor's tulip garden (that's not a dirty euphemism...she really DOES have a lovely garden of multi-colored tulips) every goddamn day.

Yesterday she said "I wish I could figure out how she (neighbor) keeps the rabbits/squirrels/chipmunks from eating the bulbs in the fall!"

I did NOT say "she doesn't fucking FEED them every day, you twit."

But I REALLY wanted to.

*My readers (and commenters) are AWESOME, and I'm likely to start using Go Oogle instead of Google all the time now. Thanks!!

**My mother in law is dogsitting at our house, burglars, so don't bother robbing us. Between the three of them I'd be afraid to even knock on the door. And I say that with love: my MIL is pretty awesome.

Jeepers, Creeper...you're a sneaky peeper!

This began as a single (snarky) post about neighborliness, and the extreme lack of it, in my living situation.

Then, while filling in the details about my crazy CIA neighbor, the suspected brothel and the demented Disney princess I realized I have WAY too much for a single post. Therefore, let me introduce a new unofficial-but-true section in my blog: the JOYFUL neighbors in my townhome complex.

Anyone who poo-poos country living or small-town living as too intrusive (everybody knows EVERYBODY'S business in small towns!) has clearly never lived in a townhome complex. Seriously, take the worst possible attributes of nosiness and snarky-neighbor bitching, add sharing walls, communal yards, and stir with vigor for dramatic results.

I grew up on a 40 acre farm...we had PRIVACY out there. Townhomes are worse than apartment buildings...because everyone thinks they "own" everything, and have no issues telling you all about it. Anyway, we've had some fabulous characters come and go in the eight years we've been here, and since I'm stupid civic minded unwilling to bitch about increases in dues without making decisions about them, I spent six years on the homeowners' association board.

Did I mention I'm stupid?

I DID get to know most of my neighbors during that punishment time served, though. I like dessert first, so let's begin with the most entertaining fool, shall we?

The CIA's Sneaky Peeping Tom
That title seems unfair to men named "Tom." And cats.

The CIA's Sneaky Peeping Dude
Our complex is a large square surrounding a flat-topped hill. I suspect the mafia buried bodies in that hill (that's why there's only trees up there; no pool, no tennis courts, no amenities at all...just grass and the occasional skeletal hand poking through rock). The rest of the board assumes it's basically a giant mound of construction trash covered with dirt by the original builders.

Anyway, the back of our house faces the hill, which is FABULOUS. It's like we have a giant back yard without anyone being able to look in our windows, so it's almost private. The front faces the row of houses on the other side of the drive. The master bedroom is, of course, on the front of the house. Facing the bedroom window of the unit directly across the driveway.

That particular owner, as it turns out, is a dirty peeping peeper. His next door neighbor (Eeyore, who will be discussed in another post), was friendly with Peeper's ex-girlfriend and shared most of the scoop with us (under the guise of being helpful...of COURSE she'd never gossip about her neighbors!).

Apparently he had his ex convinced he's CIA agent. I wasn't aware CIA agents were chronically late paying homeowners' dues and liked to start ALL CAPS EMAIL fights with the association over silly things, but I guess that's one way to blend into the hotbed of suburban activities? Anyway, she said he had regular nighttime "drills" involving night-vision goggles and scopes and the windows (seriously, any nighttime drills in MY house involve significantly different maneuvers). He has cameras set up around his house, and has telephoto lenses set up to look into other townhomes.

HOWEVER, this dude's been caught looking in the patio doors and back windows of other townhomes in the complex. When caught he always says he knocked on the door and no one was home so he was "concerned." He stole the President's girlfriend's panties out of their dryer. In their house. When they were home. (That'd be the president of the homeowners' association, not the POTUS...I'm pretty sure nobody could steal anything from that house without several bullet holes, real or fake CIA)*

Did I mention my bedroom is directly across the driveway from the dude's bedroom? Sigh. We have REALLY good curtains. Husband has mentioned on a few occasions that he'd happily open the curtains and look back through HIS scope...with a rifle attached. I suggested anyone who's loony enough to SAY he's a CIA agent likely 1) isn't and 2) is unstable enough that we should probably leave him alone.**

If Peeper ever has tried to look in our windows from the backyard, I sort of wish I could've been a fly on the living room wall...because I bet he pooped his pants. My dogs are giant fluffballs who love kids (um, maybe not birds...) and visitors and everyone (except birds). But they're not fans of people looking in the backyard windows...and 250 pounds of dogs is a lot of canine barking at you. Honestly, they're why I find this particular neighbor more amusing than disturbing. That, and I'm pretty sure Farrah from Teen Moms (and Vivid Entertainment) is a better trained CIA agent than this guy.

*Dear Secret Service and/or Homeland Security: This is a humor post devoted to making fun of an idiot neighbor. Said neighbor is neither currently nor formerly a government employee (although if his ex girlfriend is accurate, he's on disability and runs a panty-porn internet site, if that helps), and nothing here actually has anything to do with any presidents other than the one who used to run our townhome association. Seriously though...if you're reading this feel free to reassure me that you'd never let a sneaky peeping tom type in the CIA, ok? Wait...sigh. Maybe that's a job requirement.

People, this is just one of the many reasons why I'd fail as a spy.

**Disclaimer: sneaky peeping peeper HAS been reported to the cops, who very helpfully said all we can do is continue to report if/when incidents happen until they have enough to justify an actual investigation. Which essentially means "yeah, dude isn't doing anything we can catch him doing, so there's not a damn thing to be done about it." So indeed, I love my dogs.

WOOHOO!!!

This isn't a post. This is a goddamn celebration.

Allie Brosh is back!!!

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com

Go forth and read her new posts immediately. They're funny, and awkward, and in my opinion utterly spot-on when it comes to dealing with deep depression.

I'm so ridiculously happy she's back!

I'll have a post tomorrow. Promise.