Neighbors

Saturday night, Audrey woke up at 3am and had a very hard time of falling back to sleep. It made for a very slow, lazy Sunday, but in the spirit of stepping outside of the house, we decided to walk next door and meet the new neighbors (the ones who just moved in to the un-occupy-able house with the trim painted in 3 clashing colors of green). We made some cookies, gathered up the bebe, and walked next door.

We caught Elija weed-eating, and his wife (what was her name??) watching the news. She was a bit reserved when she answered the door, but once her husband greeted us, she opened her Louisiana heart up and we got at least 80% of her most recent life story in the 30 minutes we were standing on her front porch.

She is an alternative school teacher in Monroe, Louisiana, and she's ready to do something more 9-5 but she's not ready to look yet so that's why she'll only be in town for 3 more weeks then it's back to Louisiana to do one more year at her school then she'll come over and settle and try to find something in the area but not in schools because she's tired of other people's kids and she thought she was just tired of kids but she has 3-year-old and 7-month-old grandbabies one girl one boy and she loves having them around the girl is her daughter's baby and the boy is her son's baby the first grandbabies of the family one lives in Lancaster the other in Dallas and she sees the girl every morning like clockwork in fact they were here this morning and sure her daughter loves it but they keep you busy (about this time, Audrey started blowing raspberries, probably because she was trying to remind the lady to take a breath, or at least us some punctuation) but they're great they really love the new house you know they were trying to get that house across the street but it didn't work out they'd have family meetings in the circle drive every month but they'd have to pay five thousand dollars just to bid on it and that was ridiculous and it had a crack through the foundation that a baby could fall in to and when the daughter saw the house they now own she said 'no matter what this is my parents' house' and so they got it and it was a bonus because no one had ever lived there before and that's why it was so appealing...

About this time, I started trying to wrap up the conversation...

... but what's sad is in Louisiana you could leave town for a month and leave your doors unlocked and when you get home everything is still in place but they say you can't do that in this neighborhood but in Louisiana everyone is one big family and they're really open and the church they just joined has a pastor from Mississippi and he understands but says don't do that here...

...wow, look at the time, it's getting close to Audrey's bed time! It was nice to meet you...

...there sure are a lot of empty houses around here and it seems like all of them need work and they're just happy they got the one they're in because it feels like home and their daughter was right... (the husband hasn't said a word this whole time)

...well, we're glad y'all came along and filled this house, it's nice to have neighbors on both sides!

Finally, we said our good-byes and headed home. What a neighbor! At least she's friendly! But we got our dose of neighbors for the week... or so we thought....

So 3am rolls around again, and this time Kyle is awakened to a spotlight being shined at the side of our house from the OTHER neighbors' driveway... he looks out the window to see the power company sneaking around their driveway, spotlighting first our house, then the side of theirs. They were there for only a few minutes, and in processing it later, we can only conclude that they were there at such an odd hour on a mission, presumably to turn their power off.

Never a dull moment!