Neighbors

Living in a neighborhood usually means you will have neighbors. Sometimes those neighbors are friendly and other times they are asses. We’ve been fortunate enough to have had mostly great neighbors both here and where we used to live. It certainly makes for a better living environment than if we all argued over which side of the fence the blackberries and ivy was coming from. For the record, the blackberries were from their side and the ivy was on both, but only because it spread from their side onto our side of the fence.

Anyway, last night we were invited over to our next door neighbors’s house for margaritas and games. At first we were a little hesitant because, well, we would have just said our goodbyes to my brother and his family as they were driving back to California, and because, well, we don’t know them all too well. But we decided to go for it. I’m so glad we did. We had a blast getting to know each other and playing games with their friends and coworkers and kids. It almost makes me want to make our house presentable enough to have them over for dinner. Almost.

Neighbors and Pyrotechnics

Our neighbor across the street likes fireworks… a lot. I mean alotalotalotalotalot.

We are fortunate enough to live in an area where there is usually a pretty good Fourth of July Independence Day show just on our street. So we decided to invite people over to spend the day at our house then for those who were still here when darkness began to fall, we moved our chairs out to the driveway and watched a magnificent display. It was amazing and we only occasionally were hit with random shells. It had gotten a little chilly, so it was also a great excuse to pull out my quilts and show everyone before we wrapped them over our laps and legs to watch the show.

Fireworks

I can understand people wanting to shoot off fireworks for the Fourth of July. But I don’t understand why people insist on bursting their bombs into the wee hours of the night on the days leading up to it as well.

Fireworks have their place, which is to mark celebrations on a grand scale. In my opinion, they do not belong in the hands of minors and drunks, but alas, that is usually where they end up. I suppose I’d feel different if we didn’t have cats freaking out the last few nights or kids trying to sleep. Then again, probably not. I’ve never really been a big fireworks fan, other than as an observer. At least our dog doesn’t mind them at all.

Although, I suppose I do have to thank our landlord for telling us that Independence Day in this neighborhood is pretty crazy before we moved in. However, I wasn’t expecting the sheer amount of fireworks going off. I mean, we moved from an area where there were quite a few white trash people across the street in various forms of mobile dwellings ranging from manufactured homes, travel trailers and old school buses that fortunately were out of view from the street thanks to a thick line of pine trees. But their blatant pyromaniacy was quite prominent. It makes me wonder why people can’t afford to buy their kids decent clothes, but have the money to spend hundreds of dollars on a few minutes worth of crappy entertainment. Okay, so now I’m just being mean, but seriously, the cost isn’t worth the end results. I can think of many other things to spend that money on.

I guess I just don’t understand the whole fascination with lighting them off myself when I can watch them at various places for free with better displays than anything sold on the market. While large crowds aren’t really my thing either, I’d still rather watch them at Fort Vancouver here in town or drive up to Longview, Washington for the display around Lake Sacajawea than watch our neighbors light off their inferior rockets. I know many people will disagree with me on this issue, but I’m just saying I can think of far more important things to spend my money on. However, I suppose I also must take into account that these displays are partially funded by sales of fireworks from official stands, so to that end, I also must thank those same people for funding these shows.

Neighbors

Yesterday was probably the oddest day of my life. We actually met neighbors… a lot of them.

Okay, so we had been in our old house for over thirteen years and met two neighbors; the one to our left and the one to our right. That’s about it. Oh sure, we’ve seen others, but as far as having actual conversations, those two are it. Yesterday as my husband and I were unloading yet another load, one of the neighbors a couple houses down from us came up and introduced herself and we struck up a conversation, along with her husband and one of her four kids. Then we took Lucy for a walk. I couldn’t tell you how many people we had to stop and talk to during our short walk around the neighborhood before getting the mail, but I know that everybody was super friendly and practically everyone had dogs and all wanted to say hello to ours. Quite honestly it was rather refreshing to see that neighbors really do exist.

At first I was a little creeped out by it, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is going to be nice. Seeing people actually use their front porches, kids riding their bikes with abandon in the middle of the street, coyotes howling at night. Okay, so that last part, while I like the thought of hearing them, does give me some worry about the cats accidentally getting out and the chickens when we move them over tomorrow, but we have a plan to make the coop a little more secure than it is currently. I mean, we built the thing to withstand 200 mile per hour winds and raccoons, not coyotes.

Anyway, I think it will be nice living in an actual neighborhood, one where we can actually walk without fear of getting run over by cars and that actually has sidewalks and streetlights. And so far the people we’ve met have been great, which I was a little worried about. Considering they had their suspicions about the previous tenants being, well, slobs, I know that we will be better neighbors to them. Yes, I think this is exactly what we need at this point in our lives.