Best Neighbors Eva
Over the past 20 years I haven’t thought much about the impact that neighbors have had on my life. As a kid, I grew up in the suburbs of Augusta, Ga. Until high school, most of my friends were determined by the confines of my neighborhood. I could walk across the street to play D&D with the kid that was a few years older or I could ride my bike a few houses down to shoot rocks out of slingshots at my best friend’s younger brother’s nuts. You know, kid stuff.
Anyways, I never thought about how important it was to have good neighbors. I didn’t have a choice. If the kids around me were into skin mags and witchcraft, I was probably going to cast spells towards unsuspecting peers so I could see through their clothes.
As an adult (or something that resembles one), not much has changed when it comes to neighbors. You still don’t have much of a choice. You will have those neighbors that you really dread seeing when you take out the trash. You will have neighbors that end up becoming good friends. And inevitably, no matter where you are, you will have that one neighbor who went to Ohio State. It feels statistically impossible but I promise if you look out of your window right now, and you have more than 10 houses within view, you will see an Ohio State flag.
I consider myself really lucky to have great neighbors. For privacy reasons I’m not going to list out all of their names here but I will include a few who gave me permission. To our right, we have a great family with two young boys who our girls love to torture. The girls open the window and say “heeyyyy” with a tone that scares the crap out of me. The boys are 2 and 4 and this will become a more painful cry to hear as they get older, both for them and for me. Right now they are great about it. The dad sets up obstacle courses in their backyard and our kids go down to play all the time.
Directly to our left, we have a young family with two young girls. These girls are the recipients of possibly the worst hand-me-downs in the world. Since we are also huge fans of hand-me-downs (which I’ll blog about at length at some point), these two lucky ladies are receiving clothes that have been infinitely handed down. They are barely recognizable as clothes but they are nice to accept them. The dad runs his own business out of their storage shed that he’s converted into an office. We borrow each others tools all the time, talk about gardening and generally shoot the shit on a daily basis. It’s awesome. His company Blissbook, helps businesses create and manage policy documents, handbooks, etc. They are growing like crazy because they are helping HR and Legal teams replace manual, cumbersome processes and systems. I love observing him balance his time working in the shed, hanging with his family, and even hanging out with me sometimes.
Directly behind us we have the May family. They have the longest tenure of our immediate neighbors and have kids in high school and middle school. Their middle school daughter will probably create whatever destroys Facebook, so I’m definitely investing early in her good graces by paying her to watch our cat when we’re out of town. Their son reminds me of a yogi or shaman. He’s the coolest high school kid I’ve ever met. I’ve heard “cool” people the use “woke” and I’m pretty sure he’s the definition of woke. He rocks a comfort robe while inside and generally seems indifferent in the best ways.
It’s awesome to have people with older kids so close whether you like them or not, but when they are awesome it’s like a “no brainer” card hand in Let It Ride (that reference is for all you gamblers out there). You get school previews, baby sitters, house sitters, etc. Their mom is a professor who works for Georgia State focusing on Early Childhood Literacy. Guess where we get most of our books :). She’s super smart and never makes you feel dumb. What a gift.
The dad is an amazing dude. He started a company that has ideals I love. The company has a simple business model, technology-centered product/service, and a mandatory work/life balance. (It’s not the silicon valley version of work/life balance with BS unlimited vacation days which no one can possibly take advantage of. You can keep your unlimited vacay days? It’s a scam.) They solve real problems within the finance and accounting space. Check out their site or check out Matthew talking about random stuff/accounting on their youtube show Drink While You Think. He’s tried patiently to explain blockchain and cryptocurrency to me many ties. I’m still struggling with it, but it’s not his fault.
He built a firepit in between our houses (it’s literally on the property line) and we enjoy it almost every weekend. Last week, no one used his company tickets to the Atlanta United so he took the neighbors and we had a blast.
In our triplex, above the downstairs apartment we live in, we have two apartments. One is a 2BR AirBnB unit (variable neighbors) and the other one has a nice couple who works in the film industry and rents from us full time. As a family, I know that we are the loudest in the neighborhood. The house that we live in has no modern sound barriers. Sarah and I have tested noise levels by yelling downstairs and listening upstairs (and vice versa) and you can hear the screams. We apologize all the time and our amazing tenants never have any complaints. They politely say that they don’t hear anything and even say that it sounds nice “like life happening” downstairs. The only time that they did admit to hearing us was when we moved out for a while and they said they missed hearing me play guitar. It was the best thing that anyone could have ever said about me.
So yes, we are surrounded by neighbors in every direction including up. We’re friends and I’m inspired by my neighbors’ commitment to their families and our small community. It’s fantastic.
Finally, I recognize that our neighbors are patient with us. We make a living with rental properties in a slightly unconventional way. We rent our 4 different units (1 single family home, 1 triplex) in a combination of long term, short-term and super short-term/AirBnB rentals and we move back and forth based on what’s rented out. I know that no one in the world thinks “You know who I want as a neighbor? A new person every other day. And if you could throw in drunk college kids that party really loudly late at night every now and then that would be soooo cool.” So I can empathize with neighbors who are frustrated by the AirBnB rentals next door. Fortunately, we live in these rentals most of the time and our guests are almost always respectful and quiet. We generally don’t even realize they are there. But I know our neighbors might feel the discomfort of having transient folks coming through either way.
So just like when I was a kid, I didn’t choose my neighbors and they didn’t choose us, but I’m glad to live so close to such good friends.
