It's another hungry mouth to feed in the ghetto...

Thank you Elvis.

I was reading my friend Mal's blog today and she blogged about the lack of common sense and hygiene displayed by the members of her ward. I think my ward members are pretty hygenic. I've never smelled anything funny there, or seen puke in the hallway, so hygiene, or lack thereof in my ward, isn't the subject of which I want to write. I do, however, want to write about the lack of common sense and hygiene of my next door neighbors. They don't go to our ward, so I can talk about them.

Before I moved into Robert's condo, I never really noticed anything sitting outside our neighbors door except for their children's swim trunks drying on the rail. Not my style, but whatev. But after I moved in, I started noticing plastic grocery bags with something in them piling up on the front porch. And then one day, I saw dirty diapers, sans the bag, piled up on the porch. I asked Robert about it and he said that he has seen the door open a crack and a diaper being thrown out and then the door closing. Sometimes they leave these diapers sitting there for days. But the peak of laziness hadn't been reached until this morning when I saw a pile of diapers, with one of them opened and its contents spilling out onto the porch. It made me want to vomitar right there on the porch. I just put my head down and ran past it. When I came home for lunch, the pile o' diapers was gone, but the memory still lingered.

Willowbrook Condos are small, but not so small that a diaper sitting in the garbage for a night or so will create fumes toxic enough to kill the entire family. I Just don't understand why this family can't get themselves a Diaper Genie and empty it every so often. Or, why they can't walk the 25 feet to the dumpster to toss it. To me, throwing dirty diapers out on the porch is the epitome of white trash... or so I thought.

Last week, I was walking up to the condo from the mailbox and I was stopped by a woman sitting on the grassy knoll outside our living room window. She asked me what my name was, but not in a nice, friendly way. It was more like "Who are you?" I told her my name and she said that her name was Jennifer, too. I noticed she had a child in her lap, but I usually look people in the face while I'm talking to them, so I didn't notice that the 3 year old child in her lap was nursing. She had her entire breast exposed to the world, while she was feeding a 3 year old! On the grassy knoll outside my living room window! Not OK. Now, I don't want people to think that I'm opposed to breastfeeding, because I'm not, but I think that the girls should be covered at all times. And I also think there is a statute of limitations on the age of children to be breastfed. Gums, OK. Teeth, not OK. So, although I was shocked and appalled, I tried to keep my game face on and be a good, friendly neighbor, continuing the conversation. Somewhere between her asking me what my name was and which condo I lived in, the three year old decided that he had gotten his fill, got up, and ran over to play with some other kids. Did she tuck everything back in? Nope. Just let it all hang out. And then she began to put me through the 3rd degree about how she doesn't know my fiance personally, but she knows a girl he dated, and that she was so surprised to hear that he was getting married, and how she actually knew my name was Jennifer and where I lived because she was visiting someone else in the neighborhood that had our wedding announcement on their fridge. If I wasn't officially creeped out by the breastfeeding, the admission of stalking closed the deal.

I never really thought of Willowbrook as the ghetto. There doesn't seem to be any violent crime, except for that one shooting a couple of years ago in Building 1 that happened during the day when no one was around. I haven't heard of any break-ins. I don't see bars on windows or gang bangers flashing signs, but I think I live in the ghetto. The HOA has rules that won't allow people to put a satellite dish on the roof, but there are no rules governing dirty diapers thrown onto the porch or public nudity. What gives?

I've decided that I'm going to appoint myself as the official Willowbrook "Ghetto Blaster," fighting tastelessness and promoting common decency. First order of business: buy a Diaper Genie and a Hooter Hider.