Community

Today we had our street yard sale. This morning before I set up our yard sale I went for a morning walk with three of the other mom's on my street. In August we had our block party. When I need someone to watch my kid for an hour between my going to work and my husband getting home. I have at least three people on my street I can call to cover me.

I HAVE COMMUNITY

But it wasn't just a lucky real estate choice, it's taken some major commitment/fun on all our parts.

When I first moved on to this street with my husband(pre-kid) we were the party house. We had lots of late and loud parties. The last and most notorious a 4th of July complete with totally illegal firework show.

Two months later I was pregnant, with mild complication, that shut the parties down. At this point I would say we knew our immediate neighbors, with varying affection levels.

It wasn't until I had my daughter and started walking up and down my street on an hourly basis that I started to meet everyone. After about a year of chatting I had heard from several people they'd like to have a block party. It was in the organizing of the block party that our community took form.

It turned out there were a lot of kids on the block and their families were some of the most active in the block party planning process. I think it was after the second block party we formed a baby sitting coop. Which has devolved into a very informal coop, where we all just help one another out, and figure it all evens out at some point.

Long story short, if you feel you don't have community (because of your own misdeeds or otherwise) in this crazy town, make one. You gotta meet your neighbors, not just the ones next door, the whole street. Find a common interest. The yard sale thing is really fun if a block party is more than you want to get involved in. It really is a snow ball effect. Seems like every year something new gets started. Last year one of the neighbors set up a pot luck pumpkin carving party, this year we're thinking about having a chili cook off and movie night in November.

These parties are at least as noisy as my pre-kid ones but we're all in bed by 9 and no one gives us dirty looks the next day.