This Is Going To Drive Me Crazy

About two weeks ago, something appeared in my neighborhood.   Something strange.   Something I had never seen before being a lifelong resident of Texas.

Sheets.  Big giant patterned sheets all over the front yard of a house down the street from me.

I am not amused.

At first I was willing to shrug this off to someone freaking out over the unusually cold temperatures we have been having around here.

I’m going to pause for a moment here to let all you nice Northern type people finish laughing.   Done?  Okay, carrying on…

Here’s the thing, they’ve been firmly in place now for over a week.  Also, it’s not really that cold anymore.   Highs in the mid 40′s, lows in the low 30′s.    Yet there they are, day in and day out, taunting me.

If you were to ever be my neighbor, here are some things I don’t want to see:

• Sheets.
• Sheets in polka dot pink.
• Sheets with tiny Cowboys and Indians dancing around on them.
• Any of these sheets left for over a week on your shrubbery causing me to yell, “ARRRGH!!!!” every time I drive by.
• Side note:  If you cannot hear me yelling “ARRRRGH!!!!” every time I drive by, your hearing may be impaired.

They appeared a few weeks ago during the first cold snap.   (Again, you Northern types can yuk it up to your hearts content…)    I wouldn’t have even known had The Man not called me to alert me to the situation at 7:00 am.    However, they were gone as I left my house around 10:00 and I worried I had missed the spectacle.

I needn’t have worried so much about missing it however because a week ago they came back and they haven’t left since.   We had a brief “snow moment” here earlier last week which was lovely but only lasted a few hours.   The temperatures rose to about 40 degrees and I headed out for the day.   As I rounded the corner, I literally stopped in shock.

::blink::    ::blink blink::

After absorbing it for a few moments, I did what any caring neighbor self involved blogger would do and whipped out my iPhone and snapped the picture and made my getaway.

Here’s the thing that really kills me, there are several houses around this one that are for sale.  If there is one thing I know having lived in five different houses in my 15 years of marriage, you don’t need this kind of thing going on when you have a “For Sale” sign in your front yard.    Sure, your landscaping is important, but not nearly as important as days ticked off on the market when you are trying to sell your home in an economy that just ain’t pretty right now.

(True story:   when our previous house was for sale, there was a house under construction that went into foreclosure while we were listed.    They erected a  10 ft chain link fence around the front of the house to stop the contractors from coming in and taking their stuff out and on Halloween I actually saw a guy running down the street with a toilet in his arms.   Classy.)

Anyway, we are at this point but one glass of wine away from me sneaking over there to remove the sheets, fold them neatly and place them in a color coded stack on their front porch with a lovely note telling them to knock this nonsense off.

Because that’s how I roll y’all.   Can you blame me?