Meeting the Neighbors

Yesterday, Karen and I went out for a kidless dinner (Brittany has really taken to babysitting) and after wards, we, of course, went to see our lot. It still doesn't have a house on it ... heck, it is still just a plot of mud and bulldozer tracks. But who cares, it is ours.... sort of.

Anyway, we went for a walk around the circle and waved at a few people. Then, just before we rounded the bend for the homestretch back to the car, our neighbors-to-be came out of their house to see the sunset (too late, it had already dipped below the cloudline). So we said hi and introduced ourselves.

They've live there about 18 months now, the second of 16 families that will eventually be in Raven Circle. They can tell stories about every house that has gone up in the development, and know how many kids are in each house. Lois went around pointing to each house: "two there, three there, none there, seven there..." She has a good memory, I couldn't recite that about our neighbors and I've been here ten years (I'm joking, I know how many kids our neighbors have, jeez).

Mark (or Marc, couldn't tell) talked about the joys of watching your own house get built. HE said it is good to keep tabs on things - one wall in his bedroom had one too many angles in it, making it so that neither a bed nor a nightstand could have fit there. When he told the builder, they had it fixed the next morning. It is easy to fix walls when there's no drywall up yet. They also told us to beware of the "flooring guy," that he was hard to work with. But they had praise for the lighting guy and the kitchen guy. And for the builder, which was good.

So they are our back-door neighbors. We also happened to meet our front-door neighbor, who was gathering up his kids and their various toys. Bob works for Burton snowboards. We also met his kids, one a baby in a stroller, the other two old enough to ride bikes (and well - they both were showing off riding with their feet on the seat - and there was only one case of skinned elbows while we watched).

So, we spoke for about 30 minutes, longer than we expected, but it was nice. "Everyone's nice here," Lois said, and that's good. We also are seeing a lot of diversity here, which I think is great. Vermont is a white state, no doubt about that, but on our circle there are at least two and a half houses inhabited by "people of color." All the better for our kids to grow up knowing that their world is populated by people who look different from them, but who at the same time are exactly the same.

As we headed home, we were smiling the whole way. We can't wait.