Thursday, September 15, 2011

Neighborhood Picnic

"Alice thought the whole thing very absurd,
but they all looked so grave that she did not dare to laugh."
I'm a little late getting this up, but the past week has been spent on the big push to get everything packed in preparation for the main move this coming Sunday. I'm also noticing blogger is being strange and now I can't get the text to fill in the column next to inserted images. I dislike not being able to neatly layout my posts and having to waste space.

A week ago on Thursday, our new neighborhood was having their annual picnic, hosted by the City, at the little park half a block from our new house. A didn't know until the day of whether or not she would be able to attend (she ended up not), so I had made sure to make an A-friendly side dish to bring to the potluck. The City provided hot dogs and salmon and lemonade served by city council members and some of our local firefighters and police officers. The neighborhood then brought side dishes and desserts to share. They also held a raffle for a few prizes (we didn't win anything) and had a table with City-related flyers.

We met many of our new neighbors and we're in for an interesting time as there are a few notable characters!
 At least based on the demographic who attended, there aren't really any younger couples our age, which is a shame. Most of the folks seem to be in the upper 40s-50s-60s range. The neighbor we had met the previous weekend greeted us and directed us to grab some grub and have fun. (I think I'm going to be calling her the Block Mom because that's what she feels like to me.) One of the first neighbors we met was our neighbor immediately to the west. He's a bachelor maybe in his early to mid40s. He seemed to glom onto J pretty well for most of the picnic.

I met more neighbors, but the most notable of which I shall call Philippa (through my unique word association name game). She talks quite the blue streak and could even give a good contest to the two people I usually use as my top scores. She apparently gardens quite a lot, but the thing that was most shocking, was she told me outright that she stole one of the plants from our yard! She laughed and said someone "nailed" her on it, too. Apparently, she thinks it's no big deal that she dug up a plant from our yard that she wanted because it died after she transplanted it to her yard. Um...no, that doesn't make it ok. The only reason it doesn't bother me more is because I have NO idea what the plant was she took, I didn't recognize the name and none of the plants I'm fond of are missing. She gave advice when I mentioned we had to remember to water the plants before we left that evening and offered to water our plants during the day until we move in. She seems nice enough, but one to keep my eye on as she specifically mentioned that she wants some of these other flowers we have. (I know them but can never remember their name).

This week has been spent PACKING and we're no where near done and I'm already sick of it. We're going to move as much as we can ourselves on Saturday, but the main thing will be moving all the furniture on Sunday, at which point we'll be finally staying in our new house. So far, we only have one friend lined up who can help us with the furniture. I sure hope some more can because I'm not remotely strong enough to help J with all that heavy and awkward furniture.

1 comment:

  1. Good luck on the move, it's a hassle for sure but your house looks awesome so it will be worth the effort. I really wish I would have experienced the neighborhood stuff when I was there in Seattle. Sounds like a lot of fun.

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