How do you make me blue? Let me count the ways

It’s official. After seven months of talking about moving from Mulletville to Mulletville Lite, we finally have a moving date. In two weeks we’ll be out of here.

Even though I’ve hated on this town for almost six years, I’m not eager to leave our house. I love our old house, so much so I was having second thoughts about moving.

Then my friend said that she mentioned to a realtor that our home was on the market, and the realtor laughed and called Mulletville a shithole.

The realtor is right. Mulletville is a shithole, and the damn town almost duped me into falling for it all over again. See, what I haven’t mentioned is that when Chuck and I first drove though Mulletville, we loved it. The old buildings were grand and majestic. There was no traffic, no hustle. Homes were affordable. The downtown was decorated with banners claiming that Mulletville was on the cusp of a revitalization. The newspapers said so too.

It seemed the perfect spot to settle down.

The first year we lived here, we joined the townspeople in their excitement over Mulletville’s impending rejuvenation. It was so close, we all said. Soon the drug dealers would be gone. The vacant downtown storefronts would be full of quaint stores and restaurants. Our friends would stop mocking our move away from civilization.

Rah, rah!

Months went by. The banners started to fade and fray. Years went by. The banners came down. The downtown buildings were still vacant except for smoke shops and pawn shops. Instead of fewer drug dealers, there were now child molesting drug dealers. A new mayor was voted in; instead of rallying the people at town meetings, he slept (in a stroke of genius the people voted in a man who works the night shift at another job).

A few Mulletville diehards continued to sing the fight song but watching them was like watching a small crowd cheer for a 90-year-old one-legged, dehydrated, blind marathon runner with gout who was running in the wrong direction.

You wanted to shake them and shout “It’s over, dipshits. It’s Michael Moore’s ‘Roger & Me’ all over again, except Mulletville’s heyday was in the 1800s. Go home.”

So yah, I had a serious case of beer goggles when we bought our home, and my love of the memories we've made in our home almost made me bed Mulletville all over again. Slutbag! And it’s funny, I was chipper and snarky when I started this post and now I’m just sad. Even though I hate Mulletville, sometimes you want the sickly 90-year-old one-legged, directionally challenged, blind marathon runner to win the race. Just to prove the naysayers wrong. Just so you could clink your beer mug to the underdog finally getting his day.

But nope. A shithole is just a shithole and soon this town will just be a memory.

(Except for when we need to go to the dentist, pediatrician, hospital, general physician, Walmart or pawn shops. Curses!)

Kicked to the curb for the very last time

Are you sick yet of Halloween? No? Great. ’Cause Mulletween 2010 was super dandy and I'd like to tell you all about it.

This is the first year we’ve trick or treated in our neighborhood; I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. There wasn’t a mullet to be seen—just lots of parents dropping off their kids while they waited in their 4x4s and smoked.

How thoughtful!

As for our neighbors, one nice man dumped his entire bucket of candy into Junior’s bag after admitting he forgot it was Halloween (he’d been too engrossed in the Patriot’s game to answer the door). His lovely woman friend waited until we were almost out of earshot to call him an asshole.

"Mommy? What's an asshole?"

Another neighbor let Junior pet her New England chickens. When the blind one tried to peck Junior’s costumed feet, the woman kicked it.

Gently.

And hello, hearty aerobics. The neighborhood is an outdoor gym, I tell you. It’s house after house of this:



Yes, poor Junior’s “trick or treats” sounded more like “triiiiiii...ck [gasp, gasp] ohhhhhhhhhhr [gasp, gasp] treeeeeeeeee......at” but he scored a lot of extra candy—no one likes to see a miniature dragon in pain. And because Chuck carried Junior for most of the night, Chuck got some exercise, too.

(Velcro would have been helpful. Polyester dragon costume + leather coat = “Chuck! Junior’s sliding down your back again! Grab his tail!”)



As for me, Mulletween helped me answer a pesky existential question that's been plaguing me for the longest time. I now know what I want to be in my next life: a stray dog in this neighborhood. Thanks to the dark sanctity of the neighborhood shrubs, me and my pregnant bladder were able to mark at least five miles of Mulletville in complete modesty. You couldn't ask for a better set-up than dark hills lined with shrubs.

We had such a quaint night, it was enough to make me misty about moving. Could I have misjudged this blighted community? Could we have been BBQing alongside our neighbors for the last four years instead of cowering from their swearing, smoking, chicken-kicking ways?

Could have been so beautiful...could have been so right...

No. When I left for work this morning I found our pumpkins smashed to pieces on our front walkway.



Mulletville, you are officially and irrevocably dumped. Forever.