Rear Window

This morning as I was making coffee there was a bit of a ruckus outside - specifically in the alleyway in between our house and the one next to it. The side door - she was open! And people - they were talking [not in English so I dunno what was said]! This is highly unusual - in our year and five months of living here I have never once seen that door open. And, ever since the door has been opening and closing all day and also the voices. I still have no clue what's going on and I'm not bold enough to open up my living room window blind - it would reveal all about them [are they moving? perhaps a trip to the curb is necessary to scope things out? i can always pretend to check the post]...but it would also reveal all about me [and all that I watch on TV].

The type and nature of your neighbours is something that's entirely out of our control when you move into a house or apartment. For the most part I have had no complaints about neighbours [of course that's not entirely true - I have had issues with other people living in the same house, strangely I never consider them neighbours]. Growing up our house was originally the last one on the street until I was eight years old - we got some neighbours and they stayed and we stayed [and then I moved to Toronto]. In our first apartment - the highrise - we never met any of our neighbours and we lived there for over two years. In our old house the neighbours on one side were a bit kooky [they called the police on our landlords for something really not police-related among other things] and on the other side was a very nice Portugese family that didn't speak a lot of English. They had a lot of sedate family parties in their backyard and cooked nice smelling food - also they had a teenage son that we affectionately termed "pervert kid" [it's fair - he was a teenage boy]. And now here - the myseterious folks on one side [who tried to blind me with their flashlight on the night of the blackout - I think I looked suspicious] and on the other side [where we share a wall - it's a semi-detached house] is a rooming house. I'm too scared to find out what goes on there, but it does seem highly ghetto-tastic.

It's interesting...my grandma used to be rather obsessed with watching the comings and goings of her neighbours. I'm positive that she didn't even meet all of them, but she knew all about them. I can't find this entirely creepy for a couple of reasons - 1. she's my grandma - it's hard for grandmas to be creepy; and 2. I think I get why she did it. Other than the fact that it's entirely natural to be curious about your surroundings and those you are sharing it with, it's also damn hard to sit in a house alone all day. For me anyway [and I suspect for my grandma - who suffered through many "blue days" as she called them - because she didn't know what depression was]. I'm trying not to get too Jimmy Stewart on anyone...and besides my windows don't generally show me much of anything anyway...