Living Out Loud volume 17: All in the family

I took yesterday off to run some errands in our capital city (namely get a birth certificate for our son and fix my EZPass so I can stop digging for quarters to pay the toll) and stopped in to visit with our buddy Dorcas. She was hosting an art show for her husband's ceramics and it was nice to catch up. While at the art show, a woman marveled that Ian looks just like me. I smiled in agreement and went on my way. As I walked over to Dorcas she grinned and said, "you know, he looks just like Rich!" And I smiled in agreement.

My mother always said it was a good thing she didn't hate her ex-husband Lee because if my brother Doug was in the other room and laughed she would have sworn it was Lee. There are just things you get from your parents that you can't avoid. It's a fascinating case of nature versus nurture.

Here we are, smack dab between Mother's Day and Father's Day. I think that's inspiration enough for our next Living Out Loud project. Are there certain things that you do that remind you of your parents? Are there certain qualities one of your parents has that you wish you had? Do you fidget with a pencil just like your dad? Do you smile just like your mom (even if what the other person said wasn't that funny)? Are there things that your parents did that you never understood until now?

Details include:

• Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each prompt above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org. Remember, if you don't email me, I'm likely to forget to include you in the recap!

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, June 6th (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

So as Sigmund Freud would say, "tell me about your mudder." Or your father. Or both!

Recap of Living Out Loud volume 16: The people in your neighborhood

Ok, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. We'll see if I can manage to do a recap and include everyone's entries! As always, everyone really impressed me. I just get so much joy out of this project and I hope you all do too, whether it's writing for it, reading the entries or just spending a few minutes thinking about what you would have said on the topic.

It's well known that I'm pretty fanatical about our neighborhood. But I'm trying to get to know the individual people in it too and that's harder than it seems. I'm glad I'm not the only one with that issue and I'm fascinated by where you all have lived over the years!

Check them all out:

Peggy's Mighty Neighborly of You Ugh, like my mother says. Good neighbors are a gift. Sorry you had such a dud.

Ruth's My Neighborhood My favorite line is "It’s funny how aimlessness – in retrospect – can appear to have been deliberate." This was great.

Kathy's Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood ... The People That You Meet Each Day ... Good neighbors come in all forms! We have a neighborhood cat named Huxley who is adored (and fed) my all.

SuziCate's Freaks, Geeks and Squeaks Our dogs bark a fair amount and I'm grateful every day that our neighbors also have barking dogs and don't seem to care. But wow, reading permits? Amazing ...

Amy's Moving Through, Moving On It's funny because I never thought about the idea of "moving on" from a neighborhood. But I'm not good at moving on in general. :)

Megan's Diverse & Divided - My neighborhood I totally want to learn Spanish for this very reason (that and I love languages). And we have our own different sub-cultures even on our own street here of the parents and non-parents. I'm trying to straddle both.

Karal's Just one of the porch hors. 26 neighborhoods! I've lived in maybe five and that's pushing the definition. And anyone who brings my wayward dog back to me without judgment is A-OK in my book. Looking forward to welcoming you home!

Jen's Lovely day in the neighborhood Our next door neighbors have a gate between their yard and the one behind them and I want to ask our neighbors behind us if we can get one so his dog can come over and play. And I've always said walking a dog is the best way to get to know your neighborhood!

Jessica's Neighbors I'm hoping spring will get us out and about with our neighbors too. And the aqua blue foundation was a sight to see! I am fond of your neighborhood too. :)

And my own Hi, I'm Mollie, Sarah and Ian's Mom

I picked this topic and then wasn't really sure what to write. The thing I love, though, is that everyone wrote something really different!

For this month, I pick Ruth as our winner. She had a couple of lines that stuck with me and that tends to be my gauge for great writing. I love how the coasts flipped from home and "back east/out west". And as it gets warmer here and I commit myself to my own neighborhood, I like the idea of "one long summer."

Ruth wins a $25 Amazon gift certificate (which I'm still behind on delivering to several folks - mea culpa). And everyone who submitted an entry wins relative fame and my undying gratitude!

AND I even know what the theme is already for this month, so I plan on posting that within the next day or so. Pinky swear!

Hi, I'm Mollie, Sarah and Ian's Mom

I've lived in the same neighborhood my whole life. When we were little kids, the entire neighborhood was full of old people. There was actually a neighbor that complained because I rode my Big Wheel on the sidewalk and it was "too loud". So, yeah, not a lot of neighborhood kids to play with. I remember going to my friend's neighborhood just to have kids to play with outside. Over the years, those old people all died and young families bought their houses. So now the street we live on has lots of little kids on it. It's strange to me to see little kids riding Big Wheels in the driveway of Old Man So-and-So's house or Mrs. Old Lady's yard now full of lawn toys.

My parents know all of their neighbors reasonably well, in that "borrow the rototiller" kind of way. But we have lived in our new house for almost two years now and I'm just getting around to interacting with some of our neighbors. I feel like I'm courting our neighbors but am that shy kid in middle school who hasn't actually bothered to pass a note to anyone in homeroom but is frustrated I'm not sitting at the lunch table with everyone else.

When we first moved to the new house we had a Nosey Neighbor Open House. It was a surprising success as all the folks on our street happily tromped through our new home to see what we'd done with it before we filled it with furniture. But then months went by and we forgot everyone's names and we'd just wave as we drove past but not much more.

We know the names of everyone's dogs and everyone's kids because that's what they yell out in the yard. But suddenly we're referring to folks as "Fido's Daddy" because we don't remember their names. I just learned two weeks ago that our neighbor's name is Brent and I've been referring to him as Arty for over a year because his license plate says something like that on it. He looks more like an Arty to me than a Brent anyways.

I know what I want, but I'm not sure how to get there. I'd like to have our neighbors over maybe twice a year or so for a social event. I'd like to be comfortable enough returning stray pets and kids back to their yards and having the same done for us. I'd like to actually know the names of everyone who lives on our street. I'd like to feel like we're part of a community and not just a bunch of strangers sharing a zip code.

But how do we go about getting there? I've found having a kid makes it a little easier. We suddenly got an invitation to a Christmas party last year from neighbors with a baby similar in age to Ian. And just last week I had a great afternoon sitting in my 90-year-old next door neighbor's yard watching her tenants plant pansies while we sat with the baby. So slowly but surely we're making inroads to a community. I'm a super friendly person and happy to help anyone that needs it. So this shouldn't be so hard for me. Maybe we should just have a yearly Nosey Neighbor Open House.

I'm also optimistic that if all these kids stick around, Ian may have some other kids on our street to play with. If nothing else, I know our 90-year-old neighbor is cool enough she won't complain about Ian's eventual Big Wheel.