Welcome to the Neighborhood

So about 3 years ago, when we moved to the house now referred to as "the pot house", I was 6 months pregnant with twins and it was -7 degrees out.  I vowed I would never again move in the month of January.  The Universe said "hahahahahahahha, whatever Be-atch" and here were are again...moving in January. 

"Lonnie" found our beautiful 1924 home when he first arrived in Wichita and spent 3 months without me and the kids.  I'm sure there are tons of fun things he did he won't discuss, but walking the neighborhoods was definitely one he will.  Within a week of our arrival, he walked us by this house.  It was cool, but from the outside appeared to need a lot of work.  When we came to a dead end of looking at places, we discovered our realtor's husband had actually grown up in the house.  We took one look and were hooked.  That was in October.  When it was warm.  And I wasn't up to my ears in a broken workplace and a PhD program.

It is now January (technically February).  They are calling for 8" of snow tonight (note: we got it!).  To make matters worse, we decided that there were some big projects in the house that we wanted to get done before our move.  The timeline always makes more sense when you just talk about it.  One project was to remove all the wallpaper.  You all know how that went!!!  I managed to get most of the second floor done.  Another big job was to refinish the floors on the second story.  Since the house was empty, this project made sense.  That was until the floor guys couldn't start until the week we moved, meaning we would need an alternative sleeping arrangement until the floors were finished.  We debated doing the floors over the summer, but the thought of having to move everything to the upstairs then out of the upstairs and back again just made me want to hurt something...mostly "Lonnie" because it was his idea.  We choose to press with floors now and sleep in the camper for a week.  Totally not a problem.  We lived in the camper for a year.  No big deal.

Living Room, isn't it gorgeous!?

It never gets below 30 degrees in Montgomery, Alabama.  If it did, I was sleeping through it.  However, it is really cold in January in Wichita, and since there is no water hooked up to the camper, we were still planning to use the bathrooms in the house, and just sleep in the camper.  No one gets up at night to pee!  No one!  (flashbacks of Iraq living, getting fully dressed and armed to pee, not cool). 

This would all be fine, except that about 2 weeks before we moved in, the main floor bathroom was discovered to have a major leak making it unusable.  Additionally, the plumber was unable to fix it because there was no access to the pipes via the basement without the crawlspace having 2 feet times 209 feet of dirt removed (hooray for unexpected major projects!!!).  Sooooo, we had to find someone willing to dig out the crawlspace so we could access the pipes to fix the plumbing to be able to use the main floor bathroom.  She swallowed the spider to catch the fly....and it couldn't be started until, wait for it...the week we moved in.

All our usable bathrooms are on now located on the second floor.  We can't access the second floor because of the floor refinishing.  The camper is not hooked up to water and sewer.  Dare I say that we should have our own reality show?!  (note: we actually discovered a working toilet in the basement when we moved in, no really, we didn't know it was there.  It's in a room that looks like a closet near the stairs, Harry Potter style. Problem of potty kinda solved, kids haven't had a bath since Sat because we haven't figured that out yet).

Home Sweet Trailer...Again

So our big, and extremely dirty, camper is parked in front of our new house, in this older posh neighborhood, and we swear our neighbors must truly think the Clampett's have moved in!  This was all just funny speculation until the cops showed up at our door yesterday morning.

Apparently, some (or one with OCD) of our neighbors have called to complain that someone is living in a trailer in the neighborhood.  Gee...who could that be?  So the cops came to inquire about the complaints, which I might add have never been addressed to anyone in this family.  Nor, might I add, have any of the neighbors knocked on our door in welcome, disgust, or just plain curiosity.  As a matter of fact, you can't really see or hear anyone in the neighborhood at all most of the time and the loudest sound I ever hear is me yelling for Chewy the Deaf Dog to come inside.  When the situation was explained to the cops they just shook their heads like "really, we are here for this?"  First world problems, sigh.  No one arrested, no one pregnant, no pot...first 6 months here and we're doing good!

So here's the real problem.  I'm torn between TP'ing all the neighbors' homes in spite or just letting it all go.  Because the tattler is probably just the mean old lady that "Lonnie" met a few days ago who just scowls at our trailer everyday she walks by with her evil little dog who tried to attack "Lonnie".  I would actually wish her ill except that the Universe would bring it back on me in some terrible way, like forcing me to a week of unusable bathrooms in a new house in single digit weather (oh, wait...).  So instead, I hope that in her next life she lives in a trailer park.  In North Dakota.

Editors note: I wrote this last night, and today we learned the plumber is able to come by tomorrow because they can access the pipes. Soon we will have a shower and main floor potty.  Also, today we had a snow day (even the base was closed) and we did meet the neighbors across the street.  They totally understood our trailer issue and had done something similar when they were restoring their home (which you can see behind the trailer in the picture). They have 3 girls and definitely will not get their house TPed by me.