My next door neighbors

Okay, now that you've been reading for about a week, I feel obligated to share one more little fact that I didn't share on Day One.

I live next door to my parents.

"Geez," you're thinking, "how did that happen?"

Well, I'll tell you: my dad is a builder. He bought two vacant sites in the town where we currently live. On one, we built our house, and on the adjacent one, he built another house. All along my parents joked that they were going to move in next to us. Dad bought another vacant site in a city nearby (about a half-hour from here). Several years ago, he and my mom moved into the house in a nearby city. Then the real estate market took a dive, as everybody knows, and my parents decided that the house they were living in was more likely to sell than the house next door to us (we live in a more rural area). So -- no joke -- they moved in next door!

Most people would cringe at this thought -- and I did, too, admittedly. I mean, who wants to live next to their parents? RIGHT next to their parents? But actually, it's been pretty awesome. Talk about borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbors! I've borrowed coffee, sugar, bread, dog food, the fax machine, almost everything. As I said, we live in kind of a rural area -- the nearest grocery store is 15 minutes away. My mom works in town so she usually calls if she stops by the grocery store on the way home, and asks if I need anything. When the boys have been sick, she'll offer to pick up prescriptions on the way home so I don't have to take the kids back out. If Big Boy wants to visit grandma and grandpa, we can run up there and I can leave him there for a while. They can run down for dinner if MrDartt works late and I want the company. They respect our privacy and have been a huge help.

There are a couple of drawbacks. My dad thinks it's funny when his dog comes into our yard and poops. Never mind that we have two big (well, one medium and one huge) dogs and two big dogs' poops to clean up already. Also, something happened recently that caused my dad to believe that our house might one day be attacked. So, he has mounted two huge lights on his deck, overlooking our yard so that in the event that bad guys attack our house, he can illuminate our entire front yard and who knows what else. I'm not sure what is supposed to happen after that. Maybe he pushes a button and sniper rifles come out of the turrets -- I'm not sure. But in the event that our house is attacked and it's nighttime, I'm supposed to call him; that is, after I've called the police, activated MrDartt's emergency response plan and mopped the floor so nobody knows how dirty it really is. When I call dad, he will illuminate. Awesome.