SinkSide

Well, forgodsake. Twyla just passed before the kitchen window bedecked in a frumpy terrycloth robe, hair piled on head unattractively, makeup scrubbed off. She wasn’t drinking a beer, and she didn’t have a visitor. What’s up with THAT? Such a turnaround. Can’t explain it – yet.

Upside Down

Things have gone topsy turvy (sp?). All the steamy sex Sinkside seems to have subsided, or even abated. VERY disappointing, as I had become accustomed to simply looking out the window for vicarious experience. Now I have to invest in tawdry downloads – more expensive. Twyla may have a different job; her hours seem different, so there aren’t as many hours during which our waking and sleeping times are concurrent. Mostly, it’s been been dark over there, at least when I’m awake to look. Inexplicable. Tonight, instead of groping a guest, she took down the kitchen curtain and washed the window, forgodsake. No fun there. Hopefully, this is merely a passing New Year’s Reolution, soon to be broken so we can get back to the really good stuff.

In a complete reversal of what we’ve come to expect, the Other Side has become a hotbed of activity. Ashley and the Puppy have been there nearly every weekend for the past month. I insinuated myself into her morning romp with the Puppy last weekend, and learned that It’s A Boy, and his name is Bear. Kind of a disappointingly pedestrian name, but he’s no less cute for it. And when I went out to greet, Ashley was smoking, which was also inconsistent with the glamorous and beautiful persona that I attributed to her. Bear, however, was reported to be 10 weeks old and still had unmistakable Puppy Breath. He greeted me exuberantly, and we had a fine time making friends with each other while my own dogs howled indignantly inside, watching me cheat on them. At 11 weeks, Bear's still little, but starting to get slightly gangly in a big-footed galumphy sort of way, moving forever out of the compact ball of Puppydom.

And then there’s the situation in the upstairs apartment of the Other Side. I started seeing boxes accumulating outside on the walkway, and assumed that someone was actually moving in. Then the inevitable temporary No Parking signs (which one must pay for, the vendor being the City, who misses no opportunity for revenue) marking three spaces on the street, and I knew someone was moving in, reserving space(s) for a moving van. The van duly arrived – not one of those 18 wheelers, but instead a more modest maybe 8 wheeler? (I don’t know from trucks, but this wasn’t the biggest or the smallest) on the holiday morning, so I had all day to assess the contents and quality thereof, as they were moved upstairs to the apartment. It seemed like not enough stuff – some mattresses with no frames, some chairs with no tables. And as I ventured out my own door to walk into town to procure prescriptions, the New Tenant appeared and overenthusiastically introduced herself. She seemed young – for any age, probably due to a gratingly HIGH voice. I can’t even think of a comparison, except, yes! Mr. Bill! She laughed, whether appropriate or not, at everything she said, which I didn’t find particularly funny. She was perky-bouncy and cloyingly smiley. She seemed to be singularly in charge of the move-in; there was no husband in sight, though she referred to “we” and “my husband”. This was a week ago; after that day of frenzied activity, the place went dark, and it wasn’t till yesterday that there was any activity at all. Today, too, was frenzied, no truck in sight, but many boxes, and another woman (whose voice I thankfully didn’t get to hear) there to help. I assume Hubby will be appearing soon; how he tolerates the voice, I can’t fathom. I had to get something out of my car and she was outside talking on her cell phone in high-pitched, overly excited tones, and I had to run back inside because I couldn’t stand it. Can’t imagine what husband is like; who could put up with that voice? Time will tell; the set of golf clubs that appeared for a brief period on the stoop were taller than Voice Lady herself, so must belong to the husband. I assume he’s instructed her to “handle” the move, and he’ll sweep in in a rush of self-importance, just after all the work is done. He’s a guy, right?

Because I’m assigning pseudonyms, for easy future reference, I’m going to call the Voice Lady “Bambi”. She just sounds like one. She confided in me that she has two dogs of questionable descent; I think she said something like Whippet/Chihuahua mix. I can’t even imagine. Probably Bear downstairs will become infatuated and we’ll have, um, Labrwhihuahua Puppies.

A Puppy is a Puppy. Much more interesting than what’s going on Sinkside these days…

Post Holiday update

The story of my life. I start this story, convinced, based upon past history, that there will be daily tantalizing developments. It is not to be, at least as to anything titillating. Twyla has apparently taken a New Year's vow of celibacy, with no signs of guests, friends, pimps, or "companions" in over a week. It also seems that she may have a new job; new hours (as demonstrated by the lights on and off) and new coming and going times. It used to be that when we tottered down to the kitchen at 6:30 a.m. on a weekday, she'd just be finishing up, with kitchen lights out by 6:45 as she left for the day. I now find that when we complete our tottering, the kitchen next door is dark, and her lights don't go on till 7 or so. She has been pretty consistent in her "early to bed" policy, often shutting things down even before we do, which at its latest is 10 p.m., and yet, in the last two weeks, her lights have been on when we went up to bed. It's really not all that interesting. Not a beard in sight, nor a ballcap, nor a strapping young(er) man hovering in the kitchen.

I figure most folks break a New Year's resolution within about three weeks. If hers is celibacy it can't survive longer than any other. I'll post as soon as there's anything new, and my bet is that'll be before February 1.

And the p.s. is that Out the OtherWindow, Ashley's light timer has come on reliably every night for the last 8 or so days. Neither she, nor the puppy, who was learning to Sit, has reappeared. The snow is melting, and we're losing our tracking device; no snow, no tracks visible equals proof. Without the snow, how will we ever know?

This is all consistent with my luck, which is to say, without bad luck, I'd have NO luck at all. There's nothing to report. Very frustrating for a new blogger...

The OtherSide

The view from the OtherSide of our kitchen reveals an apparently single family historic home, cleverly disguising two separate apartments, one on the first floor, and the other, a spacious two bedroom suite, occupying the second and third floors. The house is like almost all of the others on the street, bearing a commodious front porch that fronts the sidewalk, that fronts the street. The distance between our kitchen window and this house is greater than on SinkSide because we are among the few with a driveway, which takes up some space. On the other side of the driveway is a little picket fence, then maybe three feet to the Otherside house.

When we moved in, the Otherside house was occupied by an acerbic octagenarian who had been born in the house, grew up and moved away, and then returned upon, as she reported it, the death of her husband. Her grandson snorted every time he heard her say that, and advised that she moved back upon her divorce, at which point, she always stared at the ceiling and she never acknowledged a marriage, let alone a divorce. He must've been pretty bad to have slid into such invisibility. She was a retired librarian, opinionated as all hell, and precise with the many instructions directed at us, which grew in scope from things like fetching her another glass of wine early on to emptying her portable bedside potty toward the end of her life.

Marian loved her liquor; time after time, her daughter would enrage Marian by coming over and cleaning out every secreted drop in the house, only to be defeated by the liquor store delivery service, which inevitably arrived within 2 hours of the daughter’s departure. Eventually, the daughter paid them NOT to deliver.

Upon Marian’s death, her family sold the house that had been in their family for nearly 100 years to Evil Investors, a husband and wife team from California. Actually, the Evil Investors turned out to be quite nice, but were not initially well-received in the shadow of so strong and fixtured a neighbor as Marian had been. They undertook a major overhaul of the house, which had fallen into disrepair, (unbeknownst to Marian, whose eyesight failed to the point that she never saw the peeling paint) and converted the 1870s dwelling, on the inside, without betraying the historic facade) into the two modern apartments, and began charging a king’s ransom for each. The quality of tenant has been far more predictable and upscale than that of the tenants Sinkside; these folks have to have good jobs or be independently wealthy, and we know that the Evil Investors do a most thorough credit and reference check before accepting a tenant for either unit. We’ve liked nearly everyone who’s lived there over the last 13 or so years since the renovations were complete.

The current downstairs tenant is a bit of a mystery. She’s young, beautiful, and Never There. She moved in about a year ago, but has been a phantom whom no one in the neighborhood has seen enough to recognize out of context. Her car bears out of state plates, and we figure she keeps the apartment as a front for her parents while she shacks up with her boyfriend, whom we’ve also never seen. Back during the summer a middle aged guy came over and introduced himself as her father, announcing that he was in town because her apartment had been broken into, and he was going to hook up a security system for her. I heard her name for the first time from him. (In keeping with lawsuit avoidance, let’s give her a pseudonym, too. Something that screams young and beautiful. We’ll call her Ashley.) Pretty clear Dad had no idea she’s never there. He disappeared at the end of the weekend and so did Ashley, only to resurface after the holidays this year with: A Puppy.

I thought she was here to stay after the Puppy sightings. She was out each morning at dawn, throwing a stick, trotting around behind the exhuberant black lab baby, plastic bags protruding from her parka pockets to clean up. She obviously adores the Puppy, stooping for kisses, and rolling on the frozen ground with it. Then about three nights ago, the place went dark, the lights came on at their appointed timer times, and went off by timer again in the morning. It snowed, and there are no Puppy tracks, nor human tracks in either the back yard, or on the front porch. Seems she’s gone again. We didn’t even get to see whether the Puppy was a girl or boy.

The upstairs tenants moved out in late December. The apartment was advertised in the usual way – a sign on the porch pillar – for longer than usual, perhaps a sign of the economic times. Then the sign went away. We assume it’s been rented, but the identity and persona of the new tenant(s) will be ongoing material for this site.

Stay tuned

SinkSide

A tad more by way of background: The current tenant has resided across our 5 foot alleyway for a little more than a year. Had I thought of this idea a year ago, you would have learned slowly over the passage of that year that which I am going to now feed you in an executive summary. After reading this post, we’ll be ready to launch into real time reporting as developments occur.

For easy future reference, and so as to avoid a lawsuit, I’m going to Name the Neighbor with a pseudonym. Let’s call her something that sounds a little trashy, to match the persona. How about Twyla? (Sorry to all of you Twylas out there – no offense intended. This just goes back to my days in college when I actually resided in a trailer for a year, and our neighbor’s name was Twyla. I’m sure there are many respectable, upstanding, educated and intelligent, non-trashy Twylas. This is just getting me into trouble, isn’t it? I’ve only been blogging for 20 minutes and have probably alienated an entire segment of the population already…). Anyhow, as I mentioned, Twyla moved in a year or so ago, and her every possession was not so covertly eyeballed by the entire neighborhood as she moved in. Her stuff seemed normal. This was a huge relief, given the history of tenants, one of whom furnished the entire house with a single pool table in the living room. That was it. No other furniture. So Twyla was off to a good start. As I recall, she didn’t have a professional moving crew, just a herd of guys, who made trip after trip from the U Haul to the house, and could be seen through the then open kitchen door sucking down beer. She apparently had standards; anyone who smoked, including herself, had to do so outside on the back stoop. We were able to observe of her that she appeared to be maybe mid-40s, bleach blond hair cut about chin-level, or whatever level is too short to stay in a pony tail, where she tried to keep it. She was, and continues to be, slightly overweight, and her skin has that grey smoker’s pallor. She had a nice smile, though, with good teeth. The first thing taken in was a cappuccino machine the size of a Honda. The last thing taken in was a cat-carrier with two occupants, which made me like her a little bit.

Twyla’s first night in her new abode turned out to be pretty much a cookie cutter for what would follow throughout the year. The distinction of move-in day was that there were a bunch o’ guys, all at once, getting drunker and drunker as the day wore on. That was the only occasion upon which the crowd was exclusively, but for Twyla herself, all male. Subsequent crowds gathering for parties have consisted of both male and female. Most of the single visitors since, however, have been male, and therein lies the story.

Twyla seems possessed of ravenous sexual appetite. Well, in fairness, I suppose there doesn’t have to be anything sexual about it. Certainly, but for some very torrid embraces and tongue-sucking kissing viewed through the kitchen window, we have no actual evidence that sex occurs. Her male friends, however, are too numerous to catalogue. Whatever she does for a living (which allows her to drive a pretty nice car) requires that she arise in darkness (we know this because we arise in darkness, and see her lights on) and depart for work well before we do at about 8 a.m. She is home most nights, entertains most nights, but I can’t remember a single occasion when we’ve seen evidence that a suitor (stud?) was still around in the morning. All of that, and no one spends the night. Interesting, don’t you think?

So that’s the rundown on the SinkSide view from our Kitchen Window. Next post will introduce the view from OtherSide of our kitchen.

I can't fathom that anyone has interest in what I have to say. But here I am. I've lived for 20 years in a small town, with close neighbors and close relationships, and I've been looking (closely) out our kitchen windows for years, observing the comings and goings next door on both sides. Our house is sandwiched in the the historic district of a mid atlantic town, between two rental dwellings; we've been here for 20 years and have been entertained by the occupants of the houses on both sides, who have conducted their lives before our very eyes, without benefit of protective shades across a 7 foot space on each side between our respective houses. Our view from one window is separated by a mere alley, 5 feet wide, from the activities in the next door house, whose kitchen window lines up with our own, which is situated above our sink, where all things Kitchen-related occur. About 6 years ago, a wise tenant there covered the vast bulk of their kitchen window with a 3/4 view curtain, which seems to "convey" from tenant to tenant. Prior to its installation, we had open viewing of (on a big night) full-screen nudity, nothing left to the imagination. After installation of the curtain, we got more titillating neck-up views, and whatever else we happened to see as the occupants and guests passed before the kitchen door, which is 1/2 window.

The tenants Out The Kitchen Window, sink side, have spanned the scope from bizarre to sublime, the landlord on that side having no qualification for occupancy, apparently, other than being Alive. In our 20 years of living here, we've observed nudists, campers, handymen, parents, and renegades who, well, pee outside. On our first day as we moved into this house, we marched into our kitchen and were inexplicably greeted by a long-haired woman who was too old to have long hair, and she enthusiastically extended her hand in greeting to my husband and announced, "Hi. I'll lay you!" Dumbfounded, he shook her hand and she thereupon vanished from our kitchen. We later learned that her name was Aleya, was really saying, “Hi, I’m Aleya” and she lived in the house Out The Kitchen Window.

It’s been my practice when something juicy is going on, to race to my computer and alert other neighbors, who have a different vantage point than I, and the crowd of interested participants ebbs and flows with the tenor of the tenant, if you will, in residence at any given moment. The I’ll-Lay-You story, and many others spawned from things we’ve observed while simply getting a glass of water, have prompted friends to suggest that I write a blog.

It’s not the purpose of this blog to review history; that first part was just to give you a backdrop of how this blog came to pass. Tune in from time to time to catch an update.