Bats in the Belfry

The Mister was out on the driveway shovelling snow when he heard, "Radmila's husband!!! RADMILA'S HUSBAND!!!".

It was our neighbour two houses down, shouting from her second floor window. "Come!!! COOOOME!" she screamed, wildly gesticulating with her hands for him to come.

Now, The Mister got scared...he thought something terrible had happened, that someone was sick, or having a heart attack, or something.

When he got to the house, the door was unlocked and it was dark...she had barricaded herself and her children in a second floor bedroom.
He fumbled around in the dark, since he's never been inside their house..and couldn't find a light switch. He shouted to ask what was wrong, and she yelled back that there was a bird in the house.

Bird? At night? In February?
Then, it came at him...it was his turn to scream!
It wasn't a bird...it was a BAT!

The Mister has hunted iguana, and lizards...had a pet monkey back in Guyana as a boy, captured and kept Marabunta and giant cockroaches the size of small rodents, seen bats "back home"...but wasn't expecting one to attack him on the second floor landing of a Canadian house.
He knocked it down with his hand, and then grabbed a nearby exacto knife (they've been renovating their house for the past year) and killed it.

I'm married to Batslayer!
My hero!

The end.

Hey, Neighbour!

Today as I turned the corner on my way to work, I noticed this Hatfield/McCoy thing going on.
I found it funny enough to stop and take a picture.
It makes me wonder what the issue is.
Is it snow shovelling?
Is it leaf raking?
Is it dog shit?
Is it the LINE OF DEATH?
What the hell is it?


They share a driveway...ummmm, it's not like it's a sound barrier, or a wall.
I fail to see the point.
When making your way to the backyard, do you have to keep your back against the wall?
That's a pretty tight walk.

If I lived next door, I would feel compelled to tap my toe over the line regularly...something like..."neener, neener, neeeeener...I'm touching your side".
I guess it's because it evokes the childish side of me...because, well....it's childish to paint a hyper yellow line down the center of the drive...

I'm glad that we have good relationships with our immediate neighbours.
If it snows and we have the time, we shovel both sides of the driveway...sometimes they do...sometimes we do it together. No biggie.
On the other side, The Mister usually mows the lawn for our neighbour Pardeep as well.
Ok, that's because The Mister is the grass Nazi and likes the grass to have a mow pattern on it, and he knows how to fertilize and all that.
And Pardeep doesn't mind...and neither does his son that lives at home.
But, over the decade that we've lived in our house, we've been blessed with good neighbours.

Lucky us.

Twats Next Door

This afternoon while puttering around the house, I heard that Steel Pulse was going to be at some festival here in the near future.
It's been a long time since I've heard anything about Steel Pulse, but I did like them a lot years ago, when reggae was...well, let's just say...different.

When The Mister and I lived in our second apartment together, our neighours were two young guys. They were roommates, and they partied. A lot.

We never knew their names, but they would on occasion knock on the door to borrow a blender, or screwdriver...or something...anyhow, when these two twats liked a song, they killed it.
They played it over, and over, and over.
One afternoon I heard "Wild Horses" by the Rolling Stones about 63 times...another time I heard Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" all afternoon, back to back...A song I always loved, but after that afternoon I never had the desire to hear it again.

Here is Steel Pulse's version of "Brown Eyed Girl", and can you believe it?
I heard it, and remembered the two gearheads that used to live next door to us.

Does Every Neighbourhood Have One?

There is a house in our neighbourhood that has changed hands four times in the past decade.
It's a corner house with the backyard exposed to the turn of the street, with a mere chain link fence between the yard and a relatively busy street.

When we moved onto our street, the house was up for sale..The first owners we witnessed weren't into maintaining the lawn, or garden, or veranda, or driveway and it was just a big gigantic festering sore of a house, right on the corner.

The second owners cleaned it up.
Fixed up the front, maintained the lawn and garden...planted rose bushes along the chain link fence and took pride in it. And the house seemed to breathe with new life.
It's a nice house, that only needed a little care to be pretty.

I once stopped my car as I was turning the corner and saw the owners in front washing their driveway. I told them what a great job they did with their house.
I just had to tell them.

The third owners had what looked like a twenty people living in the house, and no one mowed the lawn anymore, and the veranda was piled with crap. The driveway housed three cars, one always parked sideways in the little area between the sidewalk and the road.
The rose bushes died, and when I drove by I'd roll my eyes with disgust that so many people could live in a house and do fuck all to maintain it.

It was put up for sale and took forever to sell...if it did at all.

About a month ago, I noticed that new people were living there...but they were scary looking.
Thuggy looking guys hangin' in the driveway, 'hoes on the porch with their hair pulled up in tight pony tails in a "council flat facelift" style, drinkin' beer.
The other day I was in the local convenience store, and encountered one of the hoes with three kids buying smokes. The kids looked rough...you know when kids look tough, even though they're little. They looked unkempt. They were whining for candy, and she was telling them to "shut up" and "Cum' on" in a pugnacious tone.
Now that it's warm out, the residents have their garbage cans perpetually out on the driveway, there are always different hoes and thugs hangin' out on the porch.
Frankly, I really can't tell who lives there. The backyard, now visible to the road again, now that there are no more rose bushes, always has lines of laundry swinging in the breeze, and sometimes hanging over the fence.
The lawn is left unmowed...which bugs The Mister (The Lawn Nazi) no end.
It's so odd, because the other houses around it are well maintained, and this one is just horrible.

I've nicknamed it "The Grow-Op" and The Mister consoles me by telling me that they'll probably be gone soon...

I can only hope, because it really bothers me to look at it, and it's inhabitants.

When did I become Gladys Kravitz?

Tales From the Driveway.

This morning while getting ready to leave for work, my neighbour Pardeep was getting out of his car with his youngest son Daniel.

Pardeep: "OY! Radmila! Will you let me make decisions for you?"
Me: "Huh?", and then realizing that he's got a message to get out to his son.
Me: "No, Pardeep"
Daniel is standing on the front stoop, holding the screen door and rolling his eyes.
Pardeep: "Can you make decisions for me?"
Me: "No. I have enough responsibilty, thank you."
Pardeep: "Looking forward to going to work today, nuh?"
Me: "Doesn't matter. I have to go"

Pardeep winks at me and laughs a satisfied laugh, and the screen door slams as Daniel makes his point.

Life is Beautiful

As I was dragging some mid to end week grocery needs into the house from my trunk tonight at about quarter to eight, my neighbour Pardeep was coming home dragging his own bags in at the same time.

From his driveway Pardeep said to me, "Ahhhhh, coming home late, nuh?..."

"Yes, as usual..", said I.

"Oh, it's a beautiful life, nuh?...", said Pardeep

My interactions with Pardeep, along with the irony and humour of them makes me almost believe what my uncle believes...and that is that slavs are decedents of East Indian gypsies...

"...The Capilphanos' granddaughter living without her mother, Mr. Zipkin losing his job, and Mrs. Hennessy getting robbed. I sat there on the porch, with a cigarette and another glass of wine, listening to the crickets and the occasional car. It occurred to me that the quiet of the suburbs had nothing to do with peace".
Melissa Bank - The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing

Our neighbours are nice people.
Pardeep and Cala are a nice couple.
They are friendly and easy.
I leave cards in their mailbox wishing them a happy and healthy Diwali, and they bestow me with delicious Indian sweets in mine.
Our talks are corralled to the driveway and I've only been inside once, when Cala generously lent me a sari for a school unit on India one year.
I told her how beautiful, wonderful and graceful looking saris were, and how I longed to wear one.
She encouraged me, and offered one from her closet for me to keep.
I declined only because I know how expensive they can be and didn't want to take advantage of a gift that I would not have been able to pull off with the grace that women who grew up wearing them could give expression to.

It was with sadness and compassion that I came to know that Cala and their eldest son were bi-polar.
The eldest boy had his first episode after he was beaten at school by a gang of bullies in 11th grade.
Sometimes, I would stand on the landing and watch this boy in the winter shovelling snow by himself by moonlight late at night.
Pardeep said that he likes to be alone...and out in the night, in the snow, he always looked just like that - alone.

I felt for him.
A young man disconnected.

Pardeep told The Mister and I not to be alarmed if we saw the police at their home on occasion, and shared some of the life and things that he dealt with on a daily basis.

One morning Pardeep announced that he had had an aneurism and that he was now blind in his left eye.
"My headlight is out!" he exclaimed laughing.
Yet, every spring he marvels at The Misters garden and proclaims "the beauty and miracle of God, and nature".

And the police come.

And Pardeep takes care of his family.
And every dusk, I see Pardeep and Cala out for their evening stroll together, sometimes with their eldest.
Side by side.

And I watch for a moment from my step, and think to myself:

"This is a man worth his salt."

Dear Asshole Neighbour:

If I wasn't such a considerate neighbour, I would drag our lawn mower around the corner and down your street, and start it under your bedroom window at 5:35am.

I would do this because this is the approximate time that your dog starts barking.

Do you not hear your dog?
Is your dog speaking to you?
Are you getting the pearls of wisdom from your dog to get your day started?
The whole fucking neighbourhood hears your dog.
But, the rest of us only hear loud, annoying, incessant, baying at the crack of dawn.

I have a news flash for you buddy, not everyone needs to get up when the sun starts peeking over the urban horizon

If you're not going to let your dog into the house, so that he doesn't wake up the whole fucking neighbourhood, I suggest:

Because if I wanted to listen to a dog barking for two hours straight at the first sign of daylight, I would have purchased a dog myself.

Ugh.