Tuesday, May 13, 2008

It's a lovely day in the neigborhood

We have lived in our house for almost 4 weeks and people are STILL showing up to fix things. STILL. And the same people have to keep coming over because they can’t get it right the first time. 4 weeks and I still have sticky notes all over my walls with chicken scratch explaining exactly what is wrong with that exact spot on the wall. Or the bathtub. Or the crown molding. And the superintendant has stopped coming over to give them direction, so these poor guys just show up and are expected to know that they need to paint the 1x1 square of drywall in the upstairs bathroom behind the sconce on the left of the mirror. It’s like a game of Clue without the professor and the candlestick.

This morning, the painters showed up bright and early while Will and I were still in our pjs. And to tell them to come back in an hour was like telling a 6 month old to run to the store and get a gallon of milk. THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU. After trying to communicate with them for 15 minutes, which involved some very amateur sign language, they finally figured out what I was saying.

So then, we had an hour to get ready for work and get out of the house before everyone came back to wonder around aimlessly and try to figure out what they needed to do. As SOON as I got back in the bathroom to get ready, someone was banging on the backdoor and screaming my name. When I got to the backdoor, I was a little surprised to see my crackhead neighbor FREAKING out and screaming AMY, AMY!! I am not lying when I say crackhead, and I don’t care enough to tell her that my name isn’t Amy. I don’t plan on being around her that much. She was freaking out so much that you would have thought we were being invaded and needed to take cover, and somehow I had missed the memo on the morning news. But, we weren’t. IT WAS WORSE. The Police were out giving parking tickets to everyone in downtown Gtown because none of us know how to legally park on the street. And Crackhead looked out the window just in the nick of time and came running over to warn me of the disaster. I only got a warning, which was nice. But, the best part of the entire morning was the big hug that I received from Crackhead and the speech that she gave on how grateful we are to be neighbors and that’s what neighbors are for and thank goodness she was spying on me this morning because we don’t need any more run-ins with the Po-Po because last year was enough when the swat team showed up and had all of her kids on the front yard with their faces in the dirt and handcuffed.

Life on the east side. Gotta luv it.

1 comment:

TexPatriate said...

{{ side hug for Mrs. Burleson }}

<== def. not a crackhead, but very sympathetic to this ongoing situation.

I'm actually wondering if there is a Spanish/English phrasebook that might deal with "Please get your hiney out of my house until your supervisor understands exactly what you are supposed to do here. I will call him now." and/or "I need to put pants on and my husband has a gun. Shoo."