Friday, August 06, 2010

Hello Neighbour!

For the past week the weather has been absolutely crap with temperatures barely reaching its' 20s. It's still Summer but the moody skies and showers made me think Autumn was on her way sooner. I know i complain about the heat but the extreme change in weather is depressing.

But at the moment the sun is out and there's only a few scattered clouds. And the weekend promises good weather, so my fingers are crossed.

As i type this i can hear my next door neighbour listening to a compilation of 70s tracks in their garden. First it was Hot Chocolate - You Sexy Thing and now it's the Village People - YMCA. They just completed putting up a third marquee in their back garden for a 25th Anniversary party that they will be hosting tomorrow.

Our neighbors live in a three-generation household. Both sets of in-laws live under the same roof and the grand children look like they are teenagers.

I wonder what that must be like, living permanently under the same roof as their parents for the rest of their lives. I mean i love my parents and all but i also like my freedom, if you know what i mean. If you don't count boarding school, i moved out and to a whole different country weeks before my 18th birthday.

So our neighbours were kind enough to send us an invitation over two months ago but we hadn't replied back - i know, how impolite of us. But i reckon they just sent it to us out of courtesy so we don't call the cops on them for being too loud.

I mean i haven't said more than a few words to them and if we happen to see one another from a far, i usually just wave hello before getting on with whatever i was doing.


This is their invitation. They stuck a photo of themselves taken 25 years ago on the cover, on what i can only assume was their wedding day. Several kilos lighter and standing in front of the very house that they're still living in.

Crazy.

So not only do they live with their folks and in-laws but they've lived in the same town for their whole married life.

WooOoh.

Longest i've stayed in any city was 5 years but i did manage to change residential postal codes twice during that time span.

I can't imagine living my WHOLE life in one little town, in the SAME house and with the SAME people. Wouldn't that be boring?

We hadn't planned on going to their party but needed some excuse.

But since J plans to see his mom this weekend and return his parents' Mercedes that he borrowed we thought we'd use that reason. His parents' car runs on diesel and when we drove down to see my sister and parents, we knew it would be heaps cheaper than driving with J's Audi which runs on normal fuel.

But even though we're not going to our neighbours party, we do plan on buying them a present - you know, being neighborly and all. The plan is to ring their doorbell tomorrow morning and apologize for missing their celebration. And should they want to chit chat, we have that covered. We'll say we don't have that much time as we're just about to drive to J's mother who lives about 2 hours away.

So yesterday we googled what one gets if one celebrates 25 years and traditionally, one would receive Silver.

Hmmmf.

We don't know them that well to be dishing out silver especially to people we haven't said more than a few words to. I mean we're sort of on a budget.

Then i thought maybe i could bake them something but then i thought, what if they have allergies and an ingredient i use causes them to have a reaction and they get sent to hospital. Or what if they're diabetic. What if...

I dunno.

Maybe we'll just be boring and get them a bottle of bubbly and flowers. After all, the Opa does sign for my DHL packages when i'm not at home.

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