Loving Thy Neighbor.

I recently became better friends with one of our neighbors. I met her in early summer of 2009 after I had posted some garage cabinets on freecycle. They happened to live on the next street over in our neighborhood. I didn't talk to the couple much when they came to my door because I was in my first trimester and very sleepy and not in the mood to chat so Rob "handled" the freecycle transaction. Months later I ran into the wife in the park and started talking about kids, etc. since my bump was more pronounced. We would run into them from time to time and they were always very nice. After I had Charlie and when she was very pregnant with her son I told Rob I wanted to buy her something for the baby and ask them over for dinner. Rob told me that would be very weird because we didn't really know them. I was a little bummed and not confident enough to say "who cares!" so I let it go. I would later see her in the park with her newborn and older daughter and we'd chat a bit more about babies, shared hospital stories (we delivered at the same hospital) and c-section stories (we were both c-section mamas). I knew I liked her and thought she was very sweet, funny, etc. Its been tough meeting friends in our neighborhood because Rob and I are a bit younger than most families and I'd say the average kid age would be about 8 or 10. So I was excited to meet someone who I felt I clicked with but I wasn't sure where to take it from there. Long story short, this woman and I recently created a "mom's group" in our neighborhood and we've been spending more time together (at least once a week) and I'm loving having someone in our hood to hang out with.

After thinking about my new buddy, I started to think about neighbors in my prior residences. Growing up, I'd say my family didn't always "click" with neighbors. I'm not saying there was drama - we'd just exchange pleasantries and thats as far as it went for the most part. Well, speaking of drama, I DID one time bring a dead possom to my neighbor's doorstep once for them to see it. I got a pair of pliers from  my dad's tool area and grabbed the dead possom by the tail and laid it on their doorstep and rang the doorbell to show it off to them (it was very large). I got in a little bit of trouble for that. Oh and I did toilet paper their house once and when the mom told me she was going to tell my mom I told her "she already knows we're doing this" - I'm sure that didn't help the neighbor relationship. By the way, my mom really did know we were going to do that. Mom, that might not have won you some good neighbor points, but you were a pretty cool mom I must say!

Then after college, I got a myspace message from someone telling me he lives above me in our complex and asked me over for some Persian tea sometime. Stalker!

Then Rob and I moved in together in our townhouse where we finally met some "normal" people. One couple were boyfriend/girlfriend and we'd go over for drinks and dinner and vise versa. One time we drove by and there was a moving truck so we stopped to chat and we found out they broke up so there went that friendship. Then a couple moved in literally right across from us. They were engaged, fun and we really liked them. One day I saw the guy outside BBQ-ing and asked "so how's married life?" and he said "I wouldn't know." I said "shut up!" (laughed) and he basically told me they called off the wedding and his ex-fiancee moved back to San Diego and he was moving to Texas.

So I'm happy to say my/our losing streak with neighbors seems to be gone.