where do i start?

i told you about the unabomber (a/k/a crazy neighbor).

i told you about ralph (the now 18 year old kid i've watched grow up for the past 9 years).

i told you about the little war that has been brewing between these two.

well, we got dragged into it.

tuesday night i came home from work. ralph and his friends were outside making insane noise. no, really. like, banging garbage can lids. blowing a trumpet. blasting hip hop from a truck. i yelled downstairs to the two guys in a truck, asked them to turn it down, and i was told to go fuck myself. by the time i got downstairs, they had scattered.

i was pissed.

the next night, the italian was home with me. he had been prepping and painting maggie's room all day. i had worked and we were having dinner together (which we can't do much because of our schedules) and watching a film on dvd.

they started up again.

i was ready to kill.

now, i'm 8 and a half months pregnant. i'm huge. and i told my husband "that's it. i'm going down there. i'm going to have it out with ralph". of course, he wanted me to stay in and let him handle it, but the fact is that i'm not afraid of these little fuckers, and i'm the one who has loved this kid from when he was little. so i went down, and found him behind his building. here's what transpired:

ralph: Hi!

me: hi? do you have any idea what you and your friends put me through last night ralph? i realize you have problems with my neighbor, but do you have any idea of the stress this is causing me and my baby?? do you want me to lose the baby? do you want me to move away? i can't start looking for an apartment when i'm 8 and a half months pregnant ralph. my husband spent the entire fucking day preparing a room that we may never be able to use for the baby because of this asshole behavior.

ralph is shaking.

ralph: i wasn't here last night.

me: are you kidding me? you're going to look me in the eye and lie to me? i saw you. you may not have realized that this was affecting anyone but your enemy, but i saw you. you were here.

ralph: i'm sorry. it was my friends.

me: i don't care. this is your issue, and you need to resolve it. and if i fucking ask you or your friends to lower the music, i don't ever want to be told to go fuck myself again. are we clear?

ralph's head snaps around and he looks at this fat jerk standing behind him (there were about 8 of them there). the fat jerk's eyes get REAL big, and i realize they thought it was my neighbor that they said this to).

ralph: i'm so sorry. it won't happen again. i don't want you to move. i swear to god i don't.

me: and one final thing - as much as you don't like this woman, it's her DOGS that get sick from the noise. got it? they've never done a fucking thing to you. you're 18. i need you to act like it.

ralph: okay. i'm sorry.

me: it's okay. as long as it doesn't happen again, we're cool.

ralph: okay.

we went back upstairs, and the italian, who had tried to interupt twice (but i didn't let him) told me i did good, but i was a little rough on him. maybe i was, but it was necessary. he liked me before. he may not now, but if that ever counted for anything, he understood this was about my baby.

we didn't hear another sound.

after we went to bed, we heard some voices from the street. there's a bakery across from where we live, and the guys who work there are either from italy or they're from south america and they tend to play football (soccer) sometimes late at night. i couldn't care less about that. that's what i figured it was, and went to sleep.

next day, (yesterday), my husband takes me to the doctor appointment we had (maggie is breech again, but otherwise great) and then to the train so i can get to work.

he goes home, and waiting for him is the unabomber.

she thanks him for what he did the night before (?? i did it unabomber!) apparently she watched from a darkened window and heard everything. but she tells him that they didn't stop. that they were the ones who were out front, yelling and throwing things, that they said my name a few times. she said ralph was not with them, that it was his friends.

my gut tells me that she's wrong. a little paranoid, and not really experienced with summers on our street. i don't think she's lying, and i still think she's a little crazy, but now i'm wondering how far she's been provoked.

anyway, last night i stayed up behind my own darkened window and watched at 2AM as the son of the owner of the bakery and 4 of his friends played baseball (yes, baseball) on the street. they make a lot of noise. but nothing was about me.

we're in a quandary over what to do. we can't afford a two bedroom apartment in our town. the one we have is fine for us and for maggie. i don't want to leave. i really hope this crap just ends. the unabomber told my husband she has a friend who was an mp and he wants to go over there and have a "talk" with these kids. that means blood and violence. it scares me. some of ralph's friends could definitely use a good shaking up. but sending some macho jerk there is only going to make things much much worse.

she needs a mental editor. she doesn't have one. if she thinks it, she says it. she doesn't digest the fact that these are kids, and if you treat them a certain way, they're going to do whatever they can to fuck with you. i let ralph have it, but i made it clear that his behavior surprised me because i respected him and have watched him grow up. it still may come back and smack me in the face, i don't know. but i don't think so.

i want peace. i want my baby to live in a peaceful home in a peaceful neighborhood. it always has been. i hope i'll be able to give that to her.

okay, onto other things.

i'm having a baby shower. very nice, i know. it makes me happy in a way, and i appreciate it. but the fact is, most of my friends have really faded away, or moved back to europe. i don't have family apart from my sister and a few cousins.

the cousin part is what i'm about to tell you.

one of my cousins (i'll call her "bitchy") used to give me a hard time when i was a little kid. she's about 8 months older than i am. she's married to some mafioso guy (let's call him vito) and has 3 kids and a lexxus. whatever. i always liked her, but there have been some very trying times. when we were little, my mother used to make me try to get her to read. i LOVED reading, and she had some major problems. i tried to help her, but she wasn't interested, and she'd make fun of me. fine, whatever.

later on, when i was living on my own at 15, i went to her house for a night because my favorite band was playing near where they lived in staten island, and the band had sent me tickets with passes. i was excited to see my family and to get to sleep in a warm house for a change.

The band was a punk band. a real punk band. now, my cousin is half italian half irish and she at the time had big hair and a major thing for dance music. she wanted to go to the show with me and wanted to bring her boyfriend. i said sure, why not?

oh my god.

i got there, put my stuff away and was just dressed in black with my doc martens and an army coat. she was wearing a pink leather jacket with puffy sleeves. big hair. high heel boots. her boyfriend had what i call saturday night fever hair. a tiny moustache. a black silky shirt with a members only jacket and pointy shoes. i told them, i didn't think it was a good idea to go to this show dressed like that. they said it was "punk".

oh god.

so we went, and people did look at them, and vito got all defensive, and they started making fun of the people at the venue, but no one was bothering them. then i ran into another artist i had met. he told me my cousin was high as a kite. sure enough, she began to hallucinate...

to be continued...