I'm a Trespasser

Ever since we got married, Paul and I have always lived in houses that are set back off the street. We like houses like this because they give you more privacy, you don't have weirdos randomly knocking on your front door, and you feel like you can come and go without the whole neighborhood knowing about it. This is the first house we've lived in though that is actually the back house on a lot with another house in front of it. In central San Diego, land is at such a premium that, many years ago, people started building houses behind their street-front houses to rent out for extra income. Nowadays I would say that more than half of the houses in the city have a "back house" behind them. 

Anyway, like I said, we like this situation... most of the time. There is one drawback that we've recently discovered though. Think about it, what do you do with the back of your house if you don't have a garage? You put things back there that you aren't using or that you want out of sight. So yeah, unfortunately, "out of sight" for the front house is "directly in daily sight" for us. Not a big deal most of the time, but the front house has a bunch (we really have no idea how many people live there, I feel like I see someone new every week) of college students living there and they recently rearranged furniture or had someone new move in and consequently moved some furniture, including two old dirty mattresses, to their back porch. So, this has been the view from our front porch for the last week:

Imagine my horror when I looked out our front door last weekend and saw this! I mean, we're about to have a child; we're trying to establish a nice, grownup home; and we're about to have a lot of visitors over with the baby coming... and this is the first thing they will all see when they come into our yard. I'm the type of person that tries to be laid back and not let things bother me, but, inevitably, there are things that get under my skin and I can't stop obsessing over thinking about. The furniture doesn't bother me so much as those gross mattresses. I've been hoping all week that it was a temporary storage situation and they would move them back in, but here we are a week later and the eyesores are still there. 

I had to do something and my two choices were: A) go knock on their door and ask someone I don't even know to rearrange their back porch, probably offending them, and likely being laughed at/rejected/called a crazy person; or B) sneak over there and rearrange it myself. So, since I guess I am a crazy person, I chose B. I was planning on doing it under the cover of darkness or early in the morning when they would still be asleep, but I kept thinking about the possibility that I go into labor and have to suddenly leave for the hospital and never get the chance. So, today at lunchtime I just couldn't stand it any longer. I quietly snuck over there, let myself onto their porch, and moved some stuff around so that I could lay the mattresses down on their sides. The rest of the furniture is still in sight and the mattresses are technically still there, but at least we can't see them from our house anymore and that makes me a happy camper. I'm sure they'll notice they've been moved but I'm hoping that there are so many roommates that they will all just think one of the others did it. Either way I think I'm safe because I'm fairly certain they wouldn't imagine their neighbor is crazy enough to do it. So, yes, I'm a trespasser... I blame it on the hormones ;)

Speaking of which, I think it's about time for Mr. Wilder to stop inhabiting my body and start inhabiting his nursery. My belly is pretty miserably large and my contractions have started to get uncomfortable. On Tuesday my midwife estimated that he weighs about 6 1/2 pounds, but didn't check for dilation. I told her I really wanted to know if I'm progressing at all and she said this coming Tuesday she would check to see if I'm dilated and also strip my membranes at the same time. That's not an official induction method but it can help stimulate labor so I'm hoping we'll get to meet baby Wilder sometime next week. Also, I don't know if that's really proper to talk about but it's my blog so I don't really care, hehe (hormones again). Anyway, I'll keep you posted! Hope everyone is having a good weekend!