Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Who are the people in your neighborhood???

Yesterday one of my friends started a new grad class at school--
during it he was texting me--
apparently he was bored and the teachers monotone voice was doing nothing to engage him in the material--then all of a sudden i get a text saying
"She is quoting Mr. Rogers" as in the "It's a bea-ti-ful day in the Neighborhood", Mr. Rogers.
I just had to laugh--I loved Mr. Rogers
I have blogged about Mr. Rogers
and with that blog entry I won a book.
Mr. Rogers was an awesome neighbor
he spoke about being kind to one another
and treating each other with respect--
something i think society is lacking greatly in these days.

As with his song about the beautiful day in the Neighborhood there is another song about Neighborhoods--it has been stuck in my brain all day. At first i thought it was a Mr. Rogers song but then i realized i was channeling Sesame Street as i was singing it. Perhaps you might remember it
"Who are the people in you neighborhood,
in your neighborhood,
in your Neigh-BOR-hood.
Oh who are the people in you neighborhood,
the people that you meet
when your walking down the street,
the people that you meeeeet eaaachhh DAAAAYYYYYY."

I will have to apologize for my singing
we all know it is not my strong suit,
but you get the gist.

Now that i have this little diddy ingrained in your brain
i would like to talk about the people in my neighborhood.

I am the first to say i am not what i would call a GOOD neighbor
that doesn't necessary make me a bad neighbor,
just an INDIFFERENT neighbor.

I say that because in all honesty i really don't know my neighbors.
I will blame a lot of that on just being busy.
I don't even have time for the people I want to spend time with
even those that live in my house,
let alone those that are just living next to me.

Now i know the neighbors next to me are or were in college
they have smoked pot (not that i smelt it but once they called us asking us if we had some to sell--which of course we did NOT)
then there is the artist across the street
(he lets his dogs run loose)
Then right next to us we have had a rental home
we knew the people that owned it--they were young and nice and then they sold it
and since then it has had a variety of college kids inhabiting it.
It is hard to get to know them--
they are busy and had lots of sleepovers
so you never really knew who was actually living there.
I just know that they had parties that were annoying,
especially when they would block my drive way and the front of my house late at night...

So the college kids moved out and he house sat empty for a long time
and we really didn't mind--
in fact we liked having the extra driveway to park in
we thought it made the house looked "lived" in

Finally after the house sat empty for a year and a half
we had people move in--
and not the single, partying type of people
it was a FAMILY!
We were excited,
hopeful...
at least for the first few days...
fast forward to the weekend
and the first family gathering,
and pAr-tehhh
the party itself wasn't the problem--
or the cussing and swearing that took place
or the fighting
and cars squealing off--
it was the domestic abuse in the driveway that my children were privy to that i had a problem with. Call me crazy but i really don't want my kids to be exposed to that...
So the cops were called
and i must say i was impressed with their response time.
Not quite the first impression that i was hoping to have with my new neighbors
Here is hoping that things have no where to go but up?