It's a funny thing, being adopted
I would not call my neighborhood the greatest. It's not terrible, and it's deeply and truly not as sketchy as the location of the first apartment I moved into by myself in my early twenties. It's across the road from a military base, and it's very old and (super) cheap, has military families moving in and out all the time. But super cheap, also, draws a completely different kind of element to the area, too.
The kind that two or three times ends up blaring rap at ten pm in the parking lot. Or that once in the more than a half a year had someone getting arrested in the field between the two houses to the side of mine. But for the most part it's been really nice, and it's tiny, and it's cheap, and it's served me well while surviving my roommate moving on no notice and making it through the crazy depression/nearly barren of money IA months.
So it's been me and my Teeny House, that's perfectly enough space for one person, because it's basically a good size one-person apartment with a wrap-around porch. But somewhere in there -- somewhere in the gray land between keeping my head down and mostly to myself and my mother raised me to smile and be polite to anyone I walk nearby -- I, sort of, got adopted by some of my neighbors, too, it seems.
Like the people right behind me, who picked up my packages while I was gone (the ones I had assumed had been stolen when a friend gathering mail for me couldn't find them; that were picked up by my neighbors who wanted to make sure they weren't stolen). One of whom has borrowed milk for baking, and her husband/guy-friend/person, with the gorgeous silver racy car I park next to daily, who calls me 'sweetheart' in a kind, old, only ever speaks a very little bit, sort of benevolent way.
And tonight, while heading out to my wine class I passed the woman who lives across the divider sidewalk between me and the right-behind-me neighbors, for the first time since getting back from New England, who had to rush and tell me she was relieved I was okay. Because her son kept watching my car not move and my lights never turn on, and they'd decided if it went a third week they were going to call the cops to report something being amiss.
Oh. People. What is this. I am quite and polite and in passing cheerful, if not amazing social with these people (or any people I've really ever lived near), and somehow they adopted me in all my quiet, cheerful, not-quite-entirely-antisocial-glory. Somehow they notice when I don't come and go to work, or my car never changes places, even when I've always parked in the same spot. It's incredibly new. And my heart aches a little with it. (....maybe I can make them cookies for Valentine's Day or something?)
I guess the next time I go on vacation for longer than a weekend I have some people to inform now, too.
[This entry was originally posted at http://wanderlustlover.dreamwidth.org/2293679.html. Comment on either at your leisure.]
The kind that two or three times ends up blaring rap at ten pm in the parking lot. Or that once in the more than a half a year had someone getting arrested in the field between the two houses to the side of mine. But for the most part it's been really nice, and it's tiny, and it's cheap, and it's served me well while surviving my roommate moving on no notice and making it through the crazy depression/nearly barren of money IA months.
So it's been me and my Teeny House, that's perfectly enough space for one person, because it's basically a good size one-person apartment with a wrap-around porch. But somewhere in there -- somewhere in the gray land between keeping my head down and mostly to myself and my mother raised me to smile and be polite to anyone I walk nearby -- I, sort of, got adopted by some of my neighbors, too, it seems.
Like the people right behind me, who picked up my packages while I was gone (the ones I had assumed had been stolen when a friend gathering mail for me couldn't find them; that were picked up by my neighbors who wanted to make sure they weren't stolen). One of whom has borrowed milk for baking, and her husband/guy-friend/person, with the gorgeous silver racy car I park next to daily, who calls me 'sweetheart' in a kind, old, only ever speaks a very little bit, sort of benevolent way.
And tonight, while heading out to my wine class I passed the woman who lives across the divider sidewalk between me and the right-behind-me neighbors, for the first time since getting back from New England, who had to rush and tell me she was relieved I was okay. Because her son kept watching my car not move and my lights never turn on, and they'd decided if it went a third week they were going to call the cops to report something being amiss.
Oh. People. What is this. I am quite and polite and in passing cheerful, if not amazing social with these people (or any people I've really ever lived near), and somehow they adopted me in all my quiet, cheerful, not-quite-entirely-antisocial-glory. Somehow they notice when I don't come and go to work, or my car never changes places, even when I've always parked in the same spot. It's incredibly new. And my heart aches a little with it. (....maybe I can make them cookies for Valentine's Day or something?)
I guess the next time I go on vacation for longer than a weekend I have some people to inform now, too.
[This entry was originally posted at http://wanderlustlover.dreamwidth.org/2293679.html. Comment on either at your leisure.]