Monday, August 6, 2007

Tough times in the neighborhood...

When we first moved into this house we met all of our neighbors. We had a nice elderly couple behind us - Sarah and Mr. Bob. We chatted with them frequently over the fence - admiring their yard, chatting about the weather, etc. We found out about their family in Texas...The neighbors to the left of them had a black lab that we would always feed treats to. Occasionally the dog, J.J., would make her way to our front yard (found a sneaky path through the houses) and we would call her 'dad' and she'd call her and she'd come running back...A really nice neighborhood. Well, we hadn't seen them much this summer. We just thought that maybe it was too hot or too hard from them to get out. We saw their neighbor and they told us that Sarah was in the hospital. Then, she didn't pull through. So, Mr. Bob went home to Texas with his kids and now the house is up for sale...wow...

Then, we met our next door neighbors. They are an elderly couple. Tex and JoAnn. They spent their life in the military. They lived overseas and settled here in SC. Their kids live here, not to far away and they have one grandson. They have a beautiful backyard, garden, yard. We used to laugh that Tex would get up EVERY morning and mow his yard, edge it, blow it and then take the dog for a drive...He really does have the best yard! He's not very appreciative of us walking through his yard to get to our friends yard, so we take the long way and walk down to the street and then over to our friends yard...We try to be respectful. Well, JoAnn is becoming a little forgetful - maybe Alzheimer's? She asked me the other day if I was her new neighbor...I told her that I just hadn't seen her in awhile and that my hair was different. Maybe she just didn't recognize me. She said that she had never seen me before. I didn't realize then that she really didn't know who I was. Now, every time she sees me or Lane she asks if we are new to the neighborhood and what happened to the couple that lived in the house before us...wow. Sometimes I tell her yes, just to get through her frustration AND mine...When we are all outside, she comes out to figure out who we all are. Tex comes out and calls her to come back in. I'm not sure what they would do without each other...

Lane has started a new job with MicroPrice PC. It is a very well known PC Tech business to all of the small business downtown Columbia. They just had a big promo with MicroSoft. They had the big MicroSoft bus come for a promotional event. It was really neat. I went up to help out and got to meet a lot of the business owners of Columbia. A lot of the Chamber of Commerce members, City Council, lawyers, suppliers, architects, etc. It was really interesting. I meet a lot of great people at my job, too, but not like this. This was more personal. Shelly, the wife of the owner was meeting and greeting and I was kind of her gopher. I got everyone water, helped with the prize drawings and offered a smile to the people. It was fun. I took a nice picture of them in front of the bus and had it blown up at work. It was a great memento of the event!

I'm off to working my six day work weeks. BTS is taking over the world right now and I have to help sell and clean up after all of the craziness...

Here's to enjoying the joy of the kids getting back to school, football games starting, the air starting to chill...

We enjoyed the summer - now let's enjoy looking forward to the fall...