our strange neighbor

After 4 cups of coffee and a diet coke with lunch, I’m having trouble concentrating and can’t really think of anything to write about. humm… perhaps just going to bed earlier might be an easier way to stay awake.

Last night, Husband went next door and met…. the mystery neighbor. The house on our left is in pretty poor shape. Hasn’t been painted since… it was built? Perhaps it was painted sometime in the 70s, since it is a lovely shade of peeling, dirty puke green. The yard is mostly dirt, the shades are never, never, ever opened. There is even paper taped up to the little windows at the top of the door. Hummm. We have seen the owner once. (Neighbors on the other side have lived here for 15 years and have never met him.) Guy in his mid-forties who lives alone. We see him come home around 5 every day, but that’s it.  The shades are even really thick, so we can’t see if lights are on or whatever. Very strange. Very strange.

(sidebar: we actually live on a lovely street, but there are two or three houses that are, shall we say, fixer-uppers? Our house was a fixer-upper, but it was flipped, so now it’s nice!)

We had all sorts of creative theories as to who lived there. Maybe he’s an albino, so he can’t have light in the house. Maybe he’s a drug dealer. Maybe he’s doing something else illegal. Maybe he has someone chained in the basement, a la Desperate Housewives. (The theories get wilder the more I watch TV. Especially Dateline or Oprah. Where does she find those people??!?)

Well, we need to cut back a bunch of trees this weekend before they collapse on our house, and Husband wanted to cut back one of his trees that is hanging over our driveway. So he went over there. (cue scary music…) I tried to look out the window, but couldn’t get a good view. You can imagine what my imagination was doing…..

Husband reports the neighbor actually works for a local pharmaceutical company and he just appears to be painfully shy and quiet. Hummm… you mean like a serial killer!??!?  It fits perfectly! Especially with all those woods behind our house – perfect for hiding the bodies, don’t you think? Oh well. When you think about it, the neighbors actually never get killed. They just report the “strange smells” and talk to the news reporters. So, we’re probably safe. And I need to watch less TV, that’s for sure.