WE'VE BEEN FLOCKED!

Louis was working up at the computer last Saturday on Family History stuff for Church the next day when he glanced out the window and noticed the yard was full of flamingo silhouettes. He mentioned something about it when he went to bed.  I had NO idea what he was talking about.

Sunday morning I got up and while raising the blinds by the dining room table saw a flock of paper flamingos positioned throughout the front yard with a big sign in the middle pronouncing, "YOU'VE BEEN FLOCKED!"    They were dripping wet.  The sprinklers had turned on about four-fifteen and watered the front lawn first.  The birds had withstood the shower, so they weren't made of flimsy paper.

 Is this the new tee pee-ing?  Is this some kind of brotherhood we are now part of?  Is this even something we want to be part of?  The neighbors next door on the right had a party Saturday night.  Lots of people.  Lots of noise.  Lots of time spent playing games set up in their garage.  Was the flocking part of that?  And if not, the flockers were pretty bold to do it with so many people milling around right by our front yard.

Ward Council was later that morning and I was going to ask the Relief Society president who is my friend--and the mother of teenagers--what it was all about. I forgot.   Brittany was here visiting with her two kids (soon to be three year old Ro and six month old Pippa) and I thought it would be cute to take Ro's picture out in the yard with the birds.  She didn't know about the meaning of it.  But we didn't get around to pictures until after Church when Ro posed for the camera in our aviary. 

Then I texted my friend. 

GEORGIA:  I meant to ask you in Ward Council who might have "flocked" us with a yard full of flamingos.  Is this something the youth do now?  And is it because they like us? Or NOT like us?
I've had my yard tee-peed many times when I had teen age boys.  And that is AWFUL to remove from a yard!

EMILY:  Hahaha.  Being flocked is a sign of respect and love!  but I don't know who did it!  I know that some sports teams do it....you are loved!

GEORGIA:   Keep your ear to the ground as to who might have loved us that much!  I'd love to know....

We ate supper.  We relaxed in the back yard until it was bedtime, the I asked Ro if he would like to go and help me take the birds off the lawn.  We went around to the front of the house--and the yard was empty!  The flamingos had disappeared just as mysteriously as they had appeared.  It was still bright light outside.  The neighbors across the street were still on their driveway visiting with another couple two houses down.  They had been there visiting when I had gone out to water the flowers on the front porch an hour earlier--when the flock of flamingos was still there.  Now the Florida natives were gone.

Another of my friends came after Britty had put the kids to bed.  She brought some darling flannel blankets for Pippa.  So, I asked Autumn.  She said they had been flocked last year.  No, they didn't know who had flocked them, but the idea was to take the flamingos and flock someone else. 

If I had known THAT, I would have gathered them earlier.  Again, the flockers were bold.  This time bright daylight and more neighbors outside.  Who are these bird people?

Ah, sweet mysteries of life.....

FLIP....OR FLOP?

Louis' sister and her husband came to see us recently.  It was the first time they had come to our home in the 15 years we have been married. 

I had to work some of the days they were in town, but Louis had planned a robust sight-seeing agenda which included taking them to our Secrest Court house in Arvada to show them where we used to live.  But I happened to be home on that particular day, so I went along.  It has been awhile since we have driven by our old house--remember it was three years before I could even bring myself to drive by it the first time after we moved--but I wasn't prepared for how even more run down the property is.

It was Memorial Day.  The Griffey Family was home and all working out in the yard.  The dad was mowing the lawn on the riding tractor and some young adults were in the garage.  No one seemed to notice us.  But when Louis turned around at the top of the curve just south of the house, Kelly came running toward our car.  Busted! 

I wasn't in the mood to "make friendly" because even now when I think of how they changed the whole persona of our wonderful Nichols Family home, it makes me sad.

However, Kelly didn't seem to notice my lack of enthusiasm as she gushed in ebullient terms how much they LOVED the house .  How they had gutted it to the studs and redone the whole thing.  In nauseating detail!  She shared that their 12 year old son at the time wanted to be an architect, so their architect friend let him "design" the house.  Then they remodeled it.

In addition to the changes not being in keeping with the style of the neighborhood ( 21st century facade and interior changes in a 1970's neighborhood), the workmanship on the remodel is not really a professional job.  The details haven't been attended to as they should be in a total remake.  The driveway is still in the same place, and the new garage just has something like a cinder drive.  The windows are awkwardly situated, and the symmetry of downstairs windows to upstairs windows has been lost.

The fences are completely gone now.  The bushes and the one tree in the back disappeared a few years ago, but all three of the big cottonwoods in the front yard are now gone, too.  It is as bare as the day we moved in!  The grass looks deplorable--remember we didn't have the fanciest or most cultivated yard in the neighborhood, but we had the BEST grass--and the rocks in the front ditch that it took us so many years to finally put in place are all overgrown with weeds. 

It was a sad sight to behold.  Especially since Coleman was out in his yard working, and it still looks as great and as lovingly cared for as it did when we lived next door.  So, it's not that 25 years have eroded the property.  It's the people who bought the house "for the land" who eroded it.  And yet they haven't planted a garden or even kept what "land" we had in decent repair.

At her first invitation to go in and take a tour of the house, I murmured thanks but we were going out to Jeremy's grave to put some flowers on it.  Kelly persisted...anytime we wanted, we could just knock on the door and they would show us all the changes.  I didn't say anything.  Neither did Louis.  As we left, I thanked him for not agreeing to go inside.  He said he had kept quiet because he knew I wouldn't want to.

Still after 13 years, I feel like if I had known that the people who bought our house would want to "gut it to the studs and make it better" I would have waited for a different buyer.  A family who could see it was a special home where the house itself had figured in some great memories and experiences for nearly 25 years.  Some family who could see it had been someplace special and wanted to make it their "special" home, too.

Some cosmetic changes?  Yes.  New paint.  New carpet.  Even change the awkward sharp right turn to go down the basement stairs.  Yes.  But change the very appearance of the house in a flip?  Not!  The Secrest Court house deserved better than that.

Houses get flipped when they are unsalvageable wrecks, mutilated by people who didn't take care of their home because they didn't love it.  I see that channel on TV where the Property Brothers and other "flippers" go into a home and renovate it.

Sometimes the place IS a wreck.  But sometimes it isn't.  And I look at the houses like that and I think, "I wonder what that home's family would think about the horrible things the potential buyers and brokers are saying about the architectural features and room decors they are bashing?  Just ripping it all to pieces like it didn't have any personality at all."  I'm thinking that family might be feeling the same way I do about our Secrest Court house. Sad and disappointed at the outcome of a terrific property that was our home, our sanctuary, our holy place.

I always imagined there would be nostalgic pleasure in driving by 7328 Secrest Court and saying, "There's where we used to live.  Remember the good times we had there?  Wasn't that a great home!"

Instead, I think this "flip" was a "flop"!