Parking Spaces

Wyatt and I have a driveway in the backyard with a gate that we gain access to through an alley. When we first moved in to the house parking in the driveway was a necessity because we were new on the block and parking on our street and many others is at a premium. Unfortunately many of our neighbors who don't use the alley for parking use it instead as a garbage disposal place REGARDLESS of the signs that state it is illegal to dump trash in the alley. We also learned that calling the city to come enforce this law is fruitless...beyond fruitless it's an exercise in frustration. We convinced (or rather I should say Wyatt convinced) our next door neighbor Tracy to clean up behind his house so we could use the shorter end of the alley to gain access to our driveway. This helped tremendously but still we faced a shortage of parking out front or on the street when we knew it was going to be an in and out kind of day. Being pregnant has been an introduction of sorts to many people on our street and all of them gave us some advice about the parking...Get Orange Traffic Cones to block the space in front of the house. I didn't believe it would work. As soon as I started taking a good three minutes to manage to get my 34+ week pregnant belly out of the car and another three to five to walk less than half of a block I went out and bought the cones. I really didn't think it would work...IT DOES! Not only do they leave space for the Volvo but if there appears to be too little space someone runs out of their house to move for me! Of course I then need to spend a few minutes discussing how the pregnancy is going and how it's our first and NO we don't know what it's going to be. At that point there is speculation as to what I'm having and information shared about the number of children the person who nicely moved their car has...average number of children is FIVE. Each of the mothers has her own set of Traffic Cones for during pregnancy. So until I give birth Wyatt and I have frontal parking so that I don't have to try to open and close the gate in the back of the house AND so we have quick access when the hospital trip comes around! Kudos to Wyatt for really being friendly with the neighbors and Thanks to all our neighbors for being considerate and friendly to a pregnant lady!