There goes the neighborhood

I want to tell you about my neighbor, Fred.

Well, I guess he's my neighbor... he lives about 3 blocks away from us.

And I really don't know if his name is Fred or not, but for the purposes of this post, that's what I'm calling him.

This is Fred's mailbox:

Unsightly, isn't it?

Hubby was the first to notice this eyesore, because if there's one thing he dislikes more than tomatoes, it's people who don't keep up the appearance of their lawn and the front of their house. For the first two months after we moved in he gave our neighbors across the street the stink eye whenever possible. Finally, after more than one awkward stare-down with their 3 year old, they got rid of the bright, plastic, two-foot slide that NONE of their children EVER played on. We had even considered nabbing it in the middle of the night, for the good of our street. Luckily it didn't come to that.

So back to Fred.

The thing about his mailbox is, his house is the very first one when you enter our addition from the south. So driving by it on the main street, this rusty old box is the first thing you might see. And it doesn't give off a good impression.

We have fantasized on more than one occasion of sneaking over there in the middle of the night (we like to do all our re-con work at night) and spray painting the heck out of. Or of doing nightly drive-by's, giving the old gal one spray of paint at a time. My personal favorite was the idea to put a can of spray paint and a note from the "neighborhood association" (our neighborhood doesn't have one!), in his mailbox, letting Fred know that his mail receptacle is not up to snuff and that we had each pitched in a quarter for this overdue update.

Great ideas, right?? We've only had 9 months or so to stew on this.

Here's the other thing about Fred. Up until last week, we didn't think there was a Fred. We were convinced that no one lived in that house. There were never any signs of life- not a car in the driveway, no festive flags hanging from the porch, no freshly planted flowers... Then one evening last week I caught a glimpse of him, seemingly just home from work.

** I feel the need to interject at this point- we are not really neighborhood stalkers. If you have suddenly realized you live in the same neighborhood as we do, there is no need to worry that we're peering in your windows or tracking your movements, I promise! Unless of course you have some ghastly, plastic, permanent lawn furniture, in which case, your time is coming.

Hubby hardly believed me when I told him I had seen the elusive Fred of mailbox fame. But he did think it was a good idea to share our shameful neighborhood secret with the blogging world, so on our way home from dinner last night, he slowed the car down so I could hang out the window and snap some photos.

We nearly wrecked when we saw this!!

It's Fred! It's Fred!!

After speeding off and marveling at our dumb luck, I convinced hubby to turn around and do another drive-by. This time we had to be quick. 'Ol Fred was hot on our scent and I'm guessing the camera flash and our vehicle at a complete stop next to his mailbox were somehow tipping him off. After a few horrifying seconds when my eyes met Fred's through our illegal-grade, tinted back windshield, I shouted "Step on it!" and hubby peeled out like a bat out of hell.

So now, besides anti-rust mailbox paint, I am on a mission to find some dull, gray, asphalt-colored spray paint to cover up our tire marks outside of Fred's house.

I'm no dummy. I watch those CSI/Law & Order shows and tire tracks are as easy to trace as fingerprints!