moving

How late is too late to make friends with your neighbors?

3 years ago, I moved from Los Angeles to Denver with my husband and our kids. Immediately upon moving in, we met a nice couple that live next door who are around our age and have a daughter that looked around the age of our youngest son. I say “met” but it was more like a wave! and a “let me know if you need anything!”, but I was excited. New friends!

If you ask anyone here, the difference between people from LA and people in Denver has to do with ability to drive in the snow and uppity liberal views or whatever Chad on NextDoor was yelling about. But no, Chad, after growing up here for 20 years, moving to Los Angeles for 20 years, and now being back, I can tell you with extreme confidence, the difference between people in LA and people in Denver is not that, and is too long for my silly little blog post today, but in relation to the above mentioned neighbors, people in LA, while sometimes a little flaky, are pretty much your instant best friends. You say “Hi!” to someone and you’re now best friends who get pedis and mimosas together on a Wednesday and you know more about each other than your own family within like, a month! Here in Denver, people are more overtly friendly, like, they make eye-contact with strangers and wave at you like they know you, which is a serious, “you’re about to get mugged or worse” red flag in LA (that I’ve had to unlearn or relearn or however it works) but they wave at you here and say hi right in your eyes and offer up help and then they disappear back into their lives for the next three years and even though you offer to drive them to school drop off when you see them standing by a car that won’t start in the snow, or you leave your cell number and a cute little note on their door with a smiley face letting them know you were delivered a package of theirs by mistake, you never make it past the friendly waves and the how are yous. There have been no mimosas. There have been no pedis. Apparently I don’t know how to make friends the Denver way. I mean, I grew up here which is probably why I’m so awful at it. The last year doesn’t count because of the pandemic, but still.

It could also be that when we first moved here, after the waves and the offers for help, the above mentioned neighbors were outside throwing a frisbee around and it hit my window. The window I was sitting at. And to exert my space, to let the frisbee owners know that this is my lawn, I went “LA” on them not knowing it was them. And by “LA”, I mean, meanly stink-eyeing them out the window for their transgressions rather than acknowledging the innocence of the mis-catched frisbee.

Anyway.

Judging by the moving van and the photographer taking pictures of the outside of their house today, they’re moving. Don’t they know about pandemic mover’s remorse? It’s a thing. Look it up, Christine and…Chris (I don’t know his name, so he’s now Chris). I had plans for us, Christine and Chris! Chris and Billy (my husband) would be friends by the power of John Elway since they both like the Broncos. I know nothing about Christine, except she dresses in cute dresses so, of course we’d be friends.

Did they think about any of this when they made their plans to leave? Did they remember my uber services? Did they remember that I had a package of theirs? That I kept it safe from porch pirates for god’s sake?? That I wrote a note with smiley faces??

Should I approach them? Demand a friendship? Follow the moving van in my car? Haunt their house like the Brady kids taught me??

Today has been a dark day. How dare they.

I think my life is maybe just a Paulie Shore movie.

Hi. I have been quite absent from this blog and I have no excuse. Well, moving across 3 states over the summer. That’s an excuse. Also, I’m lazy.

As you may or may not know, I’m writing a book. I’m not sure how much I plan on talking about it yet because I don’t want to jinx it, and I’m battling that voice that is very loudly yelling at me that I’m a fraud and nobody likes me. That’s a fun demon with which to co-pilot this trainwreck. So I’m trying to overcome that voice by writing really bad blog posts. I’m sure that won’t make it all worse. Like at all.

So, a couple of months ago, I moved away from the love of my life, Los Angeles back to my hometown of Denver. It’s a bit of a lot of baggage to unpack. I went from feeling like Link (Brendan Fraser) in Encino Man where I’m the weird but super loved new guy to being Crawl (Paulie Shore) in Son-in-Law when he falls in pig poops at the farm and everyone hates him and he’s barely wearing pants. It has been a good move and my family seems to love it and it will be a great thing for our future. However, no matter how many movies, holiday-themed or not I’ve seen on this subject of moving home, I wasn’t prepared.  Sweet Home Alabama taught me nothing.

While there are a LOT of things (people) I’m glad to be away from, there is SOOOOO much more that hurts my heart to have left. Like a bunch of my favorite people. And I’m struggling to get my creativity back. I feel like I’ve fallen back into a vacuum.

Los Angeles has this reputation of being a vacuous wasteland of plastic beauty, soul-less egos, debauchery, and drugs, and gang members harassing old ladies. And while that does all exist, it is a city so rich in personality and friendships, and lost people and found people. And everyone you meet has something they want to share. And they want to support you in your nonsense and you want to support theirs. And they all hug hello. And whether sincere or not, everybody wants to be your friend and share a bottle or 7 of wine with you over gossip and dreams.

I don’t know if I’m going to find that here. People in Colorado are very polite yet reserved and no one wants none of my antics.

And I am, once again, an outsider looking in.

My oldest son came home from school the other day and says, “Kids just don’t think I’m that funny here,” and then he shrugged and went upstairs to play Fortnite.

God, kid I KNOW, RIGHT?

I sound very dramatic. I realize this. I’m going to go have a glass of wine by myself and try to get back to writing the book.

And in case you were wondering, sobbing it out on the internet didn’t shut the mean voice up at all.

And I do love living in Colorado. I’m just going to drop in weird on everybody like Mork from Ork and make them love me.

Maybe this is the same mentality I need to conjure when I’m writing.

Nanu Nanu.

30 Day Challenge

 

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I have 7 tabs open on my laptop (other than this one and tumblr):

Judging by my subconscious hoarding of websites, my life is clearly a disaster that I assume I can solve in 30 days. It takes me 30 days just to put the vacuum cleaner back after I use it, you’d think I’d be more realistic with my goals. I need to get my life in order, I really do. I also need to get my writing in order. I think I saw something for NaNoWriMo once that I might try, probably another 30 day challenge.

I know the 30 day lists seem gimmicky and ridiculous and they probably are, but the whole deal with the challenges thing for me is that I think it takes the thinking out of it which is really my biggest hurdle in life. The thinking. Also the clutter. And the procrastination. And the internet.

I started writing this on April 1st but I stopped because it felt like I was trying to subconsciously pull an April Fool’s joke on myself. It’s now April 27. lol.

I really need to get organized though because we’re moving in exactly 2 months and I am not packing 37 broken crayons, my bag of scrap fabric, the shoes that the sole fell off of three years ago, and whatever that thing is behind the sofa that I don’t want to touch but I’m hoping is a sock. So as much as I want to do the splits, I think a 30 day declutter challenge is probably a better way to spend a month. I have not given up on the splits though, so don’t put the Mary Lou Retton leotard away just yet.

I need to make this short because my husband is dragging me with him to our storage unit to get rid of stuff so I’ll probably be crying about stuffed animals, a broken bass guitar, and baby clothes in about 15 minutes. Wish me luck.