nebby

So we've met our neighbors. (In a good way.) We moved in to our new place so quickly that we really didn't get a chance to investigate where we were moving. We just came hurtling in right before Christmas. But I knew it wasn't a neighborhood you had to worry about. In fact it is probably one of the safest places we've ever lived. It's a cul-de-sac, so we don't get a lot of traffic here. There are some middle-schoolers (or freshmen, I'm not sure, they have no car) who live further in, and we have two houses on either side of us and really nobody across the street. We obviously all share one of those postal box blocks but I never see anyone going to get mail or find anyone getting mail while I'm there. At first I watched on trash day to guess when to put out our recycling vs regular trash, but that is a bit misleading since I think only two other houses use the "covenant approved" garbage collector. Actually the fact that you don't see anyone, _ever_ underlines the shared social illusion of absolute privacy on this street. These houses are so close that it has the potential to be very nebby (Pittsburgheze for neighborly, i.e. nosy and noisy) but it is not. In Pittsburgh, this would open it up to "porch" theater (winter: yelling stuff off your porch and summer: throwing stuff off your porch.) but not so here. The most you see is someone running or walking their dog, which is a very CO thing to do, btw.

But now that we are here, I'm beginning to notice that my beige house on my beige lawn on my beige street is not surrounded by "beige" neighbors. The neighbors to our right are a nice chinese couple. There is at least one african american family living further down as well as another asian ethnicity family also, at least if I can guess based on those middle schoolers walking by my house each day. It's not so much that I need to have a rainbow of people around me to make me feel all mutlicultural, but it is great to see something other than pockets (or frankly ghettos) of ethnically similar people living together for protection more than a sense community, like in other places we've lived. I mean don't get me wrong. This place is still pretty beige, but I'm glad to not be living some place where we had to debate about if ecru and eggshell are the same color as taupe. Yes I'm totally just throwing color names around now. For what it matters, the beige neighbors have been pretty friendly too. For instance, we left the garage door open as we left for the Christmas travel in December, and someone out there called the sheriff, who came over to make sure it wasn't a break in. No I have no concerns about this neighborhood at all.

So back to meeting our neighbors. Remember I mentioned my friend's car? The nice couple next door wants to know if it's ours or if it should be towed. We fessed up to being terribly ineffective at this whole suburbia living thing, and there were apologies all around. (Paul and I were confused by the door bell for one thing and left them out on our door stoop too long.) So we promised to get it moved and were able to wish them a Happy New Year. Suppose I should start digging out our house more so next time I can invite them in for a cup of tea or something. How does one do neighborhoods in the burbs?