I was chatting with spouse and i just casually remarked that i really liked our house, and he said, "it's like a korok" and it IS like a korok, small and with hidden surprises. All the snow has melted and the grass is greening up. There are already dandelion flowers and weeds i should probably do something about.

The backporch has a homemade cement patio area where the owners got creative with some trapezoid pavers. They arranged the pavers to form a flower with a bee (or dragonfly, maybe?) and then painted some of them. So there's a simple 6 petaled terracotta flower with a yellow center and green stem, and a terracotta insect and a border of green and black pavers that is supposed to be grass, i guess. All set in some concrete that has definitely seen a number of winters. It's rather charming, and i had no idea it was there until the ice melted away. With the six flower petals and the stem, the inside forms a heptagon, and that tickles me.

The house also came with a white resin statue of a gnome riding a snail. I'm pretty sure our realtor thought it was tacky AF but spouse and i are all about it. The gnome was on a tree stump in the front yard. I've been remaking it into a shrine of sorts. I got a couple of 18" plastic plant saucers. I leveled the stump with some carefully placed wood scraps and screwed the first tray into the stump. The second tray just nests in the first, and filled with water makes a pretty nice bird bath. I got a solar powered floating fountain to put in the birdbath, and some solar fairy lights to wrap around the stump (i do miss the fireflies in the land of crab). I'm going to spray paint the gnome a dark copper/bronze to match the birdbath trays and fix up a little shelf on the backside of the birdbath, so he'll still be on the stump. Basically a shrine.

I've decided i'm not keen on our neighbors to the north. They rented a ginormous two story inflatable water slide/pool thing for a birthday party. It looked amazing, not gonna lie. One naturally assumes that a huge inflatable means it is not going to be a brief 2 hour party affair. There's going to be shrieking children and music and whatever for at least 4-6 hours. Okay. But they had to run a generator to keep the inflatable inflated because it tripped the house circuit breakers. I was real sick of that generator noise by 7pm or so, and they didn't shut it off until almost 10pm, on a sunday. I was thinking they were going to go all night. Their guests parked in front of my house, etc. They didn't give us a head's up, which would have been a nice thing to do. Fuck me if i'd planned to have people over, right? And of course, this is how hoas are born. "Let's make people fill out a permit for parties." And i'm not into that so i guess that means i pay the cost by listening to a generator and shrieking kids and that song about the woman selling papaya over and over. To their credit, i didn't think the music was excessively loud and they wrapped up by 10pm. No drunk/high people stumbling around. In the grand scheme of things, not awful. 10 hours of generator and fan noise is just a lot. I swear the whole neighborhood breathed a sigh of relief once it stopped.

It's 11pm now and they're out banging on something in the front yard and having a loud conversation. Just because it is still light outside doesn't mean it isn't rude to make a racket! I think they're just the sorts of people who don't realize they're taking up the whole aisle at the grocery store, you know? Anyway, i give them the side eye.

I also give the side eye to the neighbors catty-corner to us, who bought the house with the same floor plan as ours, but isn't as nice. I'm like 90% sure they are flipping the house or maybe converting it for airbnb. Nobody stays there overnight, nobody sets the trash out on trash day, nor have they moved in with boxes and such (as far as i know). They show up after normal work hours and dick around for a bit and leave. There's two women with ponytails who do very little and two guys who dress like tradesmen. They have a hose coming out of the house and draining into the gutter. The painters said they heard them talking about the crawlspace flooding, so that sounds bad. For weeks they've been watering the street. They got a new water heater and i thought, oh, that must have been the problem - our seller got us a new water heater, perhaps they weren't so lucky. But many days later, the fucking hose is still running in the gutter!! We have the same house - the crawlspace can't hold that much! How are the birds supposed to find my new birdbath when they've got a small creek in the street?

We've had the house less than 2 months and i'm turning into a Gladys Kravitz!!

Anyway, i don't like the flippers and the family to the north is just kind of noisy and oblivious.

(Sadly, i heard the mom of the family to the north get upset about chores and strike her kid and the kid crying. If the slap is so sharp i can hear it clearly in the next yard ... They also got a brand new puppy and the angry mom was yelling at the puppy and i think i heard her strike it too. She clearly has a practiced slap.

So that's fantastic. Sometimes you get vibes that you don't like someone and you think you're just grumpy or misanthropic for no good reason. Then you realize, oh no, my instincts were right, and those tiny things that pinged my antenna really were red flags for a larger hidden issue. Spouse (having been raised in a conservative family) says he has a hard time condemning someone just for "hands on" parenting. When does it stop being parenting and turn into abuse. I'd say if the kid was being personally attacked in anger - called stupid or worthless, etc. That's deffo abuse, and the mom did not do that - she was just mad about the garbage not being taken out as quickly as she wanted and SMACK. So most likely i will have to document incidences and see what it adds up to over time, and if we need to file a report we will have a clear pattern established. Fuck, get her for animal abuse. If you're striking a new puppy after just a few days, bet you're gonna do a lot worse soon. What an unpleasant woman!! Bad juju in that house. Not inviting her to my housewarming party, for sure. It's sort of a weird comfort that should we need to make a report, spouse doing what spouse does is kinda like having a battle tank. Lady, if you are such an abusive asshole that we have to report you, you better just pack your shit and move if you wanna keep abusing, 'cause you will not be making trouble with us. OR you could quit being a lazy, asshole parent and develop some patience with your kids?? Abusers gonna abuse, tho. Tale as old as time.

The mom & dad left for the weekend and someone came to babysit. I heard the kids singing a song in the evening and the chorus was "happy happy home". That's some scripted for TV level darkness.)

I do like the people to the south of us. Across the street lives a family and they've been very busy replacing the siding on their house and insulating between the studs, which is interesting to watch. They make noise but you can tell they're being considerate. Our immediate neighbor to the south i have dubbed the "secret garden house" or the "sleeping beauty house". It is an unkempt riot of trees and flowers. It's the sort of wild gorgeousness that could contain anything - maybe a portal to narnia, maybe some fairy magic, who knows. If you told me a witch owned it i would not bat an eye. They have extended the height of the fence between our backyards with wire mesh and it is overgrown with flowering vines that are trailing back into our yard. So, so pretty. I love it - i love getting the dappled light from their trees. They are probably hardcore introverts, i hear nothing from them and thus are my absolute favorite neighbors.

I buzzed the thrift stores yesterday and holy shit, i had the most fantastic luck i have ever had. I went in to try to get a couple binders. One to keep the tool manuals and other instructions in, and a second to keep track of house updates in the event we sell the house. What products did we use, paint colors, etc. I'm too cheap to buy brand new binders - there's always binders at the thrift store. Not only did i find binders, i also found:

- a kangaroo pelt for $10, i shit you not.

I thought it was from a deer until the long tail fell out. It's worth $10 just to make people guess what it is.

- a wood tray for $4 that turned out to be a collectable piece from the 70s that sells for $100 on etsy (it's the cat's food dish tray now)

- a small cedar chest/footstool for $15 - i was looking for a "magic box" for my woo woo stuff and it will be perfect!

- 4 wood chairs for $18 total ($4.50 a chair)

- lululemon leggings for $2

The wood chairs are the absolute best find because this means i won't have to make chairs!! Thank god! They are restaurant chairs, apparently, i found the same ones online (holsag carlo chair). They are bent birch in the nordic/mid century style that isn't my favorite, but they are simple, comfortable and sturdy and have no arms and they stack! I'll make cushions for them from the blue/orange woven rug like i was planning, but this means i don't have to mess with designing/making the chair bodies. SCORE. I will probably strip, sand and restain them, as they have some superficial scratches and dings, but they are in good shape overall. There were 8 of them and i picked the best 4. You can't beat four chairs for $18! Even for thrift furniture it's a steal!

I want to get a footrest and a small side table for each chair. I just really hate uncomfortable gaming seating. I've sat on rickety hard kitchen chairs, busted couches, backless stools, chairs that cut off circulation in your legs, cold metal folding chairs, etc. and i do not want guests uncomfortable. I don't want the coveted two "good" chairs and then all the busted leftover chairs that create some kind of unspoken gaming group hierarchy (you know what i mean). Everybody should get a sturdy seat, a good butt cushion, back support, a place to put drink and dice, and a place to prop their feet. These chairs are a bit more upright than i had envisioned, but that means they'll be good for crafting sessions too.

I got distracted by frippery and have not been working on the higher priority house projects. I really need to focus on the main bedroom closet and the two bathrooms. Things are still very disorganized and it is wearing on me. Saps your energy when things don't have a proper place and you waste time looking for stuff constantly.