Effing onions

Onions.

Effing onions. My basement reeks of frying onions and a hint of garlic, with a topnote of Basement-ness.

My neighbor(s) cook in their basement. According to my mother, who spoke with the home's owner the day my husband and I moved in (she was staying out of the way by weeding the backyard), they have a perfectly functional kitchen, yet they cook in the basement. Not sure why. It personally grosses me out. Basements, for the most part, are icky. They're dark and dank, have low ceilings and bare-bulb fluorescent lighting. They're the home for the water heater, boiler, washer and dryer, holiday decorations, spare "stuff," cobwebs, dryer lint, and spiders. It's not where you make dinner. I don't want to smell frying onions when I go down to get my clean, warm laundry out of the dryer.

Those neighbors are just weird and are the thorn in the side of the entire neighborhood. The home owner is nice, he works hard, and I feel really bad for him; he used to have a nice lawn before all those kids lived there. I have no idea whether it's his sister and her kids or his most-recent-girlfriend and her demon spawn who live there, but there are about 1,385 people living on that property right now (including people residing in the garage), and 6 little, howling, yippy, jumping, biting dogs.

Other than the home owner, they're loud and obnoxious, the kids are never supervised, the children have no respect for other people's property (my garden and front porch railing can attest to that), and just have no clue that what they're doing could possibly be affecting someone else, whether positively or negatively.

I'm waiting for something astronomical to happen so I can finally confront the "adults" over there about it and hand them a bill for damages.

the Mission

Not quite sure what all I expect to get out of keeping this public journal of sorts, but I intend to put into it ramblings, recipes, ideas, rants, observations, and various musings. I believe I'm taking this on as an experiment of self: will I be able to maintain the promise I made to myself to post at least once a week? (I hope so.) Can I make the words on the screen as poignant and eloquent as they sound in my head? (Perhaps. If I don't think too much.) Do I intend to sound brilliant and be taken seriously? (No. Not at all. If I come across that way, awesome... gold star for me, but that's not my intention.)

In short: this is an experiment of sorts and most names will be changed to protect my ass from getting sued.