Good Neighbors

I haven't written much here this year in part because for the last several months I have mostly been out of town for work.  During the time I was gone, I lived in a short term rental, furnished apartment in a building where I did not know a single person.  There were other people living there for sure -- I saw their Amazon packages, piled up in the corridor -- but I rarely saw anyone.  It's not that the neighborhood wasn't a "real neighborhood" -- on Halloween, there was a huge neighborhood festival and entire families in costume out trick-or-treating in the early evening, and occupants of single family homes were set up in the front yard in costume with vats of candy to hand out -- but my building, no.

Now I am back, and getting caught up on what's going on here. We have houses under construction on both ends of the street but several houses that were on the market are now under contract (at least according to the signs in the yards).

So we are expecting several new neighbors soon, unless the plan is to knock down the house and start over. 

The moving truck followed by the home theater installation people and Xfinity have been at one house (the "Under Contract" sign has been down there for a while), and there's now a car in the driveway, so we figure we do have new neighbors, but at least as of yesterday, the neighbors on either side of them haven't met them yet.  I will try to get brownies made today and take them over.  Wessyngton women are having our more-or-less annual festive winter seasonal event later this week, and we'll need to make sure to pass along the invitation to that, too.

This is what neighbors are supposed to do -- stop by when new people move in, not with the expectation that we will all end up being best of friends (although of course that might happen), but that if I'm out of town you might be willing to pick up my mail and my newspaper for a couple of days, or help me find my lost dog.  This does not appear to be the norm everywhere, I know - there was the terribly depressing post I saw during the summer, written by an elderly lady in Southern California who tried hard to get to know her neighbors, but no one reciprocated, (and no, I don't usually read The Federalist - I don't even remember how I came across this) and there are the regular reports that fewer people know their neighbors now than in the past.  (And of course, sometimes it just doesn't work because some people are terrible people.)  That's not our local ecology, here, but I know it is that way in many neighborhoods.  A lot of us here try hard to be good neighbors.

When I was in the apartment, there was an electronic lock on my door that didn't require a key.  One time when I was on an early morning flight back to Atlanta I realized after I got to the airport that I hadn't locked the door when I left.  The normal thing would be to ask a neighbor to lock it, but I did not know one person in the building - so I had to ask the property management company to send someone by to lock the door. 

But I have to go now.  I need to make some brownies.