I think it’s funny.

I’ve thought of mooning her, taking her picture and then mailing it to her, asking her for Grey Poupon, etc.  But that’s more out-going than I really am.

For now, I just laugh about the feeling of being spied on by someone who probably doesn’t even know that any of the three of us exists.

Also, holy shit, also if you fucking CHEW TOBACCO and leave the tub in the communal trashcan that’s seven feet from your fucking apartment door.

Seriously?  It’s almost 2012.  You fucking CHEW?  Wow.  Am I judging people who chew and saying that they are crazy and/or stupid?  Yes.  If you are or were foolish enough to start chewing tobacco, you are fucking stupid.

And a smoke detector keeps going off.  My new neighbor?  (Fuck.)

Being car-free (six years now, as of two weeks ago) and otherwise limiting where in Baltimore we are looking really narrows down our pool, more than finances, actually.  (Not that we can afford everything in our target area.)  You’d think that would make it easier to find a house.  But in reality, we have to juggle what we don’t like against what we do like with each house.

I’m told this is not uncommon.

I’ve decided that the supposition that we’d walk into a house and “just know” and fall in love is not only stupidly romantic; it’s going to lead us into bad decision making.

We’ve really only seen two houses we’d look at again or pursue.  But it only takes one.

And we really like our realtor, who is also growing a winter beard.

And we’re doing this while other people are looking to move out of Baltimore, with its really high property taxes.  Some people, like my brother, just don’t want to live in the city and don’t act like dicks because you do.  I can respect that my brothers don’t like the city and and don’t want to live here.  They don’t usually give me shit for preferring it.  Other people, shit, it’s like:

“And Soandso says the property taxes are one hundredth of the city right over the county line, and, you know, you get, like all the same services.”

“Really?  There’s a 3-minute response time for fire/EMT service?  You have trash and recycling pick-up for free?  The bus lines and bike routes are centered in the county?”

“No.”

“What services are you talking about?”

“Uh…”

“Yeah.”

Etc.  Sure, I know.  The city’s not for everyone, especially not a…scruffy one like Baltimore.  But let’s compare them with facts, Okay.  And all that.

I feel like I’m getting older, when one of my serious considerations in house-hunting involves a possible mancave.  And, also, having to think about things like hot water heaters and copper pipes.

I am tired of talking about this now.

In Proud Dad News: Charlotte can tell the difference between books we read and Daddy’s notebooks.  “Noh book!”

My kid is a genius.

But I doubt that people here do their own yardwork.  I really do.  I’m “around” a lot during weekdays; that’s when I see lawncrews working.  I never see home-owners doing hard labor like mowing, cutting and cleaning up snow or leaves.  On the contrary, few of these rich bastards ever clear the walks they are required to (by city law) of snow and/or leaves.

I mean, shit, I fell the other day, carrying Charlotte.  I slipped on leaves, twisted the hell out of my ankle and went down — very slowly.  When you’re as practiced as I am at being a klutz, you learn how to fall well.  I twisted around, landed on my knees, slid on more leaves, arched my back to keep my balance and let the friction of my jeans and the leaf-bedded sidewalk stop me, whereupon I placed Charlotte into a soft pile of leaves and turned to make sure that Mrs. P was not also falling.  Of course, this all took two seconds.  And, of course, it could have been prevented, is said owner of said $1 million-plus house had their fucking leaves raked up like some of their neighbors have.  I meant to walk by, get their address and report them to the home-owners association and, well, ahem, send them a piece of my mind and maybe even a verbal middle finger.

But: leaf blowers.  I think I have established that the people in Roland Park who bother to do anything about what falls on their sidewalks don’t do it themselves.  Maybe one guy does, but I’ve never seen him, not living here for over five years now.

So why the fuck do we have to listen to leaf blowers on the weekend?

I mean, the real question is: Why the fuck do we have to listen to these at all?  The managers of my building had two guys out in the beginning of the fall with leaf blowers.  It took two of them, spewing exhaust and noise,to do what I could have done with a decent rake in the same time.  And, brother, I suck at raking.

But weekends?  Come on.  It’s not like Rich Jerry Van Guy is only home on weekends to do his yardwork.  He doesn’t do it!  He pays someone else, which is well and good.  So pay them to do it during the fucking week!

I was complaining to my Dad about this.  I share his mix of mellowness and near-constant bitching (we are a veritable mystery to science) as a personality.  So I was surprised when he said that maybe these folks couldn’t get anyone to come and do their yards/walks during the week.

To that I say: then pony up more fucking money for the people who do your yardwork.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the rich-but-cheap Roland Parkers with which I am familiar probably don’t pay said folks enough money anyway.  I mean, I would tell you what happened during a food drive in the 90s here and how some lady in a mansion (no shit) told us not be so greedy.  You don’t wanna know.  You’d lose your faith in this fucking city and, especially, in this rich-assed neighborhood.

Of course, leaf blowers are dirty and loud and stupid to begin with.  That’s another issue.

But, dear fellow Roland Park residents: mow your get your lawn cut and leaves gathered on weekdays.  If you enjoy hearing all that noise so much when you’re home on weekends, then do it yourself.

The Baltimore Book Blog.  Certainly not the only book blog, nor the first in Baltimore.  But this one’s by us.

And it’s fun.  Come stop by!

That is all.

Anyway, we were talking about Charlotte and how big she is today, and I said, “It won’t be long before she’s chasing boys. Wait. I mean, it won’t be long before the boys are chasing her. And I’ll be chasing them.”

He laughed and said, “I know it! You just come get me. We’ll get ‘em. My record‘s all messed up anyway!”

I felt strangely safe knowing this; let me tell you.

And then I thought that, perhaps, the definition of a great friend is being willing to hurt someone who’s hurt your friend’s daughter.  This was unrelated; it just came later in my walk, on my way home.  We’re friendly, my old neighbor and I, but we’re not friends.  In another Baltimoresque turn of events, we don’t even know one another’s names.

*(Baltimoresque: Something that seems like it would only happen in Baltimore, Maryland.)

No, wait.  That’s not the word for it.

We’re off to Ikea today. Charlotte always seems to enjoy herself there. Last time we took her, in December, she was still really into formula and barely touched the baby food we bought her. This time, she’ll probably eat some fries, veggies and maybe some mac-and-cheese. She’s into water and food these days. It’s getting increasingly difficult to get her to take her milk. Luckily, she loves cheese and yogurt. Boy howdy.

Low and behold, someone showed up this morning to fix them.  Over the course of an hour or hour and half, he broke glass, made a mess, cleaned some of it up and left.  Okay.  Come to find out, they’re showing our apartment tomorrow.  One of those windows has been broken for seven months.  But today — TODAY — they get fixed.

Only they don’t.  It’s been about four hours since My Man left and almost two since they said they’d be coming with glass today.

So two of our windows are missing their glass.  Nice.  I also sure had fun cleaning the glass and paint chips from the floor.

I’ve decided to be naughty for tomorrow’s showing, but I haven’t decided how yet.  I do plan on revealing the name of this building, for search engines to find — after we have our security deposit back.  There are some [negative] reviews on the web, but still.  Man.  Gotta give prospective tenants/victims warning.

–Wait.  Another, larger, guy is here to replace the glass.  It only took seven months!  Awesome.

Time to get Charlotte up from her nap, I guess.

Of course, I get sad at the prospect of leaving our apartment (Charlotte’s first home, in a room I painted for her) and our immediate neighborhood. Then I think of the two broken windows and how Charlotte’s room needs moderate-to-major plaster work and repainting and has other crap wrong.

And then I strategize about packing our small library of books and other mounds of stuff.

And I’m compiling a list in my head of all the places with whom we’ll have to change our address.