Suburbanmights

My elderly neighbors across the street are mopping the outside of their house. The woman has the mop up over her head swishing it around on the siding. Do only retired people do this, or is this yet another unwritten rule about suburban home ownership I am unaware of?

I have granola in the oven, my house and my dog are clean, and I have a fall wreath on the door. In Cincinnati, if I didn't have a burning couch in front of my house I was a good neighbor. In Michigan, I just had to have very little junk on my patio and maybe a few flowers surrounding it.

My next door neighbors have the most extravagant graveyard built, complete with homemade coffin and wooden fence, ghosts hanging from the trees, and a ghoulish green spotlight on it at night. And of course, the requisite pot of fall mums on the porch, carved pumpkin, things hanging in the window, etc. Some people on the street have scarecrows and cornstalks and hay bales too. I have a pot of mums on my porch too. Because one of my neighbors brought one over for me.

Annie and I were talking to George across the street yesterday. For some reason, George felt compelled to tell me out of the blue to make sure I keep the driveway clear down to the pavement this winter. Maybe the absence of a gate on our picket fence these days has something to do with it. Or the fact that every other neighbor on the block had their driveway resurfaced this summer except us. Oh, and I've also seen George and his wife mopping their driveway too.

Honestly, I've been pleased that Jeff has been decent about keeping up with the lawn mowing, even weed whacking. ( Though I am fairly certain it is because he worries that if he doesn't, I will do it and possibly break his bargain lawn mower he is so proud of.) We deliberately steered clear of neighborhood associations and blocks that got together and chose a decorating theme for Halloween and Christmas, because we knew how ill-fitted those situations were to us. I guess we didn't steer clear of all neighborhood expectations.

We keep it neat, we pay our taxes. We pick up after our dog and don't leave him outside barking. Our kids don't run the neighborhood making trouble. We have a fall wreath on our door. We still might not be real suburbanites despite the fact that we have a 2 car garage and a lawn to mow and a gateless picket fence. Neighbors: this is as close as we're gettin'.