Once upon a time I was sitting in my living room, trying to figure out what story to post tomorrow, and then The Universe, in her infinite wisdom, said, “Nah. None of those are good enough. Let’s get you some fresh material.”

I’ve mentioned my next door neighbor/stalker before, and we’ve both been laying pretty low since then, with the exception of him learning my new work routine and coming out to his porch every morning when he hears my car, to wave me off to work - shirtless. (As seen in picture 2 below - even ventured off the porch today.) There was also one small run in last night when I was on my porch videoing a sneaky squirrel, and D snuck up on me and asked me for my phone number again. I once again declined to give it to him. Yep, just those small, harmless run ins. Until today.

So I’m the kind of person that likes to have all my windows and doors open, and I have a lot of them. There’s just something hygge-ly about natural sunlight streaming in. However, this leaves me open to attack from door-to-door salesmen all the time, and today was no exception. Before I can run and hide (so sorry if you’re reading this Rigo, but I’m being real here), this guy is bounding up my porch steps and banging on my door, clipboard in hand. I’m not as strong yet as my friend Brooke, who just closes her door right in their faces, so I reluctantly opened the storm door a crack. He started in on his pitch about pest control. I actually do have a lot of spiders in my house, and don’t really love that fact, so I was sort of interested, but also knew I probably wasn’t willing to spend whatever it would cost.

Anyway, this guy is going on and on about their services, and out of the corner of my eye, I see D walking up my sidewalk, eating an apple and looking at me. As the guy is talking to me, D yells, “Oh, so you’ll talk to this guy? If I just come to your door will you let me in?” I explained that I was busy and gave the guy a look like, “Please don’t stop talking or leave me alone with this crazy man,” so that’s just what the salesman did. He kept trying to talk about bugs, but was obviously as distracted by what was going on as I was because he kept looking over his shoulder to shirtless, apple-eating D, standing in my driveway just staring at us. D asked, “Am I wasting your time? Do you feel like I’m wasting your time right now? It was all a dream. I had a dream.” Seeing that D was going to just keep standing there and trying to talk to me, I asked the salesman if he would like to come in to give me his spiel, and he gladly accepted, and we pulled the door shut.

Now we’re safely in the house, but all the blinds are still wide open, and pretty soon I hear the storm door open and the lock start jiggling. The salesman silently gets up, runs to the door, and deadbolts it. So D starts banging on the door, and jiggling the handle again. I decided to get up, open the door a crack, and ask D if I can help him with something. Apple chunks falling out of his mouth as he chews the core to smithereens, he says, “Yeah, I wanna come learn about the spiders. Let me in, I wanna hear about the spiders.” I told him to go home, and if the guy had time, he would go give him the spider talk next, then shut and locked the door. D slowly walked down my porch, staring in the windows as he went, until I saw him go into his house.

So now I have this wide-eyed bug guy sitting on my couch asking me a million questions about D, very confused about what he just witnessed. I give him a little backstory only to be interrupted by another visit from D. This time he’s just standing at the edge of my driveway, eating a new apple, staring in my windows, then slowly moves to the front of my house and is standing back to the street, just openly gawking, still shirtless. At this point I have also texted my neighbor across the street who I think saw everything, and she’s sending me warning texts about his every move. All the while, bug guy, who I’ve now learned is named Rigo, is trying to give me tips on how to stay safe, and telling me I should call the cops. I finally decide that maybe I should call the cops - in spite of their lack of help with my Bob situation - but that I will at least warn D first.

I head to the door and peek my head out and ask if I can help him with something to which he screams at me, “Quit wasting my time! Just quit wasting my time and quit looking at me!! I’m not looking at you, quit looking at me!!” The whole time he is gesturing and waving his arms wildly, apple pieces flying, but slowly retreating back to his place.

I come back inside and sit down, and Rigo and I just stare at each other, trying to process the events unfolding before us. And then, somehow, Rigo starts explaining to me that he’s new here in Wichita, and is asking if I know any good places to go hang out. Somehow this evolves into a conversation about me teaching Spanish, and him basically asking me to prove that I can speak Spanish, so I do, and he is floored and immediately responds back in Spanish. Apparently his parents are from Mexico, and he was just spending a semester in Bilbao when Covid hit Spain. We start talking of our love of Spain and travel, and adventure, and pretty soon realize it’s 7:30pm, and he’s been in my house over an hour. We exchange Instagram handles, I explain this blog to him and make him take a photo with me to give credibility to my story - and just for myself to remember this bizarre night, that somehow is just another strange and magical “day in the life” of me.

(Don’t worry y’all, I’m calling the cops next time D tries to come talk to me, and I definitely keep all my doors locked, and censors set.)