Makin' It In The Hood

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Getting used to a new neighbourhood has been an interesting process. I always imagined myself in my own home welcoming neighbours as they dropped in for a drink and a chat. My house would always be fresh and clean and it would be warm enough to sit on the deck on which I would have to-die-for patio furniture and hummingbirds making regular visits to the feeder. I would be able to offer a choice of beer, wine, sangria, or gin & tonic and would throw together a pleasant plate of edibles that would impress my guests so much they would brag about their visit with me to the rest of the hood, who would immediately figure out a way to wrangle an invitation to the home of the new, hip neighbour. If they happened to pop by in the morning, the house would be filled with the warm, nurturing scent of freshly baked cinnamon buns that I was about to frost with a cream cheese icing that I just whipped up from scratch. I’m creative like that. My new best friends and I would borrow cups of sugar from one another, wave enthusiastically when our paths briefly crossed on the road, and share books. Maybe we would even form a book club. You know, one of those book clubs where you never really read or discuss books but drink, smoke weed, and gossip instead. This is exactly what my new neighbourhood is like.  Except that it isn’t.

I am not a popular neighbor. In fact, I think that people secretly cringe when they see me and avoid communication by pretending that they don’t see me. It might be because of the times that I blast music and dance while I’m cooking. Maybe that bothers them. Maybe they’re jealous of my awesome musical taste and repertoire or my superior dancing skills. OK, probably not my dancing skills because really, I couldn’t dance if my life depended on it. I look like an epileptic lizard. Except that I have arms with which I play a mean air guitar. Lizards can’t do that. If there were lizards in my neighbourhood they would clearly be jealous of me.  Perhaps my neighbours don’t like me because the previous owners of my house were The Best Neighbours Ever and I can’t compete with that. Maybe they all heard me that time I screamed at my kids while sobbing about how hard this is for all of us and can you please please pleeeeeease do your homework? I haven’t seen social services show up at my door yet, but maybe they’re waiting for video or audio evidence. I must remember to keep my windows shut when I’m angry from now on. What they really hate about me is my dog, Tinny. I love my dog. They can kiss my arse.

Tinny is a Whoodle, which is embarrassing. I don’t mean that she is embarrassing, but the hybrid Poodle-Wheaton name is ridiculous. But she is a sweet, affectionate, stubborn dog who has gotten my kids and me through many a confusing, lonely, tough time.  She doesn’t always come when called, she shits on the floor whenever she doesn’t like a particular houseguest, and she snuggles close to us when she knows we need comfort. At first, I would let her go for a neighbourhood jaunt all by herself since she always came back. Being such a sweet dog I couldn’t imagine that she would make anyone feel uncomfortable. Rather, I thought that she would become like the hood mascot; the communal comforter; the resident playmate for all the kids. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have given her free reign because all of a sudden she started to act like a diva and that just got on my nerves. There is only room for one diva in my house and that would be me. Anyway, one day a neighbour rang my doorbell. Oh how I wish I had cinnamon buns in the oven! I happily welcomed her in and introduced myself, thinking we would be great friends and would soon be sharing a pitcher of sangria and talking about Steinbeck and Hemmingway. Instead, she began to speak in the most loudly abrasive voice I had ever heard. She informed me that my dog was terrorizing her children and that they would likely be scarred for life from the horrible creature that attacked them day after day. [I point to the fact here that Tinny weighs about 15 pounds].  She informed me that she was going to call Animal Services and have her taken away and that the whole neighbourhood was angry about the disruption that my dog was causing. I expressed my regret and apologized with sincerity while promising her from that moment on I would ensure Tinny would always be tied on when she was let outside. For normal people, that should suffice. For insane freaky chalkboard voice lady, it wasn’t. She had to repeat her accusations three more times before she was convinced that maybe her point was made and I was sufficiently beaten down.  I politely repeated my assurances to her through gritted teeth but in my head I was telling her that I’m not so stupid that I didn’t get the fucking point the first time and by the way, that hat you are wearing looks like it was knit for a three year old. Badly knit, I might add. She finally fucked off back to her minivan that she had left running on a downward slope with her kid alone in the car. And she thought I was the one endangering her child.

So, now Tinny gets tied on. She is not necessarily happy about it and lets everyone know of the terrible injustice that is being imposed on her by yapping. Incessantly. This has not made me any more popular. I am no longer seen as a person; I am seen as an extension of the yapping. I am the yap. It is completely my fault that my dog yaps and I have destroyed the foundation of what was once the idyllic, zen-like hood. I am the lone Harley Davidson amongst a sea of pretty red scooters. There is nothing I can do about this other than limit the time that the poor thing stays outside or find a way to secretly insert earplugs in everyone’s ears without being caught. Since there is an inherent risk of being found out and being labeled the creepy neighbour from whom kids run screaming because their parents told them I might touch their ears inappropriately, I chose option one.

With Tinny tied on regularly and her outside interaction limited, I was starting to feel that maybe the neighbours would see how hard I’m working to keep the peace and would start to like me. I went outside to unhook her from her leash the other day while my neighbour immediately to my right was out enjoying the sunshine on her veranda. As soon as she saw me she spoke to my dog (doesn’t she know that dogs can’t respond?) and asked, “Are you the dog that keeps shitting all over my lawn?”. Tinny, being the polite Whoodle that she is, didn’t say a word and looked all around to see who else she might be able to blame it on. Kind of like when you fart silently and look disgusted at the people next to you to make it seem like they were the ones responsible for poisoning the air so violently. Well, it turns out that Tinny’s leash extends precisely one foot onto their property and that is exactly the space in which she chooses to defecate.  Again, I apologize profusely, losing all hope that we would share a soup recipe one day, and proceed to pick up poop on their lawn while being watched by my neighbour who thinks that dogs can talk. Can it get any worse than this? Why yes, it can. I was already having a bad day after seeing my ex-husband’s Facebook updates on his wonderful trip with his new cheap and whorish slut lady friend. There I am, with a bag of dog shit in my hand that I had subserviently picked up, when I started to cry. Now, not only am I the person with the ferocious, yapping, site-specific shitting dog, I am also the incoherent, pitiful, blubbering idiot holding a bag of dog shit. I am the crazy lady. This is fucking great. Looks like Tinny and I will be sharing many a pitcher of sangria over the next few years.

I suppose I should be grateful for the one neighbour who likes me. Problem is, he likes me as in likes me and he makes me want to throw up as in projectile vomiting. I often wonder what his wife would think if someone told her about the tactics he has been trying to use to get into my house (e.g. to paint my walls, to join me for a drink, to help unplug the drain. That last one sounded dirty; I think I just threw up a little in my mouth) or how he always squeezes my arm when he is telling me how pretty my eyes are and how I must be a bit feisty since I have red hair (I made it quite clear that the red is not real. But I have to admit that it does look fantastic). It might piss her off to know that he is always asking about my boyfriend status, trying to ask if I’m gettin’ any by not actually saying “are you gettin’ any?”.  The final straw, in which she burns his belongings and bobbitizes him, will likely come when she hears of his catalogued knowledge base of times when I am alone, when I have a visitor, and when I am out. I can have him looked after, tho, because I know people who have a No Questions Asked policy. And they owe me a favor for that time I told the cops that I hadn’t seen a thing when I had actually seen the deal go down. Ok, that’s not really true and to be frank, I don’t really know whether a deal going down is a good thing or a bad thing. Semantically, it could go either way.

It is possible that by reading this post you could construe that I am not comfortable in my neighbourhood. I can honestly say that the opposite is true. The quirkiness and fascinating personalities add a color and richness to my little part of the world; I get the feeling that some of them quietly watch my back because they know I am alone sometimes; I shared a bottle of wine with one neighbour one evening and we had a wonderful l talk about kids, marriage, and strippers; I only had to shovel my driveway twice last winter because it had been cleared for me by an anonymous superior human being. I found out who this superior human being is and it turns out there are two of them on my street who push their snow blower down to clear my driveway when they are finished theirs. That’s even better than being brought a welcome casserole or being invited to bring a dip to the neighbourhood block party. Which I know is totally not going to happen because they have a strictly enforced No Crazy-Sobbing-Uncoordinated-Socially-Unskilled-Unable-to-Control-the-Yapping-Dog-Allowed policy. I have other plans anyway. At least, that’s what I’ll tell them.