This Old House

When I used to tell people that we lived in the heart of the ghetto, they'd be like, "Oh yeah right. Im sure its not that bad." and I wouldn't really ever correct them because, I mean, really, it could have been much, much worse and I didn't like to think about the fact that I may have been putting my family in danger all in the name of incredibly cheap rent.
We lived in a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home with a spacious (terrifying, possibly haunted) basement, fenced backyard and off the house garage.
We paid 700$ for rent, initially.
You cant find that kind of a deal ANYWHERE in the state of Washington unless
A) you know the person you're renting from
B) Youre waaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere
C) Youre in the heart of the ghetto
Ours was a combination of A and C.
At first when I drove by I called Charlie and said, hell no. Absolutely not. Then I went inside and it was pretty adorable. Yellow and blue kitchen, cute in a kitchy sort of way. Biggish fenced backyard that we could garden in. 2 large rooms upstairs with tons of (creepy) storage space and plans to redo the windows and paint and various other things.
I finally said ok and 2 months after moving home from Louisiana and our super nice and modern condo, we moved into the ghetto with 1920's charm.
Right on Broadway.
It was fine at first and Walgreens was literally a hop across the street. We had our friends over on New Years 2011, our first official night in the house and we bought a wine opener, a blow up mattress, a lawn chair, more wine and mustard. It was pretty efficient.
After a few months the couple that owned the house, sold it and we had a new landlord. They painted the house on the outside, so it no longer resembled a crack den, did some updates on the inside and replaced the windows. The house itself was lovely and I wasn't afraid to tell people that the house we lived in was in fact, where we were living.
However, the neighborhood was slightly less appealing.
We had a house 3 houses down that was obviously selling some sort of illegal substance.
There were people in the alley at all hours, looking shady.
There were people at the front of the house at all hours, looking shady.
There were people generally loitering, just generally looking shady.
There was also an obvious illegal substance selling house behind us, with all the windows busted out and a giant creeper statue in the yard.
With the aforementioned shady peeps, yelling at things and looking real twitchy.
The house down the street from us had a nicer paint job (before we got ours painted) than our house so I guess it was no surprise that we had 2 instances where people were trying to bang down our door.
The first instance, Steve was at my moms staying the night and I was pregnant so the kids weren't the wiser, thank God.
This woman (obviously a prosti) wearing lots of interesting makeup, too tall of shoes to be out for a walk and too short a skirt for the same reason, came to our door.
She started banging on it and screaming.
My heart immediately began to race and I grabbed my phone and had it dialed to 911.
Charlie grabbed our sons little baseball bat and went to the door.
"Who is it?"
"Its fuckin me! Where Pretty Boy at? I want my money!"
"You have the wrong house."
"What the fuck? He move? Tell Pretty Boy I want my money!"
"Were calling the police."
"Yeah, right! Get Pretty Boy out here!"
Needless to say, we called the police.
She opened up our mail slot and started screaming, "I want my money Pretty Boy!"
We both backed away and the police were at our house, in literally one minute. So, that was nice.
I opened the door with my giant pregnant belly and told the Cop that I don't associate with any people who call themselves "Pretty Boy" and that she was probably looking for the house down the street.
The police were understanding when they saw the two of us and there was obviously no one else in the house.
They let her go and she continued to geek out in her car for another 2 hours. I didn't sleep that night.
The next incident went pretty much the same way and I didn't sleep again.
We had a new door put in with extra locks and they sealed the basement door as well. I felt a little safer and a few months later both the drug houses were shut down.
During our 2 years in the ghetto we had those 2 incidents at our doorstep, I called the police on numerous occasions, there was a man who would scream and walk down the street every day at 3:00, Charlie was accosted by a woman talking about her son that she locked in the garage (we called the police and heard sirens so we think she was arrested) I yelled at a million people for feeding the dogs over the fence, told Steve to run inside if there were people walking by if I was in the kitchen with him in the backyard, found a bag of meth in the back yard, a used needle in the front yard and behind our garage, the Wallgreens across the street was robbed the guy ran to the neighbors house directly next to us, put his bloody hands all over the door and demanded that they let him in and the constant battle with rodents (that Steve wrote about at school, how embarrassing) with all these stories and a million that I am probably blocking out because Im horrified that these all happened this one little gem is my personal fave, and I think Charlies too.
During the Summer months its way more active on Broadway, the sun is shining and the days are longer, people are feeling good.
One evening as the sun was setting, Charlie was being a creeper looking out the front windows again because honestly Broadway in the summer months is better than TV any day.
"Sara! Get in here, now!!"
"What pyscho? Stop being such a creeper."
"No get over here now!"
I ran over and peeped out the blinds with him.
There was a woman, a very haggard blonde woman wearing a wife beater and sweat pants, dry humping and making out with an equally haggard man on a bike.
Not motorcycle.
A bicycle.
Sloppily.
It was disgusting, but I really couldn't look away.
After a few moments of them pawing, probably drunkenly, at each other, she backed away.
"Well that was disturbing. Thanks."
I started to walk away and Charlie waved me back over.
"No come back! LOOOOOOOK!"
I ran back over, because I really didn't have a choice.
I peeped through the blinds one more time to see with my very own eyes, the man taking a few laps on his bike and the woman pants down, peeing on the side of the Walgreens.
Seriously.
She pulled her pants up, staggered over to the bike guy and hopped on the front, and he peddled her into the sunset.
We both let go of the blinds and stared at each other for a brief second.
"We live here."
Then we went about our business.
It was amazing how much we just got used to, the sound of the sirens and the horns and people screaming and just the general traffic of the street. Its so quiet here I can hear the crows tapping on the roof with their feet, before we heard sirens at least 4 times a day and just couldn't hear them anymore after a while.
When we moved into our new house, we both couldn't sleep. It was so weird. I think we were just waiting for something crazy to happen to make us feel more comfortable.
It was a welcome change to live in a nice neighborhood, where you can say hello to the neighbors and know that the worst they will do is call someone because your lawn in a little long and not try and steal your base car stereo for meth.
Still I was a little sad.
We welcomed Summer into our family there, just 2 hours after she was born, we grew our huge garden there and had Steve's huge 5th birthday celebration there, he lost his first tooth there, Summer took her first steps, Frankie even had puppies in our bedroom there.
It was hard to let go but a rambling hippy family has to upgrade at some point I guess.
And we sure upgraded.

Cheers.