My street is alllll retired. I’m serious. There are NO kids here. Yet.  But wheni was invited to a cookie swap across the street, I really wanted to go, because it’s good to know the neighbors, especially once you have kids. There were christmas sweaters, and i was the youngest by at least 20 years, but I’m glad I went.

Of course, though, this is the morning where I woke up with two eyes swollen shut, that some allergy meds and a tylenol seemed to lessen, but I still went there looking like I had two shiners. Dave was concerned that it looked like I was being beaten, so I said "Look, Sylvia knows I’m pregnant, so she’ll mention it in front of other people, and then they will say ‘oh, congratulations! How are you feeling?’ because that’s what EVERYONE SAYS, right? And I’ll say, ‘oh, pretty good, just more sensitive to my allergies and I’ll point at my eyes." Great plan, because that IS what everyone says, then follows with "when are you due/do you know what you’re having/ do you have names picked out?" Of course, TODAY, no one asked me how i was feeling. I guess since I made it down the glass slick driveway, street and front walk balancing a plate of fudge, I must be feeling okay.

Anyway, it was cute. Charlene, down the street, who’s around 75 and lived on the street forEVER, has been experiencing prank phone calls late at night!  Pam’s grandson is afraid of the planes that fly over when he visits. Sylvia was glad that Charlene’s husband had taken her advice and gone to Dr Z for the epidural shots for the sciatica. They all love the papergirl, and left her a good tip this year. It was that kind of afternoon.

But I also found out that Charlene went to teacher’s college with two of my neighbors back home, the queen bees of the historical society, and one of whom was my 1st grade teacher and commuted with my mom for years.  Pam is retired from teaching now, but works for the uni supervising student teachers, and knows Marilyn (my mentor that I rave about here) from both careers. And when I talked about Dave finding the collection of vintage game cards in the heat intake, Charlene and Sylvia both laughed and said "oh, that would have been Billy!"

It’s one of THOSE neighborhoods. I love it. They are all excited that a baby is coming to the street ("Now that the kids are gone, everyone talks about their dogs") and they all offered to babysit.  They talked about their pregnancies and grandchildren and yeah, their dogs, and sipped coffee out of christmas-themed mugs and nibbled on christmas-themed cookies that were served on christmas-themed plates. I was there for more than 2 hours, came home and went to school to take a final, and am now home, cozied up in the house where Billy once pushed playing cards into the vent, and where Sandra planted the perennials, and where George put in the woodstove.

We hope to stay here for a long time, so maybe I’ll be the one inviting the new girl over for cookies, and talking about Charlene, and Pam, and Sylvia.  But for now, it’s just a nice place to live.

Any more questions for me? Come on, don’t be shy! I’ll answer them in a future post.