love thy neighbor

We had my Dad down for Thanksgiving and my Grandma came out too. A little odd having my Grandma and her daughter's ex-husband over for dinner. My Grandma spent the meal trying to figure out the connection, due to her memory impairment, and then trying her hardest not to say anything 'wrong' because she's pathologically polite and even though her memory isn't great she does know my Mom lives with someone else now so she tried to tiptoe around saying anything that would hurt my Dad's feelings about that. Toby did a wonderful job, as always, cooking the big feast. I did my nominal job of making cranberry sauce, no I didn't just open a can I made it with fresh cranberries, it's real easy and tastes great. I also peeled the yams, no candied yams here we like them mashed with garlic, heavenly! I got an organic 10 pound turkey from Whole Foods that was probably 3 times what you'd pay for a frozen turkey elsewhere but it was all worth it. How could it not be worth it when Toby cooked pretty much everything?!

My Dad got here Wednesday and was raving on Thanksgiving on what a good night's sleep he had at our house. Meanwhile I was agitated because the neighbors in the rental across the street had woken me up yet again due to their late night (3 a.m.) partying. They are nice tenants and I'm sure they don't mean to cause any trouble but if you drink enough alcohol there is no way you'll be able to be quiet unless you're passed out. A month or so ago I had to walk out in my pj's at 3 in the morning to tell the three girls talking (you know, they think they're whispering and it sounds like a 4 year olds idea of a whisper) on the front porch to please go inside. I've buried my head under a pillow when I hear a heated and inebriated heart to heart on the porch at 5 in the morning on a weekday, don't these people have jobs? I know that makes me sound like a curmudgeon but I can't deal with waking up at night, excluding my children needing me, it's so hard for me to get back to sleep. So Thanksgiving Eve I hear people on the porch yet again. I go outside in my penguin pj's and knock on the door, by then they had gone inside but had the door open so you could hear everything. A guy right near the door swings around and immediately starts apologizing, he was very sincere, and telling me that he doesn't live there. I said that was fine I just needed them to please keep it down so I could sleep. I turn to go and one of the guys that lives there comes out to talk to me. He's very polite and friendly and very drunk. He introduces himself and shakes my hand and wants to have 'a discussion' about what's going on. He's like 'I see you upset with tears in your eyes.' which I was upset but my tears were more to do with the fact that I had just woken up and was outside in the wind. He's going on and on about how I should feel safe due to there partying because it's unlikely anyone would break into our house with all that activity going on across the street, I present to you the logic of a drunk person. At this point I should mention that he has on a t-shirt that says 'I (heart) hot moms' and it just seems to crystallize how pointless and aggravating this whole situation is. I asked him, very politely, to keep his door shut when they have people over and if they want to go outside and talk to do it in the backyard. He wanted to continue discussing with me but I staved off saying that what I really wanted to do was go back to sleep, which surprised him, he seemed a bit disappointed in me. But he shook my hand and wished me a happy thanksgiving. It would have been happier if I hadn't been woken up and then was so agitated I couldn't get to sleep until 5:00, total flipping nightmare! There were three guys that lived in the rental last year and we never heard them, they were perfect. But living near a rental is never perfect for long. How I wish I had the money to just raze the building or, even better, move to a quieter part of Pittsburgh.

And last night one of Oona's talking stuffies became possessed and said 'peekaboo I see you' at 2:30 in the morning and two seconds later Owen is shouting for me and by the time I got settled to go back to sleep Toby is coughing uncontrollably. So he went downstairs but I called him back up an hour later because I still wasn't asleep. I went up on the third floor to the guest room and finally passed out at 6:30 and in that hour before waking I was plagued with nightmares of staying in a hotel with the kids where there was peeling lead paint everywhere, that Oona kept trying to eat, and then there was a fire and we had to escape the building from the second floor. Restful, I know.