It figures!

In about 2 weeks I will have lived in this house for 7 years. In all that time, with the exception of the neighbors right next door, we have had nothing but passing acquaintances with just a few of our other neighbors. This is not the kind of neighborhood I or my daughter grew up in.

First of all, we had ‘blocks’, not developments. FireFaerie and her friend dubbed the new developments in our northern town as "Houses of the Corn"! I always found that amusing. Anyway, in our old neighborhood, I would disappear for half an hour sometimes because Mrs. G from two houses up would invite me in for a cup of tea, or I could be found talking over the fence with Mrs. W and listening to how my great grandfather would flirt with her when she was young and pissing off my great grandmother to no end! Everyone at least said hello and were on a first name basis with their neighbors and it was nice place to be.

There were always kids and all the moms and dads would keep an eye out on all of them. If the kid from the third floor next door had to use the bathroom and didn’t want to climb all those stairs, he had no problem running into my house instead and that was fine with me. If the yard got quiet and I wondered where my kid was, I would stick my head out my window and call for her and the neighbor would stick her head out her window and tell me she was watching a show with her kid. OK, send her back for supper unless you want to feed her! lol. There were even times when chairs got set up and iced teas passed out and the parents had just as much fun sitting in the shade talking as the kids did running around. And on the rare occassion, homemade cookies made the rounds and once even hors d’oeurves that someone was experimenting with got passed around!

But that’s not what it’s like here and I miss that. Actually even the old neighborhood has changed drastically and isn’t like that anymore. Is just the neighborhood or the whole way of life that’s changed? We know some of the neighbors here by their last names only because of the mailboxes and the most in depth conversation we’ve had with any of them is about the weather or the pets. And as far as the Harrisses go, we just gave them a wide berth. They are the ones most upset with our moving in and I couldn’t blame them really, with the bunch of teenagers we had! LOL! In fact, I even told the boys that she was a witch to scare them and keep them out of her flower bed when they play ball! Hey it worked!

But we are moving anyway so no big deal. We are not leaving behind friends we will miss. Well, we might have been, but there’s no time to cultivate a friendship now. The dreaded Mrs Harriss has relaxed quite a bit (perhaps because the kids are gone?) and actually will have a conversation with me now. She absolutely loves dogs and adores Jasmine even though she can’t get within 5 feet of her, but she will always check to see if she is still doing well and we talk of other things now too in addition to my old girl.

The other morning, I had not changed out of my pajamas to walk Jasmine, I just threw on a sweatshirt, filled up my old Dunkin Donuts thermos cup with coffee and off we went. On the way back we ran into Mrs H as she was getting ready to water her lawn and there I am in my pink sleep pants with dogs and cats all over them and I realize I am having an animated conversation with this woman who is standing there in her blue sleep pants with dogs all over them, a sweatshirt thrown on top of them and she’s holding a thermos size cup of coffee! We laughed when we realized how alike we were dressed and kept talking for about 15 minutes until Jasmine (just like a kid) started whining and wanting to finish her walk.

Mrs H even asked what we were doing for Memorial Day. It didn’t dawn on me at the time as I told her we would be picking up our boys that weekend, but I wonder if that might have been an invitation of some sort if we were free? Seven years and we have made no friends to speak of, and now that we are moving, it figures that just now the neighbors are beginning to talk to us! Oh well, that’s the way it goes I guess!