Bad blogger!

I’ve been awful, I know.

I am choosing to blame it on not having an internet connection. Believe it or not, we still do not have internet, even though we have lived here (and paid for it) for two months.

The reality is, I am “borrowing” two bars’ worth of wireless internet from our neighbors, with whom we share a wall. A lot of houses in Nashville are connected by a wall or a shed or some sort, presumably because its easier to do this than to follow the city’s protocol for legally splitting a big lot.

Now I’ve lived in an apartment setting for the better part of the past decade — even shared a prison cell-sized dorm room with a trailer park trash lesbian with a crush on me who dressed and behaved like a 12-year old boy — but never have I ever inadvertently eavesdropped on anything remotely as interesting as what I’ve overheard from the people living in the house next door.

Our kitchen shares a wall with the neighbors’ walk-in master bedroom closet. (Master bedrooms in Tennessee are on the first floor.) And the builders, thinking there is no way a kitchen in one house adjacent to a closet in the adjoining house could possibly present a problem, did not put any sort of sound-absorbing insulation into this wall.

They were wrong.

I have been spending long days working at the rickety card table in our kitchen, because it is the nearest place to the neighbors’ house, and thus the only location in the house where I can get internet.

Consequently, I can hear everything that goes on in that closet during the day — which, as it turns out, is quite a bit.

It started a few days ago. A distant door (the bedroom) slammed, and then a closer one (the closet) slammed louder. A woman starts screaming, “Why are you doing this to me? Where did you hide my car keys? Give me back my keys!” In the background, you can hear a man repeating patiently, almost placatingly (its my blog, I can make up words): “I did not take your keys. Calm down. I did not take your keys.”

I, of course, have my ear pressed to the wall, phone in hand, ready to call 911 at any sign of domestic violence. That bastard better not hit her.

The next day, the same slamming, the same yelling, though this time, the woman is more shrill and accusatory. “I went to bed with my rings and my watch on! I did not take my rings and my watch off! What did you do with them? Where are they? I did not take my rings and watch off!”

And again, the man’s voice: “I did not take your rings. I did not take your rings. I did not take your rings.”

Now either this guy is taking all of his wife’s stuff, or she is really scatterbrained. Or mentally ill. Or he’s a controlling husband, or she has a drinking problem. Or he has a drinking problem.

It’s probably all of the above.

I’m not even sure how I got to writing about this. I’m alone all day, so I suppose the closet arguments is as close to human contact as I’m going to get.

And I guess I feel bad for them. Life is too short to spend it with someone you can’t get along with. There are far too many Drew Petersen creeps out there, and women too brainwashed to get away from them. Too many people spending their lives screaming at each other in a closet.

I guess I am just feeling lucky to be in the house next door.

The again, God only knows what kind of crazy they think I am, stomping my feet and screaming, “Molly! Do you want to go to the glue factory?” as she scrambles around the house triumphantly with yet another pair of my panties clenched between her teeth.