Ah, the predictable comforts of home

My next-door neighbor is a nice guy but he drinks way too much and his friends are even worse, louder and more crude, but I think that’s by design. As long as Mateo is not as bad as his friends, then he’s not too bad. I mean, he gets drunk enough to run his truck into his garage, but he’s not real bad, at least not as bad as Rick, his buddy who shows up shit-faced pretty much every day. Mateo and Rick usually end up pitching horseshoes and drinking, or just drinking. Most weekends they also work on Mateo’s house, which has been under major construction for about five years. He, his wife and two teen-age daughters live in an 800-square-foot house and they’re building a 1,600-square-foot, two-story addition, which is a whole tale in itself. Anyway, after about 4 p.m., Rick no longer speaks in words or complete thoughts; he just growls or makes growling sounds, loudly and with great enthusiasm. He passed out in my house once a few years ago, woke up and walked to where he thought a bathroom was, unzipped his pants and pissed over the only carpeted room in my house despite my screaming in his face. Rick and I haven’t exactly been pals since then. But it’s his gravelly bellowing voice that rises above all the others when Mateo and his buddies are pitching shoes and throwing back their Budweisers, and that’s all I can hear now even though I’m in the back of my house as far away from them as possible. Wait, Rick is barking. Like a dog. Lovely.