My eyes are sore

My neighborhood is pretty nice, except for the house next door. It's a little rundown. OK, it's a lot rundown. There are garbage cans on the front lawn, the steps leading up to the front door are unusable, the roof on the back porch has caved in on itself.

When I was buying this house, the listing agent said that one potential buyer offered $20,000 less on the home just because of the eyesore next door. She also mentioned the neighbors had been cited for disrepair. She couldn't say when or if those repairs would begin.

They began this weekend.

I'm sleeping in the living room on the futon because I still don't have a bed (damn State Farm!), and here is the scene I woke up to:



I stayed in bed for a couple hours watching them scrape old shingles off the roof and put down tar paper. It wasn't particularly fascinating, but they were working in the rain. I was thinking if one of them would slip and fall, I wanted to be one of those neighbors on the evening news: "He was a nice guy, a quiet guy. Kept to himself. Things like this don't happen in our neighborhood..."

Sunday morning I woke up to the same racket.



The noise didn't bother me, and in fact I love hearing this kind of noise; similarly I enjoy lawnmowers starting and kids screaming in a pool. It all reminds me of the sense of community I moved here to get. Oh, and that summer is freakin' right around the corner finally.

But the scene did bother me, a little, and if you didn't catch the butt crack in that last photo, here's a more obvious zoom:



I wanted to watch them again this morning, but I just couldn't take that crack. And every time I peeked to check on their progress, I found mostly that the guy's pants had progressed lower on his hips.

Luckily, by lunchtime, they were on the other side of the house.