...And at the Seventh Hour, She Rested.

Okay, it was more near the beginning of the third hour, but whatever. Before I get into all that, I want to tell all of you about the neighbors who just moved in. I never saw a moving truck, so I tend to believe that they're related to the man who's always lived there (his last name is the same as mine, and he has twice received my mail in his mailbox... and he gave it back to me, opened!), or maybe they were house-sitting or something.

Anyway, last Friday, there was a whole bunch of them standing outside when I went to get Skylar off of the bus for Pre-K. There was a kind of pretty girl with dirty blonde hair, a heavy girl with brown hair, and two black guys. They all looked to be in their early to mid-20's. On the way back from the bus, tiny toddler hand in mine, the pretty girl told me that Skylar is cute. I said, "Thank you." (My voice is pretty good, especially when saying short sentences like that.) One of the black men was standing right in front of my door, so I said, "Excuse me." He moved out of the way, and I went inside and closed the door. I was taking off my shoes by the door, and I heard the other woman say something. I couldn't hear her, as Skylar was babbling to me about school and her bus ride (she's too precious!). The pretty one said, "What? She's cute." The other replied, "I'll slap that bitch in the face."

Ummmm... what? I stood there by the door, waiting for some explanation, but they opened their door and went inside. I hope she wasn't talking about Skylar, but then, why would she say that about me? I've had no contact with these people.

On Monday, they were all standing outside, smoking. Not a word was said, but they were all staring me down. Nikki was home sick that day, so she poked her head out and gave the heavier woman a dirty look. We went inside, and right after that, they went inside their apartment. I was afraid they would make this a regular event, but for the last two days, they haven't been out there.

They made me very uncomfortable and nervous. I don't do well with crowds of people. I always wonder what they're thinking and what they might say to me. Hopefully, I won't see them again. Maybe they went back to wherever they came from, because the mail-opening guy was back last night. I hadn't seen him while they were there. Anyway...

Observe the cleaning of the kids' room:

Before

After

Before

After

This took me over two hours to clean. Clothes (which hadn't been worn) back in the laundry bags or hanging up, books (the ones that weren't destroyed) back on the shelves, toys back in the toybox, and oh yeah... underneath and amongst all those items were little, tiny, ripped-up pieces of paper. Skylar loves to tear apart books. The kid is 3 1/2 years old. Enough already. I filled three garbage bags, kitchen sized, full of ripped paper, empty book covers, and other assorted debris. After sorting and filing all the big stuff, in came the vacuum. Halfway through it's mission, something started burning inside of it. I ignored the smell and hoped it would go away. It did. But holy hell... I don't think our vacuum can handle much more of this!

Skylar told me she was "happy now," upon gazing at her newly cleaned room. I told her to keep both Skylar and Mama happy, and stop ripping up books and making a mess. She told me, "Okay, mama." But that's what she said last time. We've had this discussion before. In less than a week later, the room was destroyed again. I'm still waiting for it to stick.