neighbors

We've been in our house for 7 years, and at this point there's been so much turnover on the block we basically only know the people in the immediate houses surrounding us. It's kind of sad, all of the younger couples who we met when we moved in, and liked, all left within a few years. In two of the houses across and diagonal from us, the couples who replaced them were far inferior. They're both kind of middle aged, seem to have no personality, and I can't remember any of their names ever. All I know is that during the pandemic one of them had an entire box of Dunkin Donuts delivered to their house and Zach and I both noticed it sitting on their doorstep and thought it was hilarious. 

All of the other neighbors in our immediate vicinity have been in the area for a long time. In between the two boring couples is one neighbor who I know is old as hell and have maybe seen twice in the entire time that we've been here. I'm not even sure if there are 1 or 2 people there, all I know is old. Beside them is an older guy named David Brewster, who we don't see very often but are friendly with. We've had a lot of package thefts in the neighborhood recently and he recently texted our next door neighbor Teresa to let her know we had a package outside so she could tell us (I think David and Teresa watch out for each other's houses so we're reaping the benefit but it was nice of him). For the longest time, we thought this guy in the neighborhood was his son and (privately) always called him Brewster's son. This guy, who we now know is not his son, is probably in his 20s or 30s and is pretty high functioning but has some kind of disability. The first time we met him we were a little sketched out, because it was Halloween and he's a big guy that was hanging around our fence with a mask on and we thought he was drunk or something. He was kind of being a hype man for our candy and getting the kids to come to our house, but Teresa was outside too and we got the idea that he was okay from her. Shortly after that, we must have seen him at David Brewster's house and then he became his son. He is a little hard to understand sometimes but is pretty amusing to talk to. He often does basic yard and handyman work for our neighbor, Webster (ie Mrs. Doretha Webster) but seems to have very poor tools and spends a lot of time talking about what should be done instead of actually doing anything, which includes recommendations for our house as well. The work he does for her might be more charity than anything else. 

Webster aka Webby is an older woman on our right who has lived in her house since she was a girl and I unfortunately don't get along with that well. At first we had a great relationship with her, she even invited us inside her house one time to have a look or something. If it snowed, Zach would always shovel for her. But things soured after the sidewalk incident, where I thought I made a pretty reasonable request that in the future if she did any work that impacted our house, that she let us know beforehand (not mentioned, things falling off our wall due to the jackhammering onto a newly purchased vintage wood sideboard that was in mint condition, and having to pay to fix our siding where the sidewalk had been pulled up). I was pretty direct with her contractor, who I'll admit I treated with very little respect because he wasn't planning on putting a vapor barrier between our then exposed wood siding and the soon to be poured concrete and I had to do it myself with some of my own plastic sheeting as they were pouring. I thought he was a fool. But I don't think she was mad because of that- she was mad because I made that request of her, and things were never the same after that. Webby knows how to hold a grudge. Of course Zach never had to deal with this so he's all laughs and jokes with her still and I'm bad cop. But she's kind of amusing- she used to have an outdoor cat named Pete who she would call every night at like 12am for food. So every night we would hear "Pete! Pete!" until the cat came. We would often find Pete hanging out in our yard when we got home and he would always scurry away when he saw us. I think Pete basically lived in our backyard and dined at Webby's house. But now Pete is gone and we have that rat and I really miss Pete. Also now that I'm at home during the day, I've noticed that she is very particular with her trash cans. She brings them back to her yard in like 3 stages and once she gets the back there she spends like 10 minutes arranging them. One time during the pandemic she knocked on our door at like 10pm and I opened it hoping for a good interaction with her but she just wanted to complain to me about something to do with our trash can. I think I ignored whatever her request was and basically told her I was going to do so until the next day but whatever she is old and I guess I respect her right to be a biatch. Her adult daughter moved into the house a while back and she seems chill so I communicate any necessary neighbor information to her now instead. She even warned me one time, when I was out maintaining the overgrown city tree box that sits on the sidewalk between our houses, that her mom wasn't going to be happy about that. She was right. The next time I saw webby, I had just gotten finished with hand scrubbing our entire siding (exhausted), and she started going on about the tree box and how I wasn't allowed to touch it blah blah blah (which isn't true). There were vines growing up the big gingko tree trying to overtake it, vines growing out into the sidewalk impeding walkers, etc, and I thought I was just helping out. I especially don't like the vines suffocating the gingko tree and said something to that effect but she wasn't hearing it so I gave it up and haven't touched it since. Occasionally the city comes around and does that work for me, which I'm sure she hates. She's also growing a pine tree in the tree box off of the gingko (???) that she said her grandson gave to her in a cup and in that same convo she told me the city lopped off the top of it one time when they were doing tree box maintenance and it made her so mad. I could have died laughing. What an old bat. 

Finally our 3 neighbors on our left, the 3rd down is another old person house with at least one very old man that I've seen maybe twice, who did a very extensive exterior renovation on his house, including a nice looking second floor balcony in the back that I have never seen him use once. 

Two doors down is an Eritrean family that we love. They have one daughter at UVA and two little girls who play in the backyard all the time and are super cute. They all came to my UDC graduation party and the little girls were dancing up a storm. We've seen them a lot during the pandemic since we all have been spending a lot of time in our backyards. Ourselves, Webby, Teresa, the Eritrean family, and the old man all have low/open fences (ie none of us have improved our fences) so our backyards feel pretty open and we can see each other, which is kind of nice. The dad always has a project going on in the backyard that he's doing while the girls are running around/"helping" out. I like how they get the kids outside to play every day- definitely want to make sure we do that. The dad likes to run and I've seen the girls trailing behind on their bikes while he runs ahead 👍

Lastly is our neighbor on the left, Teresa, who is the reason I thought about writing this post this week. Teresa is the bomb- she lives in her house with her two young adult daughters, and claims that she is at senior citizen status but seems/looks a lot younger. Last week she gave me a book on child rearing and just has generally been a solid neighbor that looks out. I think she prevented me from assaulting someone last week. I was upstairs working, when all of a sudden I started hearing noises downstairs. It sounded like someone was trying to break in, and then I think because I was freaking out it sounded like someone was in the house. I thought maybe I had left the door unlocked or something. I shouted 'hello?' and for the first time since being in the house I grabbed the baseball bat we keep in the corner of our room. I was fully prepared to crack a skull if I needed to. We watched this show a few months ago on Netflix called Last Kingdom set in 11th century England and Brita, the Dane, continues to be a great warrior while like 8 months pregnant, so I figured I could go into battle too if necessary. But I wasn't opposed to some help, so I picked up the phone as well in case I needed to call the police. I immediately noticed that I had a call from Teresa, and also a text from her, saying that the window guy was here and he had tried to contact us. I had nothing from him. I looked out and he was measuring our windows from the outside of the house and all the noise was the measuring tape against the side of our house. I was so mad at window guy, but also so happy I got that text. So it got me kind of thinking about our neighbors, who are definitely a mixed bag but I think we at least feel pretty safe here with them.