Since everyone’s writing about politics these days, it was thoroughly refreshing when I stumbled across the print edition of a marvelous Nashville mommy blog.

Their police records (along with their bed sheets) are lily white. They think a ‘shake down’ is what you do at the end of Jazzercise class. And they’d sooner eat razor blades than a plate of homemade manicotti. But cross the Mommy Mafia and they’ll whack your social standing faster than you can utter the words ‘Cosa Nostra.’

The writing is excellent, the content hilarious.
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I’m tempted to write to her, advice-column style, about a little neighbor boy who’s been rather un-neighborly lately.  He’s not actually a little boy, but a boomerang kid, who showed up on my doorstep last week to report that my dog had pooped — not the term he used — in his grandmother’s yard.  Granted, we do have a leash law, and Dog is supposed to remain in my yard at all times… but, accidents happen.  You know, kids leave the door open, a storm throws the breaker powering the radio fence, or the battery in Dog’s collar goes dead.  It doesn’t happen often, and most of the time, someone will simply call to let me know where he is.

I appreciate that; I don’t want Dog to be hit by a car.

I’ve always shown the same consideration to our other neighbors.  There’s a golden retriever nearby who’s so afraid of thunderstorms that he’ll run through his own invisible fence, and get into my car.  Yes, the golden retriever can open my car doors.  There’s  another who found a way out of his traditional fence, and I just took him into the house until his owner got home… he’s not used to being out, and I didn’t want him to get lost or hurt, either.  I’m quite fond of animals, and often judge people by the way they treat animals — their own, as well as others’.

After complaining in person last week, the little neighbor boy called the dogcatcher the next morning, before I’d had a chance to buy new batteries and get back home with them.  Fortunately, by the time the dogcatcher got to my house to leave a notice on Tuesday, new batteries were installed and Dog was where he belongs.

See, if I had a Mommy Mafia like the one described in Suburban Turmoil, maybe one of them could arrange a job offer for this kid peddling magazine subscriptions in Timbuctu.  Or feed him fruit gummies with perservatives and high-fructose corn syrup.  Or something.