Reasons to Love the Suburbs

1. Tennis courts
2. Swimming pools
3. Two-car garages
4. Outrageous lawn decor (see below)

I am certain that this thing (baby, Budha, Chucky?) comes to life at night and terrorizes neighborhood children.

"Do you want to play with me?" it asks right before it lunges at them with a tiny little knife. Fortunately, his potbelly is so large that he moves slowly and the children escape with only emotional scars.









This one has a little something for everyone. Don’t like the impish children holding hands in a circle? How does a boy riding the back of water fowl strike your fancy? Looking for something a little darker? You’re sure to enjoy the menacing head of a devil-being emerging from the middle of this piece of concrete art.

Note: this shares the same yard a Chucky, which makes it 100% more awesome.







Last, but certainly not least, we come to the sphinx that just moved into our neighborhood, likely because it lost its job guarding The Southern Oracle from the likes of Atreyu and other characters from The Neverending Story. Now anyone who dares enter 923 Vista View Dr.* without "feeling his own worth" will find himself zapped to kingdom come.

(*Address changed to protect the identity of owners who purchase statuary with giant racks)

Beware of Dog, Cranky Mom

Our neighborhood attracts a steady flow of door-to-door salespeople and proselytizers. Before I began working at home and caring for a baby who tends to get upset when the doorbell rings and the dog goes berserk, it was a minor annoyance. It is now officially a major pain in my ass – enough so that it prompted me to post the following warning next to our doorbell.


I drafted that message after a weekend of uninvited visitors, beginning with a man and woman who came to our door at 9pm on Friday night. We were all relaxing in our living room, Lana asleep in John’s arms, when the doorbell rang. Rico immediately jumped off the couch and began barking an alarm so loud and high-pitched that it could melt eardrums, not to mention wake up a sleeping baby. I opened the door expecting to find our neighbors in the midst of some kind of emergency. Instead I was greeted by two strangers hawking free carpet cleaning services with a laminated sliver of paper that made them look not quite as official as Napoleon Dynamite’s Tupperware-selling brother and uncle.

I quickly informed them that their carpet colleague had already been by the week before, and I still wasn’t interested. “Oh, you mean Bill?” the woman asked, like I committed to memory the name of random salesmen who came to my door. “I don’t know if it was Bill, but I do know that I’m not interested,” I told her. “Well, I’m not interested either, but I can’t go home until I sign up one more person,” she responded. I don’t know if it was the sound of the crying baby or the glowing red of my eyes, but at that point the man grabbed the woman’s arm and began backing away. “Have a good evening and congratulations on the baby,” he said as they retreated, and I swear he held out his free arm like he was preparing to fend off an attack from a Grizzly Bear.