Blue Swings

Sidenote: It's been a long month of not being able to blog and post any stories. I'm working on some, but seeing as I only pull out my computer about once a month to pay bills, typing out a blog unfortunately gets put aside more often than not. I originally meant to post this over a month ago. Oops.

***

With the weather cooling down as the infamous Texas summer has ended, I've been taking the two kids out on walks in our neighborhood. It's become a daily ritual for us to talk a walk and look for "blue swings," the quintessential Little-Tikes baby/toddler swing. We have a pink one in our front yard, but my daughter loves to walk around the block and look at our neighbor's blue one.

The quintessential baby swing 

After we found the blue swing, we kept walking down that street and came across a pink tire swing in front of another neighbor's house. This led to a little game where we'd walk around the neighborhood and look for swings.

In addition to looking for swings, we've met some more of our neighbors. One morning, one of our neighbors down the street was out working in her yard and we stopped and said hello. I complimented her beautiful landscaping and started a brief conversation. She was very friendly and we both enjoyed some in-person socially-distanced chit-chat. 

A few days later, we were walking down the street behind us, and a neighbor actually came out of her house and asked if she could see my kids because she hasn't gotten to see her nieces and nephews given the current circumstances. 

Since then I've run into these same two neighbors multiple times. Once, we got candy since Halloween is around the corner. Another time, our neighbor shared her home-grown peppers with us and even cut a blue iris from her garden for us to take home and admire.

Blue irises from our neighbor.

Our neighbors are very friendly and it’s lovely to be able to meet them and say hi. I love being able to walk by someone outside of their house and feel excited to be able to exchange a greeting. But there’s something else that makes running into them almost bittersweet: we could have been neighbors with one of them. I know, we are already neighbors in the sense that we live around each other, but I mean literal next door neighbors. 

You see, one of these neighbors lives in the house next to one we made an offer on five years ago when we were looking to buy. The house next to the neighbor with the beautiful landscaping was one we were particularly upset about losing. It had one owner, clean bathrooms, and a great price. There was some updating needed to bring it up to current aesthetics, but overall, it was a wonderful house. The actual price it sold at was the exact same offer as we’d put in. So why didn’t we get it? We’ll never know. 

The other neighbor actually lives in a house two doors down from one we put in an offer on. It had a sunroom, needed some work, but the price was right. The lady selling it at the time got tired of showings and stopped accepting offers merely 24 to 48 hours after hitting the market. Ours never made it in. 

I’m thankful to live in the neighborhood we do. I enjoy walking to the nearby park and playground, biking on the trails, and saying hi to our neighbors. It’s bittersweet thinking about the houses we didn’t get to call home, especially when they’re right down the street or around the corner from us, but our house is one I’ve enjoyed spending an extra amount of time in this year. 

And we still get to walk around the same neighborhood and look for the blue swings.