Like a Good Neighbor

I struggle being a good neighbor. I'll admit it. I like my space. I like my privacy. I don't like being inconvenienced. I want relationships on my terms. It's a very selfish and sometimes isolating way to live, but it's how I've functioned for most of my life. I could say more about how I've come to grips and have had to face my issues being neighborly head on lately, but I had something happen Sunday that was a glaring reason why I have a hard time being neighborly.

Here's what happened...

We pulled in the parking lot after church with our Arby's drive thru lunch and as we got out of the car, our neighbor upstairs leaned over her porch and said "Neighbor (she didn't know my name) could you take me to the corner of this street and that street?" She was on her cell phone at the time so I thought there was some sort of emergency or something. I was planning to go into town for a half off sale at a consignment sale so I said yes. No big deal, I thought. I'll drop her off and go on my way.

When she got in the car, she revealed to me that she wanted a ride to a nail salon to get 2 of her acrylic nails fixed. Then she said she was going to walk to Walmart - about a half mile walk - to get some ingredients for a recipe she had seen on the Food Network that morning and couldn't get off her mind. She also said she was just going to call a cab to bring her home.

I quickly figured out that what I thought was going to be a quick drop was going to turn into an entire afternoon of playing taxi driver! I dropped her off at the nail place, that she didn't even know exactly where it was. It was not near the intersection that I had initially agreed to take her to. I then went over to the consignment sale and quickly looked through the rack I wanted to look at and then went back to pick her up at the nail place. I chauffered them to Walmart for their groceries or whatever they were getting and finally went back home. She has a bum knee so I had to help carry groceries up the stairs to her apartment.

It's not that I mind helping someone or driving them somewhere, but I felt misled! I guess I should've asked more questions, but I was put on the spot and would've felt worse just saying no not knowing what the real story was. I was also a little shocked that someone would be bold enough to ask a total stranger to take them to have their acrylic nails fixed when that could've waited a day or so.

I'm ashamed to say that I have almost wanted to go into hiding or park somewhere else to keep from being asked to take her places now that she knows I'm willing. She has asked me one more time for a ride, but I wasn't going anywhere else that day.

I really want to be neighborly. I really do, but it's going to take some time before I just flat agree to do things without getting all necessary information before saying yes! I did offer to let her son walk to school with us in the mornings and he has been at my door every morning this week to hang out and then walk to school. Baby steps...

Funnier in Person

We've had great weather here in El Paso today. When it's nice, there's no reason for the boys to have to hang out inside so I try to let them play outside. For some reason, Bailey doesn't spend a ton of time jumping in his Thomas Bouncer, but he likes for it to be turned on and full of air just in case he gets the notion. I think he just likes the noise!

At one point, I walked out to check on them and get Maverick a hippo to push on the porch when a huge gust of wind swept through the backyard, lifting the Thomas Bouncer and its motorized air pump off the ground. All I could do was grab the cord and hold on for dear life. (mental picture of me holding onto a power cord with flying child bouncer attached like a kite). I immediately yelled for Jake who told me to turn it off, but I wasn't letting go for fear that the entire thing would blow away and across the neighborhood. He had to wrestle the bouncer that had blown onto the pitiful skinny tree they planted in the backyard. Finally he was able to get to the power button on the air pump to turn it off so we could get it under control and off of the now leaning little tree. Meanwhile, Maverick is screaming his head off. I'm sure the sight of the Thomas Bouncer blowing through the air, me screaming for Jake and the 40 mile per hour winds blasting against his 25 lb, 30" body was horrifying. He'll probably be scarred for life.

After this episode, we had to make everyone come inside. There's a grit on my kitchen floor from the sand blown in while the door was open for this fiasco and I feel like I have sand in every crevice of my body - well not every crevice - but most! I wish we had a perpetual video camera going to catch these crazy moments. As I was reading bedtime to stories to Bailey tonight, I had to stop and laugh a few times because I could just imagine how ridiculous I looked holding onto that cord while the bouncer was suspended in mid air!

For some reason all of this just reminded me of the time the pit bull ran into our condo in Fort Mill and Jake locked us in the bedroom, leaving a Papa John's delivery guy to fight off the pit bull. Read more of that story here.

Bound to Happen

Right after we moved into our new house, I made the observation that it would be very easy to get locked out of this house because all the exterior doors have deadbolts and the little twisty locks on the knobs. If the twisty locks are locked and you're outside - OOPS - too bad, so sad!

Today, I was the victim of the always locked doors! I hung the wreath on the front door and walked outside to see what it looked like, closed the door and my life began standing still! I went to open the door to go back inside and IT'S LOCKED! I ran around to the backdoor hoping that it wasn't locked since I had let Bailey play outside for a little while this morning. You guessed it, IT'S LOCKED, too! So I'm standing at the back door, which is a glass door that I can see through, banging and screaming at Bailey to come and open the door from the inside. If you know Bailey at all, you know he was very uncooperative. As a matter of fact, he just stood on the couch watching me and watching "Go, Go." I'm sure I was a sight to anyone who could see or hear me, which would only have been construction workers. I was screaming my head off trying to get Bailey to open the door and getting oh so irritated at him. Maverick even came and looked at me through the glass. He would've opened the door for me if he could've reached the knob, I'm sure!

I tried to pull screens off windows to no avail. I tried to kick the back door hard enough to break it open. NOTHING! The only option I had in my mind was to break a window and I was preparing myself to do it. After all, I'm outside and my babies are inside! A mother will do anything, right.

I decided to just try every door I could get to again. So I went back to the front door and kicked it a couple of times and it swung open. Praise the Lord! I came inside and had a little talk with Bailey about not helping Mommy in her time of need. He wasn't very receptive and I think he could care less that I was locked outside. He had snacks, 'cha milk' and Diego. He didn't need me! If his cup had run dry, he might've considered opening the door for me.

After this fiasco, I have a new rule. The garage door will always remain raised when I'm at home during the day. I have made it a point to never lock the interior garage door. If I hadn't been such a fun mommy and let Bailey push the button to close the garage door after we turned in our keys to our other house, I could've avoided these moments of panic.

The irony in it all is that I'm not sure I ever even put the key to the old house in the door to open it. We always left our doors open and never thought anything of it. I would leave this one open, too, but we're in a construction zone so there are still lots of strangers in and out of our little neighborhood.

We bid good bye to Snow St today, but I think I'm going to go and dig up some of the ivy from the front of that house to plant around the wall at the new house. No one else is ever going to live there and the ivy is just going to go 'kaboom' with the rest of the house eventually. We'll just consider it my contribution to 'going green' and saving the planet. Al Gore would be proud of this non-green concerned citizen!

Grab a Kleenex or 2

I ran across this story tonight while browsing some blogs and wanted to share with all of you. Grab a kleenex! It's an amazing story and a reminder to me that God is the orchestrator of all of the events of our lives. His purposes and plans are so much bigger than we can fathom. He knows where we need to be and when we need to be there in order for His perfect will to be accomplished. It all sounds so cliche', but it's so very true as this one guy's life demonstrates. See it here.

Haircut Hell and other tales from the West

Last Saturday, Jake attempted to take Bailey to the barber shop at the PX (Post Exchange) to get his hair cut. Bailey refused and went mad so the lady said "we not cut hair today." So they came home without a hair cut. This Saturday morning, yesterday, Jake woke up and was determined that Bailey was going to get his hair cut and that we could do it ourselves. We get Bailey in his room and I'm holding him down while Jake starts cutting. The first pass of the razor goes all the way to the scalp. I could've cried! At that point he had a big bald place on his head so we had to keep going. We managed to get some more of the back cut before we decided this was a bad plan! Then I had the dread of having to take Bailey to a professional to get it fixed. At least it was salvagable and we started in the back! So here are the before and after pictures of our day of hair cutting. We took Bailey to the hair cut place at one of our many Walmarts and he sat in my lap while the lady fixed our mistakes. He did pretty well and only tried to wrangle his way out of my arms once or twice. Needless to say the lady got a good tip, by my tipping standards, and Bailey has his first 'high and tight'! It really is cute despite the journey to the haircut.

I think I've mentioned before how funny it is to see someone fall. Today we were witnesses to a great one! We went to FBC EP's 'contemporary' service this morning and were going to pick the boys up from their classes. I got ahead of Jake and had to stand and wait for him for a second so 2 ladies, one of their husbands and a daughter got in front of us in the hall. I noticed this woman dressed really cute with her wedged heel tie around the ankle sandals on and thought how uncomfortable they looked. As soon as I had my thought, in slow motion, one of her heels went sideways, causing her to stumble. You could tell she tried to catch herself, but she ended up flat on her butt! I can't get the slow motion image out of my mind. I know I've had the wedge heel experience where I've thought I was going to fall, but haven't so I could empathize with her to some degree. It was absolutely hilarious. Her husband came and got their daughter and told her not to hold her mother's hand because she would pull her over with her the next time she fell!

1 Month Old

Today Maverick is officially 1 month old! He's grown like a weed - if only he'd sleep like a log. We're still working on that part. Some nights are good, some nights are not so good. He's a sweet little boy and is starting to be more attentive and interested in the things around him. I could just cuddle with him all day long and never get anything accomplished. I do the "never get anything accomplished" part pretty well and I'm not just sitting around holding him all day. I did manage to get one more bag ready to go to the Goodwill drop off over the weekend. Jake would be so proud!

Now to a random story - When I talked to Jake tonight, he reminded me about our run in with the Papa John's guy a few years ago and it made me lose my breath laughing about it. About 2 years ago, we got like 8-12 inches of snow or something like that and were shut up in our house for 2 days or so with not much to do. So we decided in our boredom to order a pizza. We like pizza, but it's not like us to order pizza since we're usually on some sort of a diet. We have before and after pictures to prove it. So the pizza guy shows up at the door and I go to get the pizza and pay for it. When I opened the door, I noticed there was a pit bull walking around in our front yard. I asked the pizza man if it was his dog and he said it wasn't. The next thing I know the dog is on our front porch and (I'm laughing as I type) spots our cat, Duchess, and proceeds to bound through the door to get her. I start screaming and run into the bedroom where Jake is lying in the bed watching TV to get him to get the dog out and rescue Duchess. He thought the dog was after me and slammed the bedroom door, locking both of us in there, leaving the dog, the cat and the pizza man in the living room. Then he starts yelling at the pizza man to get the dog out. All the while I'm hysterical thinking my cat is going to be in a million pieces by the time the dog is out of the house. When we open the door, we find that pizza man has dropped his bag of pizzas and has lost his glasses on the floor somewhere in this fight with the pit bull that isn't his! Once we got his glasses put back on and squared away our pizza deal, we sent him out the back door to avoid any further run in with the pit bull. A little while later the dog had wandered back to our house. We found out that it belonged to someone down the street and it had just gotten loose somehow. We did threaten to call animal control if it ever came back to our house. To this day, we see that pizza delivery guy around town and just have to laugh at the mess we got him into on that cold, snowy day in Fort Mill. Jake still can't believe I would get that hysterical over the cat.