Home Sweet Lord Almighty What Happened to Our Home?

Our neighborhood has gone wonky.

As I returned home from my daily venture to Target to pick up the one thing I forgot to get the day before, I noticed that the house on the right with the window treatments that come in full, queen, and king sizes, had planted flowers by their mailbox. Lovely red flowers. Lovely red carnation flowers. Lovely red carnation plastic flowers in perfect groups of five to a plastic green stem.

Right across the street from that house is a rental house. Vacant and neglected, the front door was littered with yellow notices from the City of Raleigh. Mow your lawn or we'll do it for you and charge you out the nose.

It seems that more and more houses in our neighborhood are becoming rental property. The only problem with that is the renters. We aren't getting families, we are getting groups of single people. Young, loud single people who have lots of cars and like to park them on the street and in their lawns.

Last night, I was having a hard time getting Bird to go to sleep. Three times, I got him to sleep only to have him awoken by the renters across the street and two doors down. The boys in the rental ranch with the satellite dish in the front yard were installing sub woofers in the trunk of their Pontiac Sunfire convertible. They were doing a great job. The boom boom boom could be heard throughout the whole street.

I came storming downstairs after the third time they woke up Bird, hunting for the phone number to our police precinct. Instead of helping me find the number, Guy went across the street, explained to them that we were trying to put our baby to sleep, and asked them to keep it down. It worked. Until tonight. Now they are shooting off fireworks.

George lives next door to these lovely folks. Not for long though. He and his wife didn't call the cops or go over and ask them to keep it down. They put a For Sale sign in their front yard to combat the satellite dish. They've given up and are moving out of the neighborhood.

It's so bizarre. We are in a great location. George's house sold in less than 24 hours for his asking price. We live in "Midtown," and it is some of the hottest property going in Raleigh right now.

Yet our house is the one next door to three nonfunctioning cars. It is on the street of rental hell. It is right around the corner from the plastic flowerbed and the lawn that had small colonies of gnomes residing in it before it was finally mowed last week.

Not to mention the insane drive that Guy has to make everyday to work.

I love our house. I love its location. We have put countless hours into renovating this house ourselves. I don't want to move.

Or, I didn't want to move.

I swear Guy is staging this. Has to be.

Because in our little neighborhood, our established Midtown neighborhood, while we were planting hostas in our front yard in the evening, a 40-50 year old woman was walking down the street smoking a freaking joint.

As the sick sweet smell of pot wafted into our yard, I turned and looked at Guy and just shook my head. He knew he had won. By the luck of some random scank and her strolling high, he had won.

We'll be moving west on 40. Wish us luck.