Pondering

I really don't have much free time, in the traditional sense, while watching the kids since I'm constantly getting them dressed, feeding them, shuffling Genna to school, entertaining Jonah, feeding, cleaning up, scolding, pushing them around in the double stroller, feeding again, and again, packing lunches etc. However, I do have a lot of mental free time. There is an endless number of things I can ponder while doing all of that shuffling around with the kids. Playgrounds are great. As long as they are relatively enclosed and the play structures aren't too high for Jonah to fall from, I have lots of time to ponder life.

At the playground today, I didn't start my pondering right away, instead I eavesdropped on a couple of other moms first. Little Lulu was so advanced in her community center French class and little Jim-bo watched a story about a cobbler and then assembled some found objects to start making some shoes; Jim-bo is obviously going to be an engineer. The moms seemed so proud of their kids and so pleased and satisfied. Do I sound like this when I talk to other moms? Why is it so annoying when I here other moms talk like that? So, after I was bored with their boring kid stories, I decided to ponder our neighbors.

I find our neighbors mysterious. They live in a large home, similar to ours but with a dumpy exterior and yard. Really dumpy. They actually have a bathtub in their front yard and are (I think) trying to grow plants in it. They have three handwritten signs outside their house: 1. Room for rent, internet included. 2. Do not let cat in the house. 3. Take shoes off. There is indoor/outdoor carpeting on their porch. There is a middle-aged asian woman that lives there. She's answered the door the two times I've asked her to move her car in the adjacent alley driveway because it is blocking my car. Technically, we have to use their driveway to get out of our driveway, so it is well within their right to park there, and we probably shouldn't use our driveway because of this, but I've only done it two times in the four months we've lived here. Parking in the alley driveway is my absolute last resort parking spot when there is no on-street parking. I can understand the hassle of having to move your car, but does she have to be such a pill about it? They know they are blocking me in when they park they, so it really shouldn't be a surprise when I knock on their door. Perhaps she's just mad at her daughter/son that parked there and she's just taking it out on me. I always bring Jonah to her front door when I ask. He's usually screaming and full of snot so we don't have to make small talk.

There is also a little girl, probably about 10 years old that lives there. I've NEVER seen her outside, I've only seen her because her bedroom is directly across Jonah's room, so at night if her blind is open and light is on, I can see right in. She looks perfectly normal, except one day I looked in and the room was completely empty. Absolutely everything was gone. Every little knickknack was gone. Then, late at night, the girl came back along with all the stuff. What was that all about? Are they illegal immigrants and hiding for a day? Was that the "room for rent" and they had to clear everything out for a potential tenant to see the room? It was bizarre. Since then, their window shades have always been closed.

We were convinced that they were illegal immigrants until one day the woman asked me if we were feeding "our" cat. We are watching our landlord's cat while she is gone, so I told her yes we were feeding him. Then she told me she had fed "our" cat and then she started complaining about how the cat spends so much time on their (carpeted) porch. Then a middle-aged man came out and explained that he fed our cat by mistake on the (carpeted) porch and he won't do it again. The middle-aged man was not asian. I'm pretty sure he was American, but he talked to the woman in her native tongue. Now I had lots to ponder. How did he become so fluent in, let's say, Korean? Did he study the language and then go there and bring her back? Perhaps he worked in, let's say, Malaysia? Or maybe he was in the Army, or perhaps the Navy Seals? Maybe she's from a wealthy Taiwanese family?

Then there are the others that go in and out of the house. There's a few college-aged students? Are they renters or are they their children? Since Christmas, there's a new car that's been parking in their front yard (yes - I said front yard, right next to the bathtub). This new car is a BMW with Ann Arbor, MI license plates. New renter?

I could spent a lot of mental pondering on that house. I didn't even mention how I can stare into the kitchen and another upstairs bedroom. After all that pondering today, I decided I need to look for a job. This just isn't healthy.

This is our house, but you can see some of our neighbor's pots. The bathtub is just to the right.