Back from a week-long Thanksgiving vacation. I did the usual trip through Greenville, took D and J this time, and had a great dinner Thurs night w/the fam. I spent some time with D’s fam Friday and Saturday, and left for Jacksonville at 6 this morning.
Bedtime now, because this little pirate needs his…..*thinking of pirate joke*
ps. I accidentally deleted just about every comment you guys have ever made. Sorry about that, I got a bit excited with the Comments admin
Now that we are safely removed from our crazy situation I have had some time to think about everything.
On the one hand, it sucks to have been forced out of our house during the holiday season and to be totally dependent on the generosity of our friend(s). The end of the year is supposed to be a time of comfort and warmth, not a confusing period of fear and anger.
On the other hand, a forced uproot was probably one of the most focusing experiences of my life. Being in the same place for 18 months, parking in the same spot and walking the dog on the same trip every morning was comfortable, but dulling. Having a quiet neighborhood and cracker neighbors was fine, but uninteresting.
It was kind of like my mother’s lasagna – delicious and gooey, but eat it often enough and you stop noticing what makes it so special.
Toss in an insane neighbor who’s obsessed with my girlfriend and all of the ingredients that make up life suddenly each get striped down and important again. Walking the dog required all of my attention. Coming home in the evenings took on a severe urgency. Even turning off the last light in the house at night became a measured gestured – was he watching?
So hey, that’s enough bullshit for you guys. And sorry for the cooking analogy, it was unnecessary, but I haven’t cooked in days and I’m having withdrawals. My father told me last week that his insane neighbors while he lived in the Philly ghettos was some of the most memorable of his life, and I guess he’s right. Now that we’re out of danger (I hope I hope), this was probably an enlightening experience. Or something.
Diana, Jonathan and Jax are safely moved out from the hell-hole situation that has been their life for the last month. Yay!
Thanks to the infinite generosity of their friends, they are now holed-up at a safe location in sunny Jacksonville. Of course, all of their relief is due to the sacrifice of another of their friends, Mr. Thigpen, whose surprised mug often graces the banner photo of Nuinca.com, which is a popular and well-respected Web site among the educated and classless citizens of Northeast Florida.
In fact, one Luis Gonzalez said “It’s the only blog I have ever considered reading.”
Stayed tuned for more updates on the progress of D, J and J.
Diana and I lived through a weekend of normalcy.
Didn’t even see our shitheel neighbor. Despite all of the chaos of the last two weeks, it’s amazing to me how desperate we are to adopt our normal routines.
All of those sentences began with D’s. Except that one. Damn!
Mr. Obama-
You are rocktacular and you wear awesome suits, but I thought you truly believed this whole “Change” manifesto.
So then why did you lie? Why, only one day after your stunning election, did my neighbor come back over despite a trespass warning against him, and why did he later that night bash in the windshield of my girlfriends car? Why did we then have to spent an entire day admiring the the piss-colored carpets of the downtown Courthouse Annex while we pursued criminal stalking charges and filed a protective injunction for Diana’s safety?
I need some Change!
/sarcasm
Obama’s grandmother died today and he learned about it around 8 a.m.
Which means that when he was in Jacksonville today at 10.30 he knew and spoke at the rally anyway. At the time I discribed his speech as “flustered”, but I think it was an obvious misstep on my part – and I’m amazed he showed up at all.
Here’s a video from later in his day at his second stop – Charlotte. If I could buy somebody else’s vote and vote for him again, I would.
Life has gotten a lot more…interesting lately.
I’m not going to share the full details b/c I don’t want the internets all up in my biz (ironic, I know, especially since I would be perfectly willing to upload my brain to teh Google), but I have to reflect for a minute.
Our neighbor has been a problem. Not just a me problem, but a Diana problem. Basically, he started showing up at our door every time I would leave, or he would be greeting her as soon as she pulled up to our house. Bam. Instantly there, smiling and asking if she would like to hang out – but only when I wasn’t there.
Needless to say, I wasn’t cool with the situation. Last Thursday night after work I told him to consider our house off-limits when I wasn’t home. “If your house is burning down, and I’m not home, I expect you to go somewhere else and call the cops.” Oh, and this guy has no job or life, so he sits on his porch all day and gets drunk.
Friday afternoon, less than 24hrs after I told him to eat a bag of hell, he ran up to Diana’s car as she was pulling in from work, OPENED HER CAR DOOR and asked if she would like to come over for a beer. She told him to go fuck himself with a rusty hangar, and then called me, half in panic and mostly in anger. For those of you who haven’t known me long enough to witness my red-headed rage, this is a new situation for you. I immediately left work and came home. I don’t remember anything about the drive back, but I’m sure it was awesome. I got home and called the cops. My thoughts were something like Fuck him, fuck his rights and fuck his ability to live across the street from us.
Needless to say, our Halloween was screwed. The holiday Diana looks forward to the most was now ruined; no costume, happiness or alcohol – just cops and anger. As soon as he realized we weren’t fucking with him anymore, our neighbor hid for most of the weekend – whenever we thought he was there, and would call the cops, he wouldn’t answer the door (a surprisingly effective counter-measure to a cop w/o a search warrant). Our tactics this weekend were this: Sign of life at neighbor’s house, call the cops.
He avoided our retribution until today. Two of our cop friends (We had become exceedingly familiar with several officers of JSO at this point) drove by in an unmmarked patro car. They verified he was there, parked around the corner and walked to his house – and busted his ass sitting on the front steps getting drunk.
Like I said a scant 500 words ago, I won’t give the details. But now, JSO has a formal tresspass warning against Shitty McTurdistan across the street and if he fucking looks at us he goes back to jail. The cops agreed with our sentimetns – our neighbor is cracked out, crazy or just stupid. “Just look in his eyes – you can tell something isn’t right” the cops told me after they responded. They also warned us to be extremely careful and to basically watch our asses every time we leave/enter the house.
Now we get to my point.
WTF. This guy has changed our lives, permanently. Diana can’t take the dog for a piss without fear or this asshole retaliating in a fit of schizo rage. She gets home earlier than I do, and has to sit at home alone knowing that he is watching her from his front porch. Short of us moving (take me home, Lord) or his moving (to the bottom of a lake) there’s no real way out of this situation.
The most disturbing part of this all – when one of the cops was suggesting that we be very careful from now on, he asked if I had a gun. I do not. He recommended that I get one. Sweet mother of lord – that really solidifies things, doesn’t it? Before that I could imagine that some retarded Boo Radley was living across the street – dumb and imposing, but ultimately harmless. But when a cops tells you that you might consider buying a gun, which of course implies that you should be prepared to shoot someone to defend your own life, things take on a new perspective.
But hey, tomorrow is election day – and if my ballot counts, Change is on the way, right?
Copyright © 2004–2009. All rights reserved.