My husband the hero

The other night while the husband and I were peacefully enjoying a lovely steak dinner, we were unknowingly being watched.  Who knows how long we were being monitored.  Perhaps an hour, perhaps the whole day.  All I know is we were being stalked.  Our every move, observed and evaluated in hopes of finding a pattern or a weakness.  Something that could be used against us when the time was right.  This is why I believe it was awhile that we were watched.  How else could it have known that I would be the weakness? How else could it have known I was the one to corner and ambush in a moment of distraction? Virtually defenseless.

As I was saying, the husband and I were enjoying our dinner.  We were in the living room, husband on the couch, me safely protected, or rather cornered; sitting on the floor, husband to my left, couch to my back and right.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement to my right.  I froze.  In my hand I gripped my steak knife. Suddenly movement again! It was coming towards me!! I leapt!! I leapt from the floor and halfway into my husbands lap! Holding fast to my steak knife as I went! I am certain that I must have been attempting to protect my husband by throwing myself between he and the giant eight-legged fiend that was coming toward us!  Luckily for me, husband knew that I was no match for the spider.  He knew, that despite my bravery, the massive size of the quarter-inch creature would be too much for me to over come.  Husband saved me.  After he removed me from his lap and the knife from my hand he took the beast between his fingers and slayed it with one pinch! My Hero!!

The Neighborhood

So we have lived in the new neighborhood now for a month...or a month and a couple weeks.  Honestly I don't even know what year it is some days!  Anyway, we have lived in our new neighborhood for a couple weeks.  We are responsible adult types, all homeowning and bill paying and cooking and cleaning.  Such grown ups.  That's beside the point, not at all what I was going to talk about.  I was going to address some of the peculiarities of our neighborhood, which have become more noticeable as the excitement and newness of homeownership is wearing off and the responsibility and annoyance begins setting in.  So in no particular order, things about our neighborhood!

1) We have a nosy housewife

Well actually at least two, there may be more.  Anyway the nosy Ms. Noserson I had in mind is the neighbor directly next door.  We met our neighbors the very first night we had our house, those who know me may remember pictures of the husband and I trying to hook up our water heater...or rather pictures of him trying to hook up the water heater whist I sat in the room taking pictures and providing witty commentary.  So we were planning how to go about getting the water heater in the house (very heavy) when a man walked by and asked if we were the new neighbors.  "why yes, we are, its a pleasure to meet you" we replied.  But not really because we aren't that polite.  Long story short, he helped us out and introduced me to his wife.  Since our first meeting, neighbor wife has managed to conveniently be outside every time I am.  That's a bit of an exaggeration.  She's a bit of a "know it all" and has informed me that we can purchase a new garage door opener at home depot for $30, that we could buy sod for the lawn at home depot "it's not expensive," that she knows a tree guy who can trim our tree for $300,  that the people who lived in our house before us repainted the exterior (although I have evidence to the contrary) but did not remodel the kitchen, and that we probably should get new windows, guess what? we can get those at home depot too...I'm beginning to think she actually works for home depot and that bit about staying home with her kids is a lie, they're probably just small employees she houses to keep her mortgage payments down!

2) The neighborhood goes down hill

Literally! I noticed it the first time I went for a walk, I took our dog and a friends' dog we were watching (Mr. Wes) to a near by park.  The park is like a half mile away and mostly down hill.  On the way back I noticed that houses were getting progressively nicer and yards more maintained as I climbed toward our house until I eventually made it to our street.  Overall, I'm happy about this observation.

3) DOGS!

Holy hell there are a lot of dogs in our neighborhood!  The reason I know this is that they all bark like all the time! And when they aren't barking, don't worry, there is a fire department on the next street, and the fire department can be counted on to respond to calls, day or night, any time the dogs aren't already going.  Let me explain, first you hear the sirens start up, then one dog: BRRROOOOOOORRRR then another dog: WOOOOOOOOOO and another dog: BARK BARK HOOOOOOOO and another dog.  You get my point? Eventually we have a concert of various howls and barks in different tones and pitch, it's quite relaxing. At 2 am.

The other aspect to my DOGS observation is nosy neighbor's dog.  Don't get me wrong, he is a very sweet, very old, very fat black lab.  I took a picture once upon a time, but I cannot seem to find it at the moment.  But neighbor dog likes to bark.  And this is not an exaggeration.  He barks the entire time he is outside, which seems like it is all day some days.  If you are outside, he will bark at you.  If you are not outside he will bark at someone else.  If no one is outside, he must bark at squirrels, I'm not sure.  But quite literally, he barks constantly.  It's not an urgent or intimidating bark, more like he's just reminding you he's there, every 3-5 seconds, all day.  He stops if you pet him...although I found out after such an act that he has a skin condition...ew.

4) Our mail lady is an evil ninja

Or possibly just over worked and underpaid.  Or maybe lazy.  I'm not sure, but either way she's sneaky!  I'm home at least 3 of the days when she brings mail, but even with the door open she comes by and drops of mail without my noticing until she is at the next house! I don't know how she does it!  I say she is evil, because she is kinda grouchy and "evil ninja" just sounded more intriguing than grouchy ninja.  But she also does not like to look in our box, which is by the door on the house.  Maybe she's just shorter than she looks from a distance, but she routinely leaves mail in our box that I wanted her to take...so again, evil? Trying to take over the world by slowly driving me into a fit of frustrations which would lead me to talk badly to a client, cause hurt feelings and then through some unseen steps I'm too sleepy to verbally illustrate lead to the downfall of society? Maybe.

5) Dog foody deliciousness

Again, I'm talking about dogs...not really though.  What I am referencing is an occurrence we have experienced possibly 3 times since finding this house in which our entire neighborhood smells like dog food.  "huh?" You are confused I see.  Well, for those of you not in Denver, you may not know that there is a GIANT Purina dog food factory off of I-70.  "That's miles and miles from your house" you may say.  Yes, we realize, but that does not stop the pungent and oh so tempting smells from the factory from drifting their way north all the way to our neighborhood and settling in for the day from time to time.  I cannot explain it.  Guess it probably has something to do with wind currents and weather and the right day (or wrong day) in the cycle of dog food making...a perfect storm if you will.  Luckily we've only had a few "dog food days" since the move, which is good.  I cannot describe how hard it is to run when every breath tastes like dog food.

Okay, there you go, 5 things I have sarcastically observed about our new neighborhood.  There were probably more, but that's all I can remember right now.