Is There Life After Hockey?

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Now that the Chicago Blackhawks have finally done it -- they've won the Stanley Cup after a 49-year drought -- life around the Teeters household can come back to normal. The winter sports season -- on June 9th -- came to an end.

The past seven weeks have revolved around the Hawks' playoff schedule, and the mood in the house has been dictated daily by the recent successes or failures of the team. Robin is a long-suffering fan, and I'm a fully-converted hockey lover. The kids all have Robin's devotion, and if I'm not mistaken, even the dog looked forward to the occasional breakaway one-on-one rush that ended in a Hawks score. When the Hawks won, everyone was happy. After a loss, the mood went dark.

But now it's over. No more planning meal times around the starting time, or planning mid-day naps to accommodate the west-coast late-night finishes. No more scheduling the lawn mowing, car washing, and laundry-doing around the games.

And no more putting off the blog writing. Now I can finally get back to hatin' on my neighbors.

The Hawks' success gave me a period of serenity about my neighbor, the dick -- the Polish feller across the street. He still leaves his garbage cans out in the street for days on end, and his lawn hasn't been mowed in three weeks.

But a while back I made a prejudice-induced guess that he may like hockey, being Polish and all... In my experience, my eastern-European acquaintances -- especially the vowelly-deprived ones -- are more into hockey and soccer than baseball and American football. So I cut him the same slack I expected everyone to cut me when I was too busy drinking to do anything until it became a crisis. But the playoffs ended last Wednesday, and he still hasn't mowed his yard. That leaves only drinking or laziness as his excuse.

He's had a great scam going over the last few years. As a contractor, he has a few connections in the local white-slavery trade. So about every other week you would see a new landscaping company attack his yard. Mexican guys everywhere -- mowing, raking, trimming -- the whole nine yards. Then, I have to assume, the check would bounce. Two weeks later, a different company was on the job, whacking away making a great first impression. Never to return. Eventually I think the word got out, because the weed crop is coming in strong across the street.

He could get my kid to mow his lawn for pretty cheap, as I have an awesome lawnmower. But I don't think he wants to be too friendly with us over here. Maybe it's because when he leaves his garbage cans in the street past Monday, I pull them into his driveway at 5 a.m. Tuesday. Then his wife has to get out of her car and move them in order to go get more vodka and cigarettes. That's the kind of passive-aggressive neighbors we've become.

I really want to steal the cans outright, or lay in some heavy Fourth-of-July ordinance and blow them right off their freaking wheels, but I'm sure that's over the line. Besides, I heard their house is going into foreclosure, and I don't want to be too mean.

Because, like Earl and his mentor Carson Daly, I believe in karma.