"Not that Smart"

The evening was much longer than usual because our neighbors to the rear decided to have a concert for everyone to hear!!! Our house is situated on the other side of a cul de sac along with the rear facing an adjacent street. We have more rear neighbors than side neighbors and our house sits at a little higher elevation than those houses in the rear so if we wanted to we have great “peeping Tom” vantage points of four or five houses. Neither my wife nor I are the “peeping Tom” type but this setup is not exactly conducive when one of the neighbors decides to “cut loose” on a Tuesday evening.

When I first walked through the house I sat in the upstairs area admiring the view to the rear because the very large windows gaze out to the mountains. As I gazed out at the mountains the realtor counted the houses in the rear that were in foreclosure along with one of our side neighbors. Several of the houses were vacant when we moved in and still there are several houses that are vacant; however; someone has moved into one of the homes and has been doing a great deal of work. This area is predominantly families so when the people moved into this home a few weeks ago we thought we were getting yet another family. There could be a family in this home but when they first moved in there was a party in the backyard that lasted into the wee hours of the morning. This was a weekend and my wife and I just chalked it up to the family celebrating their new home.

Last night I have no idea what was going on but I could hear the music into well past 1:00 am. Yes, I am an old “fogey’ when it comes to this and after an hour of just listening to the very loud music I had had enough. I ventured into our backyard in hopes of seeing someone in that house but after 15 minutes no one came out. Now the house is literally a quarter of a mile away to the front door if I didn’t hop any fences. I wasn’t about to hop any faces nor was I about to confront them at the front door in the wee hours of the morning. One of my conditions of parole is that I am to have no police contact whatsoever and I do take these conditions of parole literally so I was not about to call the police. This left me no choice other than to hope the music would fade away and a few minutes later the music did fade away and I got some sleep.

In 19 ½ months of my incarceration I was well rested but I’m not sure if I had a good night’s sleep during the entire time. I am such a light sleeper and prison did nothing to change this that just adapted to my light sleeping habits. I do feel bad for my children when they get older and try to sneak into the house because with my sleeping habits they stand no chance!! After the music finally faded away I had a hard time falling asleep which usually happens but I always have wonderful thoughts which helped to put me to sleep.

In the morning I was very tired and this must have been contagious because the whole family had difficulty getting out of bed. Even my son who rises at the crack of dawn was still in his bed well after the time he normally wakes up. Somehow we all managed to get out of bed, get dressed, have breakfast and be on time for school. It was a struggle this morning but we did make it without any incidents or confrontations.

The day seemed to move on by and since it is Wednesday this is the day I venture into the office for the weekly meeting. Prior to the meeting I made it a point to help my daughter and son with their respective homework. I may not be “smarter than a fifth grader” because I really have to stop and think about my daughter’s math homework. I have the percentages and the math down but when it comes to terms such as integers, acute angles and perpendicular lines I have to stop and think. I didn’t want a repeat of her C minus homework the other night so I sat with her correcting each of her problems and hopefully she will do better than the C minus.

My son is a different story and I can see that he is much more intelligent than he lets on. He is having a problem with his reading but I catch him pronouncing the difficult words over the easy words quite often. Also; he seems to be breezing through the math section on his homework even though he occasionally comes up with the 7 plus 7 equals 12 answer!!! If he focuses he will do very well and he will be just great at the end of the year.

I was running a little late as I helped the children with their homework but made it to the meeting with time to spare. The meeting went off very well and afterwards I had a private meeting with a few of the principals in the organization. We talked about a variety of topics and the subject of me being very smart came up. I certainly downplayed this because really I am not that smart especially doing what I did. I didn’t come up with some grand scheme nor do I have all the money hidden.

I was a compulsive gambler looking to stay in action and unfortunately I found a way to stay in action. Thankfully that is all in the past and today is looking wonderful. The conversation turned to one of politics and normally I keep my opinions to myself and this was the case today. However; there is something brewing on the horizon that can be very beneficial and hopefully we will follow this course.