neighbors’ dogs

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Five for Friday: It’s Almost Christmas! Edition

How many hours of TV watching is still considered “acceptable” while one’s child is on winter break? Asking for a me. 

Carla is feeling nearly back to normal. No fever since Sunday, and no more sore throat. Just a little sniffle and a bit of congestion.

We have SNOW this week, which is delightful!!!!! Probably because I am not obligated to drive in it. But I loooooove snow. I think it is supposed to warm up in the next couple of days, so it may not linger. But it’s so lovely while it’s lasting.

  • Carla and I spent FIVE HOURS running errands on Monday. Five. Hours. It was… not pleasant. She is a real trooper, though, and maintained her good humor throughout. Me… not so much. Somehow, despite the marathon, I still need to go to the grocery store and I really really want to go to the garden center because I continue to have Porch Panic about the state of my front stoop. It is so dumb, but I feel like the dead mums (which I panic bought three days before Thanksgiving, by the way; they were beautiful and lush at that time) are emanating a Gross Dead Vibe and the entire neighborhood is whispering about me behind my back. (Going to a neighborhood Christmas party and having one of the neighbors teasingly ask why we don’t have any lights up didn’t help. THEY ARE PAYING ATTENTION.) Maybe I could just swirl some twinkle lights festively on the dead mums and call it a day???? I still would need to purchase twinkle lights though. I also have a strong urge to buy more poinsettias. I have two small ones, one of which is trying to die already, but I want MORE POINSETTIAS. Part of this is a case of Christmas Décor Envy, which I developed while attending the aforementioned holiday party: the hosts’ house was GORGEOUS and every inch of it was bright with Christmas magic. There is no point in comparing oneself to other people – and in reality, I have no idea WHERE they store all their Christmas paraphernalia, and I have only a creeping horror in my bones to hint at what kind of time and energy is required to dress the house in such a fashion – but still I WANT MY HOUSE TO BE A WINTER WONDERLAND. Poinsettias would go a long way toward helping me achieve that goal, right? RIGHT? 
  • The real problem, I think, is that I have no idea how to decorate this house for Christmas. The living room is weird, so our Christmas tree is weird. It was kind of a battle, to be honest, to figure out where to put it. And I was the one who gave in, which makes me feel crabby. It’s a very open space, with really only two full walls: the other walls are the kitchen (which is a partial wall separating two doors) and the stairway/entryway which isn’t even enclosed; there’s a balcony that overlooks the living room. The longest wall isn’t even a wall wall, it’s a wall of windows. And the other wall is taken up by cabinets and the fireplace. So there’s no REAL place to put the tree. We ended up putting it in the middle of the wall of windows, which I think at least makes sense symmetrically. (My husband and child wanted the tree off center, which just felt wrong in so many ways.) My big idea was to put the tree up against the stairway, but my husband hated that idea so vehemently I think he might have simply declined to celebrate Christmas if I’d pushed. (I still think it would look great.) Also, we are planning to get new furniture for the space, so NEXT YEAR it will be even weirder, but my husband said not to think about that now. (Does he know me?) And that’s just the living room! It’s definitely the most Christmassy of all the rooms. The other rooms have… nothing. Which feels so unfair! (The party host had FIVE CHRISTMAS TREES. That is more Christmas trees than I could ever handle, but maybe I could handle two????) I could fill the piano room with poinsettias! What I really want to do is to line the doorways with something festive (yes, I know I mentioned this already) – I originally thought pine garland. And I have seen so many Instagram videos of people putting shower tension rods in their doorways and decorating them with pine garland and ornaments etc. that I have started thinking that’s a viable idea. (Keep off the internet, kids.) My mother suggested ribbon, which sounds not only economical but also less dusty (and less of a pain to store) than pine garland. But I am not crafty like my mother is, so who knows. I did end up buying some bow-things at Joann Fabric (70% off!) (I also got a box of Hanukkah candles for next year, also 70% off, so perhaps we will have enough candles to light the menorah FULLY every single night of Hanukkah next year lol cringe.) and a spool of ribbon and I’m going to see what I can do. It may be very Preschooler Makes a First Ornament, but it will be Something.
  • Where I have excelled, at least in volume, is baking. I have made not one but TWO batches of cranberry crumble bars, and they are still by far my favorite Christmas treat. They are just the perfect combination of buttery/tangy and crunchy/chewy. Carla wanted to bake, and her very specific baking request was snickerdoodles with buttercream frosting, so she made those. She really wanted colorful buttercream, and while she was rummaging around for food coloring she found the box of candy eyes we used last year and so she went wild with the eyes. Very Christmassy. I wanted to make molasses cookies, but they turned out a) completely smooth, not crackly like molasses cookies are supposed to be and b) very dry and crumbly on the inside. I tried to save them by adding an eggnog glaze, which I think does help, but… meh. From my online troubleshooting, it seems like my oven is the problem. (My understanding is that the crackly tops come from a combination of rolling the dough in sugar to dry it out, and having a nice hot oven.) I am pretty irritated with our ovens. Yes. We have TWO OVENS and neither of them seems to heat appropriately. SO FRUSTRATING. You should have seen how pale our Thanksgiving turkey was. It was cooked through, but it needed some time on the Jersey Shore with a bottle of baby oil. 
  • During our marathon errand day, Carla came across a selection of dog toys. She promptly burst into tears because she wanted to give them to all the dogs in our old neighborhood. Listen, I am a heartless bitch when it comes to I Really Need That tears. But I got a little misty, too, and I allowed her to buy them. She wanted to use her allowance, but then I had a discount situation that made them free. A Christmas miracle! She wrapped them and I texted our old neighbors and we spent an afternoon going from house to house, giving dog toys (and cookie plates) (although they were last-minute cookie plates, so they were on Hanukkah dishes because that’s all I had) and lots of pets. It made Carla’s day, although I think it also made her sad. It’s so hard to find a balance between honoring her grief by allowing her to visit these old neighbors, while also helping her to move on. I don’t think I’ve got it right. But it was lovely to see our old neighbors, who EACH had a little gift for Carla.  
  • Stocking stuffers have been procured. I feel as though I didn’t give you the full story, on Monday, when I alluded to shopping for stocking stuffers and how difficult that would be with Carla in tow. The thing is, I ordered stocking stuffers for Carla (and for my husband) long ago. Or at least long enough ago for them to have arrived already. However, my parents are spending Christmas Day with us, and I feel super awkward about them coming to our home and NOT having stockings to open. It is probably very silly, especially because they are minimalists at heart. But my desire to have Stocking Equity overruled my knowledge of their minimalism, so I got them stocking stuffers. (We have anonymous stockings that we set out for guests, so they will have stockings as well.) And also, I had NO IDEA what I wanted to get for stocking stuffers. The only thing that I really wished I’d learned about earlier was this flexible screwdriver bit. My dad would use the heck out of that bit! It’s so handy! But alas, I only learned about it on Monday when a YouTube ad interrupted my workout video. Next year, for sure. What I really needed to do was wander around a store and happen across the exact right stocking stuffers. And I got the chance during Carla’s music lesson and found a bunch of stocking stuffers that will hopefully be fun and/or personal-ish enough while also not making the recipient feel too guilty about throwing them out. So now there will be Stocking Equity and I am super relieved. 
Kohl’s is the place to go for stocking stuffers. I also got everyone candy. And Carla, shockingly, will get a bunch of other stuff because she is spoiled beyond belief.

Well, that’s it for me before Christmas, I think! I still have the grocery store/garden center to visit, and I still have to wrap some presents. (And Santa has to wrap gifts AND stocking stuffers – WHY, Santa, WHY did you begin such an arduous tradition????)  (Then again, maybe this is the last year Santa will visit our house, and I will henceforth be sobbing about NO SANTA GIFTS????? Parenting is so fun.)

Oh, by the way, I just have to include this here. Carla went to the orthodontist this week (yay, braces in our near future woo) and the orthodontist was very chatty about Santa. He said he sets TRAPS for Santa, to which Carla reacted with scorn. “Do you want to HURT Santa?” she asked, voice dripping with disapproval. No, the orthodontist just wants to SEE Santa, in person! “Why don’t you set up video cameras?” Carla suggested. Oh, but the orthodontist has tried that. And it didn’t work! Didn’t capture a thing. “That’s because Santa deletes the footage,” Carla said, and she might as well have added, “you idiot” because that’s what her tone conveyed. 

SANTA DELETES THE VIDEO FOOTAGE. You heard it here, folks. Don’t try to mess with Santa, even via digital surveillance methods. 

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To the Buyers of Our House

Welcome to this house, this lovely wonderful house that still feels like mine even though it is yours. Even though the rooms are now empty of everything but paint, as though I have traveled back in time twelve years to when my husband and I were just beginning the life we build in this space, imagining the years ahead with no idea what they would hold. (They held so much joy.)

I wanted to share with you a few things about this house, things that are too wordy or too silly to share through the mediator that is our realtor. Things that probably don’t need to be said – you will either find them out on your own, or they won’t matter to you one iota. But things I want to say. 

I’m sorry for all the things that are wrong – it’s an old house, and it has creaks and cracks. The windows are draftier than I’d like, and I wish I’d replaced them five years ago, for you and for us. We tried our best to keep this house in good condition, and we tried to fix the things that we would want to be fixed before we moved our family into a new house. It’s amazing how you live with something for so long and it becomes invisible, or just a thing you accept as you accept the bad with the good in anything you love, like how your spouse snores when he has a cold but refuses to take cold medicine or how your best friend gets so maudlin and depressive when she watches a specific movie but still insists on watching that movie once a month at least. These little flaws are so glaringly huge now that we are turning this house over to you, and I hope they seem less huge to you, or that they disappear quickly beneath all the good this place has to offer.

Our refrigerator, as you know from the disclosures we posted, is “functional but quirky.” It probably needs to be replaced, but I couldn’t bear buying a new fridge when this one does the essentials of what a person needs a fridge to do. It holds a lot of food and it keeps things cold and it looks very lovely in the kitchen. But it is a little quite needy. I don’t envy you the mornings you’ll find the meat drawer adhered to the bottom of the fridge with ice and have to remove large chunks with a butter knife and your hands. Will I miss the little musical chortles, as the fridge asserts its presence in the household? I don’t know. 

The back door sticks a little, when it’s humid.

The oven is quite slow to heat. Everything will take longer to cook than you think it will. Especially the Thanksgiving turkey. (ESPECIALLY THE TURKEY.)

The carpets are old. They were old when we moved in. We tried to take care of them, but – as you’ll note from a few bright pink splotches that no amount of scrubbing can remove – we wanted to wait to replace them until our child was old enough not to ruin new carpet, and we have not yet reached that age. Perhaps these carpets will last until your kids are that age. (Do kids reach that age? One can hope.)

These may seem like a lot of problems, but for me – and I hope, soon, for you – they are outweighed by the joy this house has brought us. 

Can you hear the echoes of laughter and singing? There have been so much of both these past dozen years.

I love the big sliding glass doors in the living room, through which you and your children can watch this little pocket of nature. I’ve always marveled that so many creatures amble through the yard in our urban-edge-of-suburban neighborhood. We’ve seen opossums and raccoons, skunks and groundhogs, innumerable deer and squirrels and rabbits. There’s a chipmunk who likes to come sit on the step and contemplate the world. A red-tailed hawk that will alight on the top of the swing set and contemplate the chipmunk and its many options for dinner. Cats will wander through, sometimes yowling for some action. Very occasionally, the neighbor’s dog will escape through the hedges into this yard – a sighting which always filled my child with delight. My daughter and I spent the bulk of her first three months in front of these windows, looking outside at the grass and trees and sky, naming all the wonderful things in the world, watching squirrels tumble around in the grass and regard one another from gravity-defying positions on the trunk of the enormous backyard oak.

The primary bedroom in this house is enormous. Believe me – after looking at dozens of houses, all much bigger than this one, there are few primary bedrooms that rival it in size. The closet is vast. The ceilings soar and it had ample room for our king bed, a dresser, a couch and two armchairs. It was big enough for our whole family to gather in on lazy weekend mornings. Even among all the furniture, it can comfortably sleep a small child (or two, I assume) who won’t return to her room after a nightmare. 

I will miss the light coming in through the bedroom’s east window. The way the glow suffuses the dormer first, while the rest of the room remains drowsy and dim.

You will, I’m sure, want to choose your own paint colors. But in case you like the ones we picked and painted ourselves – my husband up on a ladder, carefully filling in the walls up to the peaks of the ceilings – there are cans of paint in the basement. My daughter’s room is painted in February Frost, the softest shade of lilac. How carefully we chose that color, how deliberately we picked the furnishings and artwork for her room. The dormer is the perfect size for an armchair and a lamp, for reading Goodnight Moon and I Am a Bunny and all the exploits of Curious George. When your kids inevitably, too-speedily get older, as mine has, that space is the perfect size for a desk and chair, for schoolwork and coloring and LEGO building and playing with dolls. 

The back deck gets impossibly hot in the afternoons – the sun shines directly on it. But the yard itself, with its abundance of trees, is cool in the shade. The hedges and trees make it feel like a private oasis. I hope you fill the yard, as we have, with shrieks of joy from running under the sprinklers, with iridescent bubbles and bursting water balloons, with the thwack of a badminton racket hitting the shuttlecock, with songs sung while swinging, with astonishment and awe as fireflies pinprick the dark with their bright signals. 

The basement walls are red, yellow, and blue – a bold choice, I know. (And not ours.) But they grow on you. The basement itself doesn’t feel like a basement. It’s not damp or dark or creepy. It’s hosted many hours of imaginative play, overseen the conception of thousands of artworks, housed so much laughter. 

In the autumn, the tree in the southwest corner of the yard bursts into the most brilliant yellow. You can see the leaves, even now, beginning to transform. I won’t get to see its exuberant celebration of fall this year. But you will, and I hope it fills you with happiness each day until the leaves fall. 

The driveway and the sidewalks out front are perfect for chalk. Rainbows and body tracings and elaborate games of hopscotch. 

The ice cream shop is just the right distance away for a leisurely summer stroll. As you walk, you’ll pass through the school parking lot – that’s where my daughter learned how to ride her bike; maybe your kids will learn to ride their bikes there too. We spent so many hours there, circling and circling the lot. The sports field is great for running and cartwheels and games of catch. 

Keep an eye out when you drive past the school. People don’t always stop at the stop sign, even though they should.

Make sure you buy a lot (no, a LOT) of candy. Our little cul-de-sac gets a ton of trick-or-treaters. Hordes of them, surging around the block in waves. And it’s such a safe, limited trick-or-treating path for your own little ones. All the neighbors held back special treats for my daughter and she felt emboldened to go up to their stoops by herself to ask for candy.

When it snows – and it will – know that the neighbors don’t bother shoveling the sidewalks. It’s not ideal for dog walking, or accessibility, but on the plus side, there are massive hills of plowed snow for climbing and sliding down. The front yard is perfect for making angels and snow sculptures. 

I know we mentioned this briefly in the list of things we love about living here, but our neighbors are truly one of a kind. Don’t think that they are intrusive or nosy – in fact, they are very good at keeping to themselves. I prefer to think of them as aware. Many of them have known each other for decades, have raised their children together. I think they want to be involved, but won’t push. It took me many years and one effusive, extroverted child to do more than smile and wave in passing. But now these kind, generous, lovely people number among my friends. S texts me long missives about her life and is interested in the minute details of mine. F has the kindest, gentlest manner, lets my daughter walk her dog, and notifies her when tadpoles have arrived in her backyard pond; she’s offered her recycling bin if we need it, her house when our power has gone out, her car when we were filling ours over and over with boxes. L is an expert gardener who shares her fresh grown tomatoes with my daughter, who taught her to love green beans and broccoli, who lets her pet and brush and pamper her dog, who always has a gentle smile and a kind word to share. R and his wife bought Girl Scout cookies every year and offered to give Carla rides to school any time we needed it. T attended my child’s school events in the absence of a grandparent, took me out for breakfast, brings us homemade cookies, runs the neighborhood block party and is irreverent and sincere in equal parts. G and C gave me baby gifts when I was pregnant and suggested babysitters when my daughter was small and C threw her arms around me when she learned we were leaving. Everyone – everyone – knows my daughter by name, keeps an eye out for her as she rides her bike, lets her join in on family games of cornhole in the front yard, welcomes her affection for their dogs (or cats). They are your neighbors now and I hope you build the same kind of relationships with them. 

We planned our family here. We brought our baby home to this house. In this space, we’ve watched her grow and flourish. We have been so happy here. We hope the same will be true for you.

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Neighborhood Wanderings

Walking outdoors is my favorite form of exercise and mental decompression. (Also, mental expansion: walking is a great way to get the writing ideas flowing.) Most of my walks take place in and around my little suburban neighborhood, and I have to admit that the more walks I take, the more I fall in love with our community. 

NGS’s post about walking her dog and all the things they (she) notice while making the rounds made me think about all the things I see on my walks. I have to admit to a certain level of obliviousness. Especially if I am lost in an audiobook or deep inside a storyline for my own work, the world around me tends to fall away. But I do try to be present, when I can. This is place where I live and I want to be a good citizen.

Carla and I love meeting the neighborhood dogs – and we have such a wonderful variety! Corgis! Pitbulls! Scottish terriers! Bernedoodles! Basset hounds! Beagles! Cockapoos! Greyhounds! All manner of golden retrievers and labs! There is a giant cocoa colored labradoodle that lives on a street nearby, and it is so beautiful all I can do is stare and grin any time I drive or walk past it. 

There is a sprinkling of lockdown babies in the area, too, and it is so fun to see them toddling around now after being little lumps in their strollers for the past few years. And now, siblings are being added to the mix!

I have told you before about the prevalence of fake flowers in some of my neighbors’ yards. And I’ve mentioned the giant Costco skeleton that makes an appearance for Halloween and other holidays. Here are a few other things I’ve noticed when I’m out and about.

The Skunk

Last spring, I came across the body of a baby skunk. It was lying on the sidewalk outside someone’s house, between the house and the (very busy) street. Every time I walked that route, I observed the skunk, which was never removed by the homeowners, never hassled by what surely are dozens of bicycles and dog owners and joggers and walkers that travel along the same path that I do. Of course, I never hassled the skunk corpse either. 

(I did write about the skunk and shared the essay with a friend; his primary reaction was, “WHY would someone leave a dead skunk to decay on the SIDEWALK?” and maybe implied gently that I should perhaps do something about it. A) I feel like it would be far too weird to drive from my house with a shovel to… remove the skunk to a garbage can???? because the skunk’s remains lie a good mile from my house. And B) I am a country girl at heart and a little death doesn’t bother me. I mean, it raises a lot of existential thoughts, which is why I wrote an essay about it. But I am wholly unbothered by a skunk slowly returning to the earth concrete and in fact found it quite interesting to observe how it changed over time. Once its fur and innards had receded, exposing its tiny white bones, I brought Carla along to check it out. She also found it fascinating and we had quite an in-depth discussion about whether or not she could bring some of the skeleton to school for show and tell. Her position was that they were examining owl pellets in science class, why not a skunk skeleton. My position was a hard no; I won that argument.)

Now, nearly a year later, I can still see the place where the skunk found its final repose. The sidewalk remains changed, for having ushered that creature into another realm, a little darker, a slightly different texture to the concrete. The people who live in that house – people who never once noticed, it seems, the funerary cast to their sidewalk – have now put the house up for sale. I don’t think the two events are related, but I suppose one never knows. 

The Cereal

(I swear that I have shared this before, but maybe I haven’t? Either way, I am going to share it here now. If you have heard it already, I trust that we are at the point in our relationship where you will smile fondly and say, “Oh! Isn’t that nice!” rather than rolling your eyes and sighing loudly, “You have told that same story SO MANY TIMES!”)

Once, as I was huffing my way up the street east of mine, I spotted a man leaving his house. He stopped near the edge of his yard, and then poured something from a box onto a tree. As I drew nearer, I saw that it was a box of cereal. He was feeding cereal to his tree.

I cannot remember if I stopped immediately, or if this happened a second time – at which point I refused to continue my walk without knowing WHAT was happening. The man, in a half matter-of-fact, half slightly-embarrassed way, said that the squirrels love the remnants of a bag of cereal or crackers. He beckoned to me, and sure enough, there was a small hollow in the tree trunk that acted as a natural cereal bowl. (No milk.) 

The Companion

For as long as I’ve lived in this house, I’ve been aware of a woman who frequently takes walks with a companion. She is a petite woman, slim as a tree branch, her back slightly bowed with the gravity of time. Her companion sits in a wheelchair and wears a brightly colored blanket on his lap. She propels him down the street and up the street, the slope of which is almost imperceptible when you are walking briskly but must surely be much more evident when you are pushing a person twice your size in a wheelchair. 

I know her well enough to wave or smile; we have never once exchanged words. I don’t know her name. I don’t know where this woman lives, although I know her house isn’t on my street. Which means she pushes her companion a good distance; our street is half a mile from stem to root. 

Earlier this winter, I noticed the woman out walking. She was by herself. And then again, again alone. This winter has been so mild that I’ve been outside much more than on a normal year, so I wondered if maybe she simply doesn’t bring her companion outside in the cold. Although it hasn’t been so cold. 

Aside from the neighbors on my little cul de sac, I’m only on a “comments about the weather” or “compliments to your dog” conversational basis with the people in my neighborhood. I don’t know people’s names. I don’t wish to know their business. But oh how I wish I knew her well enough to ask if he’s sitting in his chair, at home, watching for her from the window. Or whether he’s departed this plane for the next.