I made merciless fun of the new Kroger when it first opened. Partly it was because of the full-blown jewelry store up near the pharmacy – I couldn’t imagine a scenario that would cause someone to make use of it: “Honey, we need some Tylenol and oh, what the heck, let’s get married!” And partly it’s because to get to the milk, you have to pass through the furniture aisle. That’s right – furniture in a grocery store.

For some reason, it doesn’t bother me that Walmart sells milk and furniture within close proximity. Because here’s the thinking behind that: “We need a new bookshelf, and, what the heck, we’re out of milk.”

But the other way around? I wasn’t buying it. Until I went to the new Kroger on the day before Thanksgiving. On my way to the milk, there was a big rug for $50 that would cover up nicely the bad patch on the carpet, where Girl yerked and I finished ruining with a do-it-yourself steam cleaning job.

When I came through my back door hauling a big hunk of rug, Bob shouted, “Oh no! You’ve been Krogerized!”

It could have been worse. Much worse. There are rows and rows of colorful pillows back there by the milk, and wouldn’t they look nice on the sofa? There’s a guilty pleasure in getting something you don’t need while you’re on the way to getting something that you really do need. Maybe that’s what Kroger is banking on.

Still, I’m sad to see the old Kroger go, like a sad old dog that has to be put out of its misery. I shopped there one last time yesterday. The little fountain that my kids always begged to throw pennies into is history; same with the mums by the front door. Everything has been stripped down, never to be restocked again. I didn’t realize until yesterday just how scuzzy the place had become. I will miss it, though. I knew the contents of every aisle, and I could get in and out in 30 minutes with everything on my list. And practically nothing that was not.

For card-carrying adults, Saturday mornings are nothing like the sugar-cereal/morning cartoon induced stupor of childhood. Saturday mornings now are usually a swirl of getting people to the right places and buying/washing/cleaning all necessities for the upcoming week. In other words, they’re no damn fun AT ALL.

Except for yesterday morning, when something completely wacky happened. My neighbor built the world’s longest slip and slide on the slope leading down to the river. He used a 200 foot by 16 foot sheet of plastic his grown son ordered online just for that very purpose. They rigged up a sprinkler at the top and a garden hose midway to keep the plastic wet, and poured Palmolive over the whole thing to make it slippery. By the time the kids and I went down there to check it out, the 20 kids sliding up and down the hill were a sudsy mess. (Note to two sets of grandparents: The slide did NOT end in the river.)

My kids hung back for awhile, until they recognized some kids from their school. Turns out Girl goes to school with my neighbor’s grandson. Boy soon fell in with a pack of boys and before I knew it, they were all tumbling down the hill, on tubes, pool floats and bare stomachs, over and over. I called Boy’s best friend who lives a few streets over, and he showed up in his bathing suit, ready for action. The rest of the day, my kids kept saying, “Man, that was fun!”

It was the closest thing to sledding my Texas-bred kids have ever experienced. And the best redneck slip and slide ever. Sometimes there are advantages to living outside the homeowner association zone.

I’m not much of a Monopoly player. I get too attached to the high-dollar properties and usually end up losing all my money before the game is over.

Bob, on the other hand, is excellent at it. He usually snags the roachy purple properties near GO – Mediterranean and Baltic Avenue, then puts hotels on them. By the end of the game, he’s cleaned everyone out.

So it was that when my neighbor P’s property came up for sale, Bob jumped on it with a bid hours after the “for sale” sign went up. To me this is the equivalent of buying Baltic Avenue. We already own Mediterranean.

Our house is what you might kindly call a “fixer-upper.” We have been fixer-upping for six years now with no end in sight. P. wanted to sell us her house a while back. She told Bob, “Those kids need a good house to grow up in.” Implying that ours is not.

P. is now in a nursing home and her son says she is at peace with the idea of selling her house. I have my doubts. Her counter-offer can best be described as hard-assed. She seems to have forgotten that the Bob who wants to buy her place is the same Bob who picked her up off the ground and washed the blood off her knees. The same Bob who rushed over to meet the ambulance in the middle of the night. The same Bob who kept her children informed of her condition. Maybe it’s dementia. Or maybe it’s just her.

No matter. P has given us pause, and pause is a good thing. Bob did some more math and the numbers are not friendly. That little red hotel she’s built over there could drain our stack of bills.

Plus, we’re asking ourselves if it make sense to buy Baltic when there’s still so much work to do on Mediterranean. The whole game has made me rethink my little green plastic house here. One of the reasons I have been willing to keep fixer-upping has been that we were zoned to a good junior high and high school. It now looks as if that is going to change, and if it does, I may want to put Mediterranean on the market. Staying here is not worth it to me if it means Boy and Girl have to go to Thug High.

So yes, I continue to suck at Monopoly. I’m trying hard not to suck at the Game of Life.

Yesterday Bob and I were sitting in the backyard enjoying a glass of cheap white wine after work when we heard a loud BEEP BEEP BEEP coming from the street. We looked past the gate and saw a white and blue fire truck pulling into our neighbor’s yard. Again.

Bob set his wine glass down and hustled over to the neighbor’s house while I shooed our curious kids inside.

Ambulances, police cars and fire trucks are weekly visitors to my neighbor’s house, but they usually come during the daytime when only Bob is home to see them. The kids and I usually hear about it later. “P is in the hospital again,” Bob will say.

It falls to Bob to call her children, feed her dog, pick up her mail and help her into her house whenever she returns. This cycle has been going on for about a year now.

P is only in her sixties but her body is giving out from a combination of abuse, disease and neglect. Yesterday the EMS person told Bob the medication P is taking now is so heavy duty that she should not be living alone anymore. And yet, she is.

P’s children seem either paralyzed to act, or else they are moving at glacial speed. They say they are going to put her in an assisted living facility, but when? It seems they are playing a waiting game with their mother. It’s a game I will never play with my mother, and one I pray my children will never play with me.

As neighbors we cannot make the call to put P in a home. We cannot gather her things and say, “Don’t worry anymore. You’ll be taken care of. You’re going to be okay.”

I pray for my neighbor, feeling impotent. I’m glad to see the paramedics these days. Used to be when P went to the hospital, I’d pray that she could come home soon. Now I pray that she does not.