32 Days...

It's been 32 days since my roller derby drill gone incredibly wrong. 31 days since I had surgery to put all the pieces together again. 30 days since I arrived home from my little adventure in the great state of Connecticut. 30 days of sitting on the couch, staring out into my 'hood. 30 days of thinking about how I've always meant to start a blog about life in my little corner of the 'hood and all of the exciting things that go on here. So here it is. My life in the 'hood as a mom, a runner, a domestically challenged wife, a derby girl, and a teacher. We moved here in 2008, when children were part of our "five year plan." Two months later, children were suddenly part of our "two month plan" and we had a mortgage on a one bedroom condo in a questionable part of the city. Living the dream! That first summer, I started noticing some strange goings on in the 'hood and realized that this neighborhood was story telling gold! My first clue? At the time there was a factory of sorts next door. They fixed wooden pallets. You know. Those wooden things that goods are shipped on? Well, suddenly I noticed that the three decker next door had amassed a large amount of these pallets (either legally or illegally-that's still up for debate). They sat there, in between 2 three deckers for about a month. As the size of the pile approached the height of the first floor windows, I debated reporting them to the city, but at this point I still wanted to avoid becoming the neighborhood snitch (That quickly changed…). What followed was about 24 hours of non-stop hammering. When I looked out the window the next day, I was surprised to see a "garage" built out of these deconstructed pallets with some sheets of tarpaper stapled on top.

Behold! My neighbor's "garage"!

Good stuff, right?! "Sided" with old plywood that didn't quite reach the top. Sandwiched amongst three buildings in a densely populated area. There isn't a thing wrong with this situation! And although you can't see it in this picture, there is a rickety wooden ladder leading to the roof. Those bottles you see scattered up there? Beverages that my neighbors drank and left up there while relaxing on their new and entirely up to code oasis in the ghetto.

Now, I figured it would end here. There's no way it could get better than this. So imagine my surprise when I woke up to MORE hammering the following morning! I stepped out onto my porch that overlooked this little gem and laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants!

Math. It's important.

Yup. When my neighbor went to put their car in the "garage," they discovered that the door wouldn't close all the way. I guess they'd neglected to measure accurately-or measure at all. That hammering I heard? My neighbors cutting this hole in the front of the "garage" so that they could close the door behind the car. You can't make this stuff up. I laughed all the way until the snow fell because once those little helicopter things started falling off the trees, they stuck to the hood of the car, totally defeating one of the purposes of having a garage. And yes, this happened 7 years ago and I still share these pictures with my class when we start learning about measurement and why it's important to learn to measure accurately.

So there you have it. The start of our life in this part of the city. Always a good time! In time I've come to love my neighborhood, but I still get lots of laughs out of the neighborhood shenanigans. Including these from my pal Turtleboy...

Turtleboy. One of Worcester's most-loved citizens.