We's The Magins!

As many of you know, we recently moved to a small quaint town located about 45 minutes west of DC.  Our neighborhood is about 22 years old and our immediate neighbors have resided here since the neighborhood was built.  This is our first single family and we finally have a yard to enjoy.  Some odd things occurred during our first month of residing here, I'd like to think that we have 'worked out the kinks' and that they won't happen again, but unfortunately, I think that we have made a lasting impression on the neighbors......

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and Connor came running in proudly proclaimed, "Mommy, I had to go pee really bad and I went outside in the front yard!!!"  "Oh Lord", I thought to myself, "how am I going to fix this?"  Let's go back in time a bit: We had gone on a family trip to West Palm Beach, Florida, in mid-April, and were lucky enough to have a beautiful pool in the backyard of our rental property.  Connor, a diabetic, pees quite often if his blood sugar is high, and almost slipped on the tile floor as he was wet and tracking water throughout the rental house to get to the bathroom.  So, being the concerned parents that we are, my husband and I instructed him to keep taking pisses in the sideyard to eliminate any chances of slipping & falling.  Good idea, right?  I thought so.  I had no idea that there would be repercussions from 1 week of sideyard peeing that would result in him whipping his "thing" out in public at a moment's notice and pissing wherever he felt like.  Whoops!  "Were you definitely FACING the street I asked him??"  "Yes, Mom!", he said proudly, and he ran to show me exactly where he was standing!  Please note that the neighbors directly across the street were mowing their lawn during this spectacle.

"Were there any cars going by?" I asked, "ummm, yeah", he said.  Like duh Mom!  Our house is situated on a corner lot that gets quite a bit of traffic going by at our 4-way-stop.  Here's where my son handled his business, "Howdy neighbors!":

 

The very next afternoon I heard my husband bellowing from inside the house, "NO!, NO!, NO!, NO!".  I came downstairs to hear him reprimanding Connor outside, "You DO NOT poop in the backyard, only Tucker (our dog) is allowed to poop back here!"  It was about 80 degrees outside, we had all of our windows and doors open and all the neighbors were in their backyards, and I am certain that they overheard our conversation.  This is one of those moments as a parent, that you're like, crap, I now have to go put on a serious voice and discipline this child, when in actuality I wanted to die of laughter and high-five him for taking a dump in a yard.  "Connor, I said, in a serious voice, we have indoor plumbing, aaaannnddd you need to have bowel movements indoors buddy."  "But Mommy, you said not in the front yard, so I went in the back yard".....I appreciated his logic, but in order to socialize this kid properly, I told him that he was to never poop or pee in public again.  "Hey, howdy, neighbor!"

Since we're on the topic of poop, let's go ahead and talk about our compost bin.  You see, my husband is really into gardening, I mean OBSESSED, like all he thinks about it 24/7, he refers to his plants as 'his ladies' and he tends to them first thing upon rising and it's one of the last things he does before retreating for the evening.  What's the most important thing for the ladies, well, their soil of course, and the best soil is created from composting.  So being the top-notch gardener that he is, he built a compost bin the second weekend that we were here so that his ladies would be adequately nourished.  He came home from work during our third week here and was very excited to tell me that a co-worker's cousin, Jim Beau (sp?), can give him chicken poop.  Jim Beau, if you have stumbled upon my blog, first of all, I'm sorry, how does one write your name......is it hyphenated, is it Bow, or Bo, or am I correct, Beau?  Second of all, despite my complaining, my husband LOVED your chicken poop, please tell your chickens to keep up the good work!  "Did I hear you right, did you say chicken POOP?"  "Yes, isn't that awesome?!"  "Why do we want chicken poop?" I asked.  "For the compost bin" he said, "I'm so excited"!.  Apparently, if you're a composter, chicken shit is the holy grail of all compost material.  Composters seek out this glorious feces like water in a desert, and we were now going to be the lucky recipients of some.  So, a couple of days later my husband came home with 4 oversized trash bags filled with chicken shit and the biggest smile on his face, our compost was gonna be da bomb!  True to it's definition, the chicken poop smelled like holy hell and the flies were drawn to it like a moth to a flame.  The hubby worked the poop into the other contents of the bin and voila, the decomposition was to begin.  The next afternoon I realized that our compost bin which is up against our neighbors fence was horribly stinky and that there were millions of flies buzzing all around our joined fence......luckily that only lasted for about 4 days.  "Hey, howdy neighbors!"  Here's she is below, she is my husband's pride & joy:

Nothing was said until the next evening when there was a knock on the door from our very panicked neighbor.  She was almost in tears as she asked if it were okay if she entered our home to go into the backyard.  Her pet tortoise (not turtle) that she had had for 20 years, was a backyard pet and was missing, and she was very worried!  "Come on in!" we said, I took a quick look around and accepted the fact that my house in it's current state looked like it had been ransacked by the police, 2 messy kids and boxes that hadn't been unpacked from our move yet =

She scoured every inch of our backyard looking for her 3-legged-tortoise named Lucky (he survived some attack and lost a leg and scored the name).  As time passed, she was in absolute tears and had surmised that our cocker spaniel, Tucker, had dug a large hole and pulled him under the fence and......had eaten him.  The most embarrassing part of the search is that she kept going by our stinky fly-infested chicken poop bin.  I had to also repeatedly warn her to step over Tucker's land mines, we just hadn't been out there to pick them up yet.  I explained to her that our dog used to be a hunting dog from Blacksburg, VA., so maybe that's why he went after her tortoise.  I did not have a chance to tell her that I actually got him from a cocker spaniel rescue group at the local Petsmart.  After purchasing him we got his medical records and history and there it was, he was a bird-dog, he had several BB bullets lodged in his body and apparently he likes to dig large holes and maybe eat tortoises???  After 25 minutes of searching she went home crying.....talk about a weird moment!  "It's nice to meet you, welcome to our filthy home and please step over our huntin' dog's feces as you search for your tortoise carcass....!"  My husband and I went back out to look for Lucky, the 3-legged-wonder, but to no avail.  An hour later, we got another knock, and there she was with Lucky in her hands, apparently he had just been hiding in her backyard.  Our neighbor had been exposed to our filthy house, our magical bin of poop, and of course, our hunting dog, Tuck.  She instructed us to place large rocks along the fence where Tuck digs, which we agreed to.  Of course my husband gave Tuck a big hug that night and said, "you and me Tuck, we're both just trying to get Lucky!"  "Howdy, neighbor!"

This was not the first neighbor that we had met via Tuck's antics.  A couple of days before the 'Lucky incident', Tuck had escaped from our backyard and I didn't know until about 20 minutes had passed. The kids and I were taking a lazy day and were eating lunch in our jammies at the time that he ran away.  I grabbed the kiddos and threw them in the car to patrol the neighborhood to see if we could find him.  Let me go ahead and say that due to the move & current state of chaos in our lives, that it had been many a fortnight since Tuck had been to the groomer.......he was FILTHY and began to resemble Chewbacca.  Tuck didn't have updated dog tags yet (minor detail ;)).  I circled the neighborhood in hopes of finding him.  After 5 minutes of circling, there he was, on a leash with a man who was taking him for a walk.  I opened the window, "sir, you have found my dog, I am sooooo relieved!!".  I realized at that moment that my mascara was down to my chin, my hair unbrushed and that I was still in those jammies.  My children were even more worse for wear considering they had PB&Jelly and bread crumbs all over their sweet faces.  I met Dave the neighbor, explained why our dog was filthy and didn't have dog tags yet.  "We like JUST moved!" I said to him 5 times, I figured it summed up why we ALL were filthy (including my car) and why my dog was missing for a total of 25 minutes.  "Nice to meet you Dave, howdy neighbor!"

 

 

Tuck, post-grooming, he's a real charmer!

We haven't seen nor spoken to our neighbors in months, and I want to start over and give explanations for why my child used the 'facilities' outside, or why we have chicken shit, or why our dog looks neglected and runs the streets, or why he's digging holes and trying to eat your pet tortoise.  Right now we are just trying to keep up with mowing our grass, which was up to our thighs as of yesterday.  We are not Rednecks, we're just the Magin Family, and we're trying to be the finest neighbors you ever did have!