Randomness

Heard around my dinner table tonight...

John: “Mommy, I learned something in church the other day. They were talking about obedience. I learned it's important to be obedient. I understand now. When you and Dad ask me to clean up my room or do my chores, you're not telling me that to make me suffer. You want me to have a good life. You just want me to learn. Actually, Mommy, I learned a lot that day.”

Me: (mental dialogue) Did he actually just use the word suffer???

Nasty neighbors already??? Say it ain't so!

Let me preface this by saying that we LOVE our new neighborhood. We love everything about it. We have met a ton of the neighbors and so far have really liked them all. The only issue we have had is our neighbors to the right have two large fluorescent bulbs on the outside of their garage that they leave on ALL night. This wouldn't be a problem except that our bedroom backs up to their garage and we have one bedroom wall that is nearly entirely a window. It's like daylight in our room. ALL FREAKING NIGHT. After hoping for the past month or so that they would turn if off, I finally decided just to ask them. Yesterday, I went over there, introduced myself, and very sweetly, in my best, most polite Jeni voice, I asked if they wouldn't mind too terribly much turning off the giant annoying NASA-grade lightbulbs they were blaring into our bedroom at ungodly hours. (Okay, maybe I worded it slightly more diplomatically.) His answer? NO. Not, "Gee, I'm sorry, let me see what I can do," or "Oh my! I had no idea I was being so overtly disrespectful. I had no idea you would want to sleep at night." Nothing. Just flat out NO.

He said his wife likes to keep it on at night in case she gets up in the middle of the night. Apparently, the giant bulbs from hell do a really good job of illuminating the house. No kidding. We've noticed. I suggested she get a simple night light and even offered to pay, but he wouldn't budge. He said his wife gets up a lot. What I wanted to say was, "Dude. They can see those lights from space. Try turning on a hall light or something." No. Not gonna happen. My wife needs THOSE lights.

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Now I'm mad. If you know me well, then you know this is not good. He should be afraid. Very afraid. I managed to walk back to our yard without striking him, where I (loudly) announced to James what a mean… uh… jerk(?) he was being. I then (loudly) proceeded to outline – in plain English – how I would be reporting them to our HOA as they were breaking the "nuisance" code.

Must have worked… for now. The light was OFF last night. We shall see… stay tuned.

Is this a racial thing?

We got our first letter (not the good kind) from our HOA. It started out pleasant enough… Welcome to the neighborhood, blah blah blah. Then they informed us in no uncertain terms that we were (gasp!) using the wrong kind of trash bags. Apparently, only black trash bags are allowed in our neighborhood and were were using white ones. God forbid. Is this maybe taking uniformity to a new and ridiculous high? Hefty should sue. So… to keep the peace, even though I had already invested a healthy portion of our grocery budget to very nice white bags, I dutifully went out and purchased the black kind. Hopefully I have restored some sort of harmony to the universe.