It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

The sun is shining. The birds are singing. The roses are blooming. The leaves on the trees are dancing in the gentle breeze. The squirrels are chattering. The freight train - here it comes! The traffic noise up on the Pike is temporarily drowned out by the godawful deafening racket of that freight train. The house gently sways and the pictures are askew once again. (*sigh* A woman's work is never done!) Away it goes lumbering on up the track. Sweet silence - er - well, pretty close to silence anyway. Ahhhhhhhhhh...AAAARRGGHHH! For Godsakes it's an air raid siren. It's up on top of that pharmacy 1/10th of a mile up the Pike. What the devil? Not to worry, just calm down. It's loud - yes it is! It has to be loud so that the volunteer firemen know there's a fire and rush to the firehouse with their little blue lights flashing on the top of their cars. We know they have pagers now and there is no reason to blare those air raid sirens but they do it anyway. Sometimes those sirens will blast for 2 minutes straight before they get to the firehouse and turn them off. (real nice in the middle of the night, btw..) 'Eddy Machete' (we call him) is waving. He trimmed his lawn once with a machete. Nice guy - I mean really a nice guy. He would give you the shirt off of his back. Just don't mess with him - or anyone he likes. He likes me, thank goodness, and I genuinely like him too. Good neighbor leftist is wanting to hash over this Israel thing. Just don't go there. I'm behind Israel and I'm too on edge to have a nice debate about it. Jake and Petey are at it again - you can never let those two dogs out at the same time. They don't like each other. Period. There's a nasty little terrier across the street who makes it his business to tell everyone what to do. The girls and I call him 'Mussolini'. I never did like a terrier. Nasty, yappy, jumpy little dogs and they'll attack your ankles. There are 2 sets of twins on the block. One set are awesome, the other set are nasty. Stay away from those nasty twins, girls! The nasty twins will play in the middle of the street and not move if a car comes. They'll stand there with an attitude. I've taken to beeping the horn, putting on the gas and screaming that I'll run 'em over if they don't move their asses. They move for me. They aint in Southwest Philly anymore. We don't play that 'attitude in the middle of the street' thing here. People are moving out. The house values are up and people are taking advantage of it. The school district sucks. It was a great block for the little ones for many years. I always told Troll, 'It's not a good neighborhood for teenagers'. We're stuck for a couple of years. We'll make the best of it and there are many good neighbors left. A couple of new neighbors that moved in are very nice, too. People take care of their houses and yards. We'll keep the girls busy as we always have - involved in many activities away from the block. It's always nice to hang on the block, though, let the kids play while the parents chat. The neighborhood probably has a couple of good years left in it.