Excitement in the neighborhood

I’ve had almost more excitement today than I can stand!

It all started with a lazy morning. I didn’t even shower till nearly 11am. I knew I had to be done by the time Kurt got home at 11:30am, so I really rushed through my morning routine, to the point where I didn’t even bother drying my hair. I figured since I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything, there’s no point.

The excitement started during lunch about an hour after I got out the shower. My neighbor C came to the door to apologize for not taking our call last night. We’d invited her to go for a walk with us after dinner, but she said she hadn’t heard the phone. I wasn’t offended; I understand people get busy. Then she asked me to walk up to the school with her. See, she babysits the girl that lives next door to her, which means she has to take her to and from school every day. The school is only a couple of blocks away, and C thought it would be great for all the kids to play while she waited for the girl to be dismissed.

C’s girls (aged 2 1/2 and nearly 5) have names that rhyme, so I was constantly getting them backwards. I felt so badly until C assured me it was okay, she did the same thing all the time. Remind me not to name this child something that rhymes with Grace!! (Actually, that won’t happen; it’s either going to be Mary Ellen or Henry. And I’ll still get them mixed up.)

Grace did fall off the slide, face first into the woodchips, but she recovered quickly. She didn’t bust her lip, for which I was hugely grateful. I fell off a swing when I was two and busted my bottom lip way open. I would have had full lips anyhow, but that just exacerbated the problem. My lips are so full I was teased as a kid. One boy even called me “Lizard Lips” for many years.

Coming home from the school was hilarious. C had the girls race from point to point, but the littlest just couldn’t keep up. We ended up carrying her, switching off between the two of us. But Grace was right there with the big girls, racing away and holding hands with them to cross the street once they got our OK to do so.

She loves hanging with the big kids.

Once I got home, Ms Cheez-It’s son came up to me with his friend. See, I was supposed to watch G this afternoon while Ms Cheez-It ran her other son T to practice and filled in for someone at her work. She’d already told me that it was okay if G spent most of his time outside, so I wasn’t all that worried about having to actually watch him. He was coming in to check in with me, and he also wanted to introduce me to his friend.

Now picture this. A kid with a blonde bob of a hair cut, just sort of cut straight across all the way, like a skater would have. A white baseball shirt with red sleeves. Jeans with dirty knees and plain black shoes. And this friend’s name was Cameron. Tell me, friends, boy or girl???

I didn’t find out till much later that Cameron is a girl. I was mortified when Grace called her a “him.”

I figured I wouldn’t be doing much actual watching of G, so I figured we could have our regular dinner plans of Thai beef salad. But then G showed back up on my doorstep right at 5pm with Cameron in tow. They wanted to play in the house.

I have a lot to learn when it comes to this parenting thing. I realize now I probably should have had Cameron call her parents to make sure it was okay that she played here with G and Gracie. After she’d been here a good hour, she told me she should probably go home because her mom didn’t know she was here. I asked if she wanted to just call instead, but then she told me she didn’t know her phone number.

Um, you’re ten years old and you don’t know your phone number? I know I knew my real mom’s phone number when I still lived with her, and I was younger than six at the time. This is bad juju.

Apparently it didn’t faze her mother at all to have her daughter playing at some other random person’s house because ten minutes after she left, Cameron was back at my door, saying she had to go home in thirty minutes so she could eat dinner. There was no communication between the mother and me at all. You’d have thought the mother would at least have walked Cameron back over here to meet me. But then, Cameron and G regularly roam the entire neighborhood at will. And to be fair, she’s moving to San Diego in a week, so I’m sure her parents are insanely busy getting ready for the cross-country move.

Since it was apparent that G and Cameron would probably be present for dinner, the plans for Thai beef salad went out the window. Ms Cheez-It’s kids are notoriously picky. She’s the one who brought a whole ‘nother meal for her sons when we invited them over for lasagna for my birthday. So we got pizza instead, which ended up to be the best thing possible. Ms Cheez-It had shown up not long after G did, and I spontaneously invited her to dinner. Her son T came home from practice too, so we had four kids and three adults.

But just before dinner, I noticed a large dog chasing our neighbor’s cat Hama-san up the tree in the front yard. Kurt and I go racing outside — Kurt to corral the dog, and me to take photos and document the event!

Here’s Penny, the dog, trying her damnedest to get to Hama-san. Poor Hama-san, a Japanese black & white cat with a stump of a tail, had shot up to the very top of our tree while Penny barked her fool head off at the dog.

Right as Kurt corralled her, Penny’s owner E comes racing up in her truck (she thought she’d have to roam the neighborhood before finding her), apologizing left and right for the trouble her dog has caused. It also brought our next-door neighbor R out to see if her cat was okay. E couldn’t stop apologizing to R, but R took it quite well, knowing that these things tend to happen. E grabbed Penny and threw her into her SUV and locked the door so she couldn’t escape. Then we all stood around the tree wondering if we should call the fire department.

Hama-san came down on his own, head-first, no less!! I had grabbed my camera but he was just too fast for me. As soon as his paws touched terra firma, he raced off for safer pastures. I sure hope he wasn’t traumatized.

I invited E into my house for a few moments since I hadn’t really gotten a chance to talk to her before. What’s funny is Ms Cheez-It and her family were probably the first tenants who are still here on our street, and they moved here in June. R got here sometime after that, we arrived in September, C and our across-the-street neighbor came in November, and I think E moved in during December. This means we’ll all be here together for the next three years, so it’s good to get to know each other. E seems really sweet, and when I told her I am free twice a week while Grace is in preschool, she seemed very interested in getting together for brunch dates. That was quite thrilling. Kurt’s usually my brunch date on those days, but I am thinking it’s time to branch out.

All these people in and out of my house all day meant that half the families on my street ended up inside my house at one time or another!! I’m not used to this kind of excitement… but you know, I kind of liked it!