Living in the burbs...

Hubs and I lived in a small ranch house in a northern suburb of Cincinnati from 1999 through 2004. The subdivision we lived in was built post WWII and featured thousands of nearly identical brick ranch houses with 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and a 1 car garage. Living in the burbs is interesting - especially if you have interesting neighbors.

To our left was a couple about 20 years older than us with one kid left at home a 19 year old boy who imagined himself to be somewhat "gansta" even though he was a skinny, pasty white kid. His Nissan Sentra was his pride and joy and he desired to make it look like a car from the Fast and the Furious. He had a slammin stereo in there apparently and we could hear the bass throbbing when he was still 2 blocks away. He had a habit of turning that stereo on at a level to rattle our windows while he was washing and waxing his car every weekend. It was an annoyance and hubs would often go out there and tell him to turn down the volume - he would until hubs went back inside and then it started all over again. We were happy when he moved out! His parents were nice people but total rednecks, every fall the dad went deer hunting and would drag his dead deer back to the burbs and hang it in the tree in his front yard. Reminded me of home sort of.

Across the street we started out with an old lady and her yappy chihuahua dog, she was friendly and nice. Then she sold and moved in with her daughter. The people that lived there after her were not quite as easy to take. A single mom with 4-5 kids (was never sure) and her deadbeat brother who never seemed to have a job. Their lawn was never mowed, their kids ran wild and were full of attitude, the mom was ignorant of her kids behavior. Thankfully they disappeared one day and we found out they were foreclosed on - apparently after moving in they never paid even one payment. Nice!

Next to them was a rental house that turned over several times. The people who lived in that house were always entertaining. One couple had the police there for domestic disputes weekly and once the guy was pounding on the door in the middle of the night screaming at her. Another time he threatened to drive his truck through the front window cause she locked him out. After they left a much quieter couple moved in, until her car was repo'd and she chased the repo guy down the street with a baseball bat screaming like a lunatic.

On the other side of us was also a rental house but these people were long term. They were totally welfare peeps and trashy BUT friendly and quiet. Our biggest complaint was they didn't mow their lawn as often as they should and that they had a deaf cocker spaniel that barked at us all the time. Then their son moved home - he was pretty quiet but had a string of cars coming and going. A car would pull up, he'd go out and stick his head in the open window to talk and a few minutes later they would pull away. 4-5 times a day this happened. Didn't take long to figure out he was dealing. One night in the dead of winter around 11pm I looked outside and saw 4-5 men in black holding guns in my backyard and I freaked, one of them knocked on my sliding door and showed a badge. I opened the door. Apparently someone hopped on on something the kid sold had taken them all hostage next door and they were trying to deal with the situation. They told us to stay in the house - yeah we were going to bed but not now. Then the cops are back knocking on the back door - they are rescuing people who were barricaded in the bedroom and since no one had coats or shoes and it was Winter they wanted us to let them in our house. We did - the dad was stuck though -at nearly 400lbs he could not fit through the window they were rescuing through and had to stay in the house with the druggie with a knife until the police could subdue him. It didn't take long and the hostage taker was actually a "friend" of the drug dealing son. Somehow he escaped from any blame in this and the police never suspected that the druggie was breaking in for more drugs? So for a few weeks the stream of cars stopped but soon enough he was dealing again.

Now I live in the sticks and the only thing out of the ordinary that happens is finding baby deer sleeping under my trees or waking to the farmers cows all over the lawn AGAIN. It's a trade off I can live with.