Motherhussy

The Dog Next Door

The neighbors are building a house next door. It’s a sad thing that happens often in Redondo, people buy lots that already have adorable little beach houses on them—then they proceed to bulldoze the tiny charmers into oblivion so they can build million dollar “look at me!” homes on the newly leveled lot. Right now the “house” next door is only a skeleton of wood framing that comes alive each day with a party of Hispanic construction workers. This morning, the party came to my house—at 7 a.m.

Apparently, my car was parked where the construction workers needed to park their massive cement truck. How did I know this? Well, there was a knock at my door and I had to answer it because Anthony was in the shower. I opened the door to see standing on the porch a blurry construction worker, who then quickly asked me the dreaded question:

“Is that your tan car parked on the street?”

It was my tan car, and apparently I needed to move it. So I stumbled out of the house with my car keys, flip flops, and contacts glued to my eyes trying to walk while also trying frantically to blink some type of moisture into my contact glued eyes so I could see enough to move my car (if you don’t have contacts, damn you for not understanding this phenomena). As I was tripping towards my car, a fuzzy blob intercepted my path.

“Hi! I’m Brooks, your soon-to-be new neighbor,” the cheerful voice assaulted me.
“Hi, nice to meet you,” I lied.

Obviously, it was not nice to meet him. He must have thought I was crazy the way I was frantically blinking through my sleep-puffed eyes. And what kind of a real woman is still sleeping at 7 a.m.? I should have been at the gym or doing laundry or something productive at that time. I should have, then I wouldn’t have had to move the car.

“Thanks so much for moving your car. This won’t happen every morning,” Brooks promised.
“Oh, no problem,” I lied again. I was so tired and annoyed that if he had tried to shake my hand at that moment, it would have been chewed off and spit out into the carcass of his soon-to-be enviable house. Wouldn’t be so enviable then, would it Brooks?

Much to my glee, when I approached my car there were about half a dozen Hispanic construction workers standing around staring disapprovingly at it. Since I don’t know Spanish I can only imagine they were muttering something like, “Stupid beeyotch, move your skate, then we siesta.”

So I moved my car. ALL THE WAY TO THE END OF THE STREET. That’s right. I swear it was almost an eighth of a mile! There was no place else to park it. That’s another thing you have to deal with in California, lack of parking everywhere.

On my walk back another blob apprehended me. This blob was blonde. Brooks’ wife. I can’t remember her name but she spewed out something syrupy like,

“Can you believe we decided to pour the cement the same day as trash day?”

I dribbled out a completely fake, "how ironic", two-second chuckle, and just kept walking. There will be plenty of time to be genuinely friendly with the new neighbors I figure—plenty of time while I’m genuinely sunning myself and drinking margaritas on the deck of their new pool. I figure they owe it to me after this morning.

posted by Anonymous @ 11:08 AM