What's Your Couch Break Moment?

 It's 6AM on a Saturday, and I woke up this morning wide awake at 4AM sharp. I blame the canned espresso stuff I keep in my desk drawer for emergencies that I had late into my Friday workday. I try not to ever dip into those unless I'm really tired. When I got home I was still amped up. I asked Mrs. Noisewater if we should invite some neighbor friends over, a friend from Erik Noisewater's school and his family, and she said that was a good idea. So in my caffeinated turbo mode I cleaned the entire house. Both bathrooms spotless, and I suddenly grew very annoyed with clutter I had looked over without thinking twice about for countless days. I was suddenly a 1950's housewife jacked up on diet pills that were actually speed before we knew what speed was.

"Check weight, clean entire house again."

We ended up going over to the neighbors' house instead, but at least I got a clean house out of the deal. We had a great time. Yeah, I drank 3 beers. A dry January that made it like 25 out of 26 days of the month has now just completely ended short of the full 31. But anyway, the kids got along great because they have kids roughly the same ages (ours are 5 and 2 and theirs are 4 and 2). When we got home Mrs. Noisewater thanked me for taking the initiative to set that up so that we are not hermit crabs (or crabby hermits?) every weekend. I may never have picked up the phone to call the other dad had I not been euphoric from canned evil coffee. I seriously wrote a review on Amazon saying that stuff is way too strong. 

Behold. Pure demon pee.

Okay, time for one more thing to write about. Also perhaps because I had the energy of ten men, I decided to get haircuts for myself and both sons after work. This barber is from Eastern Europe, does amazing job on kids' har, he is all business, even does the hot foam on the neck and the straight razor, all for an insanely cheap price. We looked like three damn studs rolling out of there. But here is thing because that sidebar about his professionalism and prices was completely not needed: The story is about this great big fat guy that was in the shop.

I'll give him a plug. What the hell. A plug for Seven Readers who don't live in Chicago, but still.

The heavyset man (roughly 375 pounds) was just wrapping up his cut and proceeded to sit in a chair (as the couch had a sign that said not to sit on it), maybe waiting for a ride, casually making small talk to me and the kids. Midway through one of our three haircuts a guy with paint on his pants and a power drill comes to talk to the barber. Then right when the overweight fella leaves, the barber says to me, "Can you believe that guy broke my couch?" How embarrassing. Yet the obese man was all smiles, did not in a hurry to leave, and the guy coming to fix the couch came in while he was there! He did not seem the least bit embarrassed. 

Still the funniest show ever.

So, Seven Readers. I have come to the end. Maybe breaking a couch was the wake up call that man needed to make a drastic change in his life, like switching to diet soda (which maybe is worse?), and maybe our couch break moment could be something else as a reminder to switch something up. Like maybe I better throw those amphetamines in a can out when I get to work Monday morning. I'll start there.

So, what's your couch break moment? Let me know in the comments.

Mrs. Noisewater and I are going to miss some things about this apartment.  Hearing the drunks congregating in our alley having loud conversations filled with "WOOS!" is not one of them.  This often wakes us up out of a dead sleep, and then they hang out by the dumpsters and we can make out every single word they say.  I never could figure out why they would want to smell garbage while they converse, but then the other night we could gather from their conversation that they were doing cocaine.  Lovely!  As I have said in previous posts, rather than telling them to shut the heck up, like some of my neighbors have done, I prefer to just interject, chiming into the middle of their conversation.  They suddenly hear from above, "Is that pretty good coke?"  The problem is that they would probably want to talk about that all night with me, so I would have to add something creepy like "Can I come down there in my pajamas and do a bump?  And then maybe you guys can come upstairs with me and cuddle?"

Anyway, one thing I am going to miss in this hood is the middle aged Black man on the block who takes excessively meticulous care of his sky blue circa 1991 BMW.  The thing is dented all over the closer you look at it, which is no surprise because he parks it on the street in a busy section of Chicago - a great way to get dinged.  He is down there when it's cold out warming up the engine while he fusses over cleaning the interior or checking the oil, but I have never seen him actually go anywhere.  Sometimes I will see it parked in a slightly different spot, suggesting that he has taken it for a spin, but it's always returned to the same side of the street.  It's not so much that I'll miss him, it's that I'll never figure out his story/solve this mystery.

In case I don't get a chance to talk to my favorite OCD neighbor to get an explanation, something I will be doing if I see him again before I go, would any of you like to wager a guess at why he behaves this way with his "beemer?"

This guy is as appauled about smoking as Marsha was when Greg lit up!

There is a site called Every Block that notifies you about things going on in your neighborhood, and thank God because the Oz Park Advisory Council uncovered startling and unsettling news about teenagers smoking marijuana in the park after school!  Can you imagine?  I'm posting some of the funnier entries below, along with my smart-ass commentary, of course:

Many residents posted entries in support of this guy, including this person who wants a stop to this marijuana use before it leads to robberies!

Then we have an actual voice of reason, albeit a long-winded voice, followed by another moron. 

Along comes Pete who witnesses how weird this grown man is taking pictures of kids he doesn't know, and then Ozlock defending his weirdness.

Then it just turns into a long debate with people chiming in with all kinds of stupid stuff.  I just like that someone pointed out what a creep this guy looks like with his camera.  Get a life, buddy.  Or move to suburbs.  Oh, wait, kids smoke dope there too.  Maybe he should just get a job.  Who has the time to chase around pot smoking kids at 3:30 every day?

I wanted to chime in with some funny comments in response to this guy and share them with you guys, but the crazy ass posted the Facebook accounts of people who stood in his way of his private drug war, so that scared me off. 

What do you make of all this, Seven Readers?  

Oh yeah, and there's a new post by Urbanist Chic over at The Liars Club, so be sure to leave a comment there if you have a moment.  

Deer Neighbor,

So, you heard "Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazarus coming out of my apartment and you immediately call the police?  It can't just be because I think it's a cool song?  You right away assume that I have a plus-size woman in a pit in my basement, and I'm lowering her lotion with a bucket while I dance around in the mirror with my wang tucked between my legs while I seductively dab on lipstick?  I just . . . I just like the song.  You can trust me.

Very Superstitious Plumbers

I have this friend, I'm going to call him Plumber, and every time he comes out to the bars with me, he gets lucky with the ladies. He's a good looking guy, but I think when I'm out with him I force him to be more social because he can be shy. I'm fearless out there because I have a girlfriend, so what the hell do I care, right?

So, he had gone home with girls 2 straight times when he went out with me going into Saturday's outing. We were having a burger cook off at my place, and then the second we stepped out into the alley to go to the bars, the neighbor girls, who I don't even know, hollered at us to come join them on their garage deck. I thought it was unsafe move on their part, but luckily for them, Plumber and I are not rapists. We mingled with them for a while, one seemed interested in Plumber, he got her number, and she's been blowing him up ever since.

Then at the karaoke spot, we met a number of women. One had a tight dress that looked like tin foil, like a baked potato, but she wasn't very cool. Then another girl thought I was an MMA fighter, I think because she has seen me in the bar with my friend, Gung Ho who trains. I was too drunk to be clever enough to lie. Then there was a pair of girls we were chatting up, and while I ran interference on the not pretty one, at some point Plumber had a barroom make out deal with the pretty one. Boom!

You ever get superstitious about things when you were single?

I know there were certain shirts I was convinced were vagina deterrents, and I'd never wear them out. Some bars I would go to I would see friends having success, but I'd be like a damn leper in the joint. Then other shirts and other bars would be really consistent for me.

Anyone have anything along these lines they'd like to share?

This Morning . . .

. . . at around 6:00 AM, the kids who live downstairs woke me up with loud rambunctious play. Again.

They carried on for around thirty minutes, it seemed, and when my alarm went off at 7:15, even though I promised myself I wouldn't use the button that has ruined our country, each snooze button interval of sleep felt so very good because it was that exact time of REM sleep that those little kids keep denying me.

Every couple of dreams was about these kids, and in the only one I can remember - a particularly sadistic one - I was looking for DVD's to play loudly in retaliation. My selection? Well, I considered an AC/DC in concert DVD but opted for Andrew Dice Clay's "The Dice Man Cometh." Not that I actually own any Dice DVD's, or an AC/DC ones for that matter, but in the dream I thought it would be nice to blast some dirty nursery rhymes by an angry Jewish guy who thinks he's Italian. That would be really screwed up to expose my young neighbor kids to a host of four letter words just because they wake me at the worst possible time on a daily basis; that would be truly sick.

However, when the final snooze went off, the one where if I didn't heed the call, I'd surely be late for work, I left the phone vibrating on the ground when I got in the shower for it to buzz loudly for the people below over and over. Just like I had to listen to that kid sing the Batman theme song over and over and over . . .