You might not think there would be any good in the ghetto given my negative description in my last post but there was (is?). While everything I talked about in the last post was absolutely true, there were a few perks to living in the ghetto.

Some of them are fairly straightforward.

For instance, there was awesome garbage pick up. There was a giant caged enclosure where you could just dump your garbage whenever you felt like it. As someone who had been putting her own garbage out every second week for eight years, it was pretty cool to not have to wait until pick up to toss the poopy diapers.

Wow.

I just read that paragraph over again and realized how pathetic it is to get excited about dumping garbage. *sigh* Such is my life...

Anyway, the down side to the garbage enclosure was obviously the gigantic skunks and raccoons who used it as their nightly buffet. I never saw a rat. Thank DOG. However, just the other day, a friend of mine said she spotted one running under her car. *shudder*

The second fairly rad thing about living in the ghetto was that heat and hydro were included. We controlled our own heat, too, so I could turn it on whenever it felt chilly and not have to worry about whether it was a heating season or not.

However, I obviously won't be taking advantage of that this winter since I moved before the seriously cold temperatures hit and it was one fuck of a hot summer.

But still....

Despite all of the downright terrible components of living in the ghetto and the fact that people who live in the ghetto are considered garbage and there's a huge stereotype, I do have some pretty great memories attached to my time there.

One is my friend, Sarah, and her children. In particular, her daughter, Hannah. I will likely blog about her a lot in the posts to come as we have become really, really close. And Hannah has taken up post as Julian's one and only friend. There is just something about this little girl that he adores. Maybe because she has two older brothers, one of whom has ADHD, so she isn't put off by Julian. Maybe because she is younger than him and doesn't put many demands on my little guy. Or maybe just because. Whatever the reason, I can't put into words what it is like to watch Julian NOT try to hurt another child and NOT chase them away as soon as they even come close to trying to play.

Another is Dirk.

As I mentioned last time, during our summer in the ghetto, the housing corporation was having some work done to the exteriors of the houses. They were replacing the siding on about half of the houses, mine included.

It was awful.

Loud beyond belief.

Dangerous because of the old siding falling down from ladders and little trails of nails and power tools up whatever row they were working on.

I'll spare you the description of Julian's reaction to all of this at the time. Use the description of my little boy in the ghetto from the previous post and add a few meltdowns and you've pretty much got the picture.

I tried my best to get Julian out during the days they were working on our row and particularly our house (downside of ghetto living...we had no say whatsoever in when the work was being done and it blocked you either in or out of your house as the yards would be covered in debris and there would likely be a ladder with a dude on it in front of your door). But it was hard because Julian doesn't like to leave the house much.

I tried letting him watch the guys a bit so that he could at least associate a picture to the sounds but that didn't work very well.

Eventually, I gave up the good fight, stuck my nose firmly back in a book and decided to try to ride it out.

One scorching afternoon, Julian gestured towards outside. It took me while to understand what he wanted but when he turned on the tap and pointed and cried hysterically, I finally figured out that he wanted to play in his kiddie pool in the back yard. Being so hot in the house was overriding his fear of leaving the house and having to interact with people.

I took him to our tiny back yard and let him fill his small pool with water from the hose. He immediately got in and started to walk around in circles, humming and making happy nonsense noises. The siding guys were on their lunch break, so it was quiet. I took advantage of Julian's temporary happiness and sat my ass down on a lawn chair and started reading the textbook, "Helping Children With Autism Learn", focusing on a chapter about re-gaining lost language abilities.

"Hot enough for you?" a voice said from behind the fence dividing our small yard from our neighbours.

Julian screamed.

I grabbed my heart.

The voice laughed.

"I didn't mean to scare you," to me. "Sorry little man", to Julian.

It was one of the siding guys who had been eating his lunch under the shade of the trees in front of my house. I hadn't seen him sitting there. Julian had stopped freaking out and was babbling away to himself, anxiously trying to figure out how best to respond to the interruption of his little oasis.

And that was how I met Dirk.

Standing in oldest capri pants rolled up past my knees so that I could dip my feet in the kiddie pool, drenched in sweat, my hair actually wet from the heat of the day with a four and a half year old autistic child pulling HARD on my hand and grunting towards the door.

Quite the impression, eh?

But he stayed. And chatted. About the weather. About the work being done. About the other yards and the mess of abandoned furniture. I took no credit for my clean yard, explaining that we hadn't lived there very long.

His lunch break ended and Julian and I went back into the house. Well, actually Julian had already gone back in and attempted to lock me out which made Dirk laugh. He laughed even harder when I produced a spare key from my pocket, explaining, "Once burned, twice shy."

The next day, Julian again wanted to go out into his pool (it was a really, really hot summer) and again Dirk stopped by to chat. Julian was nowhere near planet Earth, locked in his own little world, and this time paid Dirk no attention.

And so it went all week, with this strange man standing at the edge of my fence while Julian walked in circles and I got behind in my library book.

I learned that he was single. Had no children. Lived in a town about forty minutes away. He had one brother. No sisters. His Mom and Dad were in the same house he grew up in. He liked playing the video game Rock Band but wasn't much for violent ones. He played the real guitar and a little bit of the drums. We both loved Dexter. He had never seen Big Love (another of my favourites).

And then, on the Friday that Troy took the kids, he asked me out. On a real date.

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

I remember standing in front of my bedroom mirror with the fan blowing on me, trying to decide what would show the least amount of sweat. I remember looking at myself and wondering what the fuck was wrong with this guy that he would want to take me out.

I seriously considered leaving and standing him up until I remembered that I would have to see him again at some point since he would be working on the row houses until the end of summer.

We went to dinner at an air conditioned restaurant. I'd be lying if I said that the conversation flowed seamlessly. Taking the literal fence out from between us made me nervous and not having Julian as a guaranteed "out" made me even more nervous.

I don't remember how I ended up telling him about Julian. I think he must have asked me how old Julian was and that always leads to well-meaning questions because Juilan, in a lot of ways, looks like a big baby and at this time, wasn't speaking.

But I figured there was no point in sugar coating anything. I've reached a point in my life where I've stopped giving a shit about what people think of me...even good looking siding guys who ask me out.

So I told him the whole truth and then some.

He listened. Asked questions. Nodded a lot.

And then he kissed me.

Do you have *any* idea how long it has been since somebody kissed me? Even I had lost count!

He took me home and we had a glass of wine (I've started to enjoy wine a bit. It must be because I'm getting older or something because I used to really hate it) and then he kissed me again.

That's twice!

I'm not going to lie...it took every ounce was self restraint not to attack him, IT HAS BEEN THAT LONG. But I was a lady (sort of) and said good night.

He called the next day.