Inspiration- Rouges

I get ideas for characters from all sorts of random places. But, really, I don't need to look that far. I'm married to one.

During the day DH has a nice, legal, job. He pays his taxes, volunteers in the community, plays with his kids, and helps the neighbors with projects. Really he's an upstanding guy and good citizen. But all that goodness seems to evaporate when the two of us get time to just relax and look around...

This evening we were out walking and decided to turn down the dirt road that's just gone in. There's a tree nursery down there and someone bought the land for new houses. I think it's a shame, I like not having a busy subdivision and I appreciate the trees. But I don't get to pick. So we walked down, commenting on the trees that are going to be chopped down and how much we'd like such nice trees in our (very empty) yard.

Then we see the back ho, just sitting there.

At this point a law abiding citizen would keep walking, thinking nothing about the machinery.

My husband (and I- I'm a bit of a rogue myself I suppose) both looked at the machine and went... Huh, well wouldn't you know it. We need and lookee there!

DH walked up and came back smiling. "It doesn't need keys to start, that was their first mistake."

For the record, we did walk away and leave the machine and trees unmolested. Tempting as it was I'm sure the neighbor would notice. I need to go chat with all the local gals and when they are all in (or suitably snockered) we can proceed.

Or I can make some phone calls Monday morning and see if the developers would like to kindly donate the trees and I'll give them a receit as a tax write off.

So our walk was uneventful. We toured the neighborhood, talked about the abandoned houses (3 locally, 1 at least because of a murder) and looked for a security sign we could snag for our yard. To best of my knowledge no one in this neighborhood had a security system installed. I don't think they monitor this far from the city. But some people have signs, snatched from other peoples yards, which makes them communal signs and fair game if they are left behind. But we live in an area that a moving family won't stop with packing the contents of the houses, one family took the "for sale" sign and the mail box on their way out.

There's got to be a story behind that.