To The Guy Who Lives In My Yard When I'm Not Home

I gotta be honest, this whole relationship is starting to get a little bit out of control. It used to be I would tolerate your "antics" as those of a bored person walking around in my yard with nothing to do but here lately I am starting to question your motives. I guess I should have brought this up a few years back but I've been reluctant because, well, I figure you are at least better than having a dog because you don't have to feed a stranger who only lives in your yard when your not home (except for that steak I left warming on the grill while I went out to buy more beer. I know you ate that steak!). But, here lately, I am starting to get a sense that I may be "enabling" your behavior through my continuing non-action. For instance, when you filled the emply cat litter bucket in the garage with seventy five pounds of cement, I should have probably said something. You knew that my wife kept that bucket so that she could fill it with dirt in order to plant her new flowers every year. Sure, your heart was in the right place when you played the little trick but you weren't the one who had to feed her in bed for the two days following when she took up the bucket, thinking it was full of breezy summer air and not extremely dense cement. The same thing could be said for when you took all of my practice golf balls and threw them in all of my neighbors' yards; sure it was kinda funny but Mrs. Tanner ran over a scuffed Titleist with her lawnmower and nearly turned Mr. Tanner into an invalid while he was tending his garden (and guess who didn't get any free corn that year by the way? You got it. Me.). My wife wanted me to also point out that your drinking and smoking has gotten completely out of control! Just last Saturday morning as we came back from a nice breakfast at the new Bob Evans, the wife counted no less than twelve beer bottles on the picnic table and an ashtray overflowing with cigarettes. Who drinks twelve beers and smokes a pack of cigarettes before eleven o'clock in the morning? And in less than an hour? I called my brother and he swore he only had two beers when he came over that previous Friday night and he only smoked one cigarette; and I don't even drink beer and everybody knows I stopped smoking last week so the only person it could have been was you. Not that I really care what you do with your free time in our yard while were gone but at least clean up your damn mess! Because you know who gets yelled at? That's right. Me again. But, hey, I probably would have cleaned up your litter had you not committed the single worst crime of any person who lives in a family's yard when they are gone. You stole from me and with that action you have forever broken the strong bond of trust we had spent five years establishing! You can deny it all you want but I know you took the pH Plus and Algaecide I had sitting on the glass table beside the pool. Why would you do such a thing? Why steal from somebody you spent so long trying to earn trust from? Honestly, I don't care. That pH Plus was less than two weeks old and I had a good week left of Algaecide but now I can already see green algae forming in one corner of the kids' side of the pool. That's right, the kids' side! Did you not even think of the children? And my pH is totally going to hell in a hand basket as it is friggin' everywhere on the Test kit (and I'm about out of Phenol Red!) I can only hope the Alkalinity stays above 60 ppm until I can get to the pool store on Monday. I called mom and she swore that my stepdad and herself never used the pH Plus or Algaecide when they thoroughly cleaned the pool the other day and I can believe her because mom wouldn't lie about something like that!

As for a guy that hangs out in your yard when your not home, I guess he is about as dependable as a guy who walks by your yard when your not home. Now, I ask you, how sad is that?