Once Upon a Time there was a Lovely Yellow House

And a lovely woman bought the lovely house for herself and her over-excitable yet lovable mutt after she'd been heartlessly tossed out of her last apartment where she'd lived for a decade . A sensitive and not overly-well-paid artist, without husband or children or any family to throw in a couple of bucks, she emptied half her life savings into the coffers of the mortgage company for the luxury of being queen of her domain, and never again being at the mercy of strangers with no love for her.

She and her belongings were moved into the house a few months later by an efficient crew of unemployed musicians, onto the second floor of the lovely yellow house. The first floor was occupied by a pair of unpleasant ogres, who chain-smoked, collected cats and rabbits, and decorated the lovely yellow house with the most god-awful decorations for all holidays--think the Macy's parade as imagined by a drunken clerk at the Dollarama. They also blasted bad eighties techno, though they were in their 50s, and their life dramas involved a crack-whore daughter who used to turn tricks at the end of the street,and a second daughter with bleached hair and 3 children from an equivalent number of mouth-breather boyfriends (if the current pit-bull owning specimen was any thing to go on).

No no, the lovely woman did not buy property smack-dab in the middle of a trailer park, though evidence would indicate otherwise. The lovely yellow house is in a neighbourhood that is referred to as "in transition" or "interesting" or "up and coming." And it is true that other people like the lovely woman were moving into the neighbourhood, but the ogres downstairs were part of the neighbourhood's dark and malodorous past.

For the first year there were only minor skirmishes between the lovely woman and the ogres involving the length of time the tacky decorations were left hanging after whatever holiday had become a distant memory, and the volume of the bad techno music that shook the beautiful hardwood floors of the lovely woman's second floor perch.

Despite the damning evidence, she harboured no prejudice against the ogres. After all, they were helping her pay off her mortgage, they took care of the gardening, and because they were paranoid, they kept one cyclops eye open day and night, wary of intruders who might break in and make off with the piles of junk they had in their abode and the basement. She even understood their annoying territorialness in the back yard, in the cellar, which they had claimed as their own. She had been a tenant all her life, and knew the terrors of the unknown new owner. She tried her best to make nice. But this all changed one day last summer when what we will loosely refer to as The Flag Incident came to pass.

This blog will chronicle the lovely woman's epic battle with the ogres in her attempt to rid her queendom of their menace so she can once again enjoy her beauty sleep in the lovely yellow house, which will also be freed forever from plastic snowmen, flags the size of bed sheets, and reams of fake cobwebs that blind whoever dares to come to the door.

Next time: Take down that F&#$ing Flag!!!