Balls

So when is it acceptable to start a fight with an 80 year old man?  Is it after he builds a soccer field in the residential lot behind yours with the soccer goal against your fence? Or after teenagers start kicking the balls over and climbing your fence to retrieve them?  Or after that soccer field starts getting used by adults who kick the soccer balls into your fence, breaking the boards?  Yeah, that's what's been happening and now there's a big damn hole in our fence for our dog to escape through.

Let's rewind a bit.  I first tried to address the situation with Old Man by phone months ago:

Me: "I am concerned about adults using the "soccer field" you put behind our house.  They are kicking the ball into our fence and trespassing on our property (this part wouldn't be such a big deal if we hadn't already been robbed).  Also, they are going to damage our fence... and it's annoying to have loud soccer games behind our house every single night."

Old Man: "Well the soccer field is only for the kids in my organization and I don't know why you want to spend time outside anyway.  You should just enjoy your air conditioning inside like I do."

Me: "We bought a house with a yard because we like outside and the soccer field is being used by more than just your kids.  This is a problem."

Old Man: "Well you had kudzu growing on your fence. It harbors rats and snakes.  Who do you think cut that down for you when we built the soccer field?"

Me: "Super... didn't realize kudzu harbors rats..."

Old Man: "Really?  Where are you from?"

Me: "Wisconsin"

Old Man: "Really?  But people from there are usually so nice."

I'm pretty sure Old Man just inferred that I was a bitch.  This was going nowhere.

Me: "Could you take the nets down when you're not playing?"

Old Man: "That's too much work"

Me: "Could you put up signs with rules that state this field is only for kids?  I'll even let you post them on the back of our fence."

Old Man: "The state of the economy has made things difficult - signs are expensive."

Me: "I'll pay for the signs."

Old Man: "I did put up signs but someone ripped them down."

Me: "See!  Clearly this is a problem - now the people are ripping down the signs."

So then I decided to make some signs of my own.  Here is sign #1:

But some people didn't think that was effective enough so I made this one:

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to hang either sign before today's destructive events happened. But I totally think people would have appreciated our concern for their balls.

Fast forward to today's broken fence.  Here's what things are looking like:

Clearly broken

This is the spot Olive can escape from.  Hubby nailed the broken piece back to the fence.

So how do we deal with this?  Well, hubby walks around back to have a conversation with the folks who busted our fence.  I don't do so well with civilized conversation.  Instead I run out of the house, barefoot, like a raging maniac.  RAWRRRR - WHO'S GONNA FIX MY FENCE SO MY DOG DOESN'T ESCAPE???  I'm 5 foot 3 inches of FURY. 5 foot 3 inches behind a 6 foot fence. But once I climb up that fence I'm like 6'5 and totally intimidating... in my mind. To the people I'm yelling at, I'm just 5 foot 3 inches of crazy.  I'm like an insane robot with only two settings.  

Setting 1 - Terrified of confrontation. Afraid to order pizza. Scared of the bank teller.  STRANGER DANGER!

Setting 2 - Raging monster.  The only thing scarier would be a cross between Cthulhu and an angry narwhal.

How do the soccer players respond to my craziness?  "Don't you have like some maintenance man to come fix it or something?" Seriously? Sure, let me just call the property manager and get him to come out and fix this. Oh wait, that's me... cause this is my house and not an apartment complex. Ugh.

So we assess the damage and between our fence and our neighbor's, we've got seven broken boards.  This is where we call Old Man again and ask him to come out so we can figure out how to get our fence repaired.  Here's what happens next:

Old Man to Soccer Players: "You're not supposed to be here.  You're ruining this for the children"

Soccer Players: "Well, how are we supposed to know we can't play here?  There are no signs" 

Bam.  That's what I said.

Old Man: "This field is for the children of my organization"

One Soccer player: "But I used to play for your organization"

Bahahaha.

Hubby: "Let's talk about fixing the boards"

Neighbor: "Yeah, we don't want people going all Pele on our fences"

Old Man: "Well this board just looks rotten"

Side note: Our fence was built less than 10 years ago.  The boards are perfectly unrotten.

Hubby:  "Our fence is not rotten.  It's broken from soccer ball impact."

Old Man: "I was relaxing at home, enjoying a movie on my couch and I didn't want to have to come up here and deal with this."

Baaahhhh!  This is hopeless!  Anyway, Old Man got out his insurance information while I held the dog back from her newfound escape route.  Then we nailed a temporary board over the hole in the fence and are now crossing our fingers that they will actually repair the damage.

Later, husband and I argued about discussed how we both responded to the situation. I was ready to grab the nearest sharp object and defend my property to the death.  Hubby just wanted to use his words. His response was probably more socially acceptable but I still believe mine would have been more effective.  

Oh and I didn't fix my messed up lamp but here's the other shit I made this week.  It's a picture wall. 

So I had this bare wall:

And I hated that the thermostat was all up in your face in the dining area.  Also, I had a ton of frames that were left over from our wedding that we had used for our table numbers.  I bought all of the frames from Goodwill for almost nothing and then antiqued them.  I figured I could use them again later and voila, here we are... using them again.

First I cut up my Anthropologie catalog (fear not, they always send me two... I totally circled the iPod victrola for my Christmas list in the other one) and used the pages as placeholders for the frames.  I cut them to the exact size and then marked where the hanger was so I could nail right through the sheets and then just tear them down.  Also, I numbered them all so I knew which was which.  Fortunately, most of my frames already had numbers in them since they used to be table numbers.

Then I arranged everything the way I thought I wanted it on the floor.

Ugly Box...

Oh and the dog did not help at all.

Then I translated that to the wall. This way I could try different placements without putting holes in the wall.

And then when I decided I like the arrangement, I nailed straight through the paper, ripped it down and then hung the frames.  And it looked like this:

And I like it.  I want to add a few more frames and fill in some small spaces with some other meaningful things but I think it's a good start... and it totally hides the thermostat.

Here's a close up of a couple of my favorite photos:

Yes, we did take our wedding photos with the Bronze Fonz and the Klements Racing Sausages. This is why the hubby puts up with me.