Back Yard Neighbors

I have this thing about telling the truth.   It gets annoying sometimes because I don’t want to exaggerate or misrepresent something, even if it’s likely the only person who would care is me.   For example, I like to run (or bike) to a rounded mile so when I report here how far I went, I’m not telling my four readers I ran ten miles when I only ran nine point eight.  

Another thing I do is get bogged down in terminology.   For example, my mother’s sister’s daughter (otherwise known as my cousin) is one of my closest family relatives.   She and I decided some time ago that our children could just call us aunts, as opposed to figuring out some technically correct but wholly unpractical relationship-based name to refer to us.    Now that I think of it, I may be wrong on the second cousin thing.   I’m not sure what denotes a “second cousin” or a “once removed” cousin, but since she and I decided to simplify the nomenclature to suit our needs, I really don’t care.

Only I do care sometimes, because let’s say I’m telling a story about how my niece is this amazing swimmer to someone who knew from conversations in the past I have no siblings.  In these cases, I try to explain the situation quickly and succinctly.   Only it’s never that quick and it is definitely not succinct.   Also, I think the person listening is thinking to themselves, “oh for pete’s sake, get on with the important part.”

In a related and recent example, I find myself trying to explain the relationship our family has with our neighbors and their children. Commonly I’m talking to people who don’t know what our backyard and the layout of the houses surrounding ours is like.  I try to explain what happens when our children go outside and our neighbors children see them from their back yard and come running out to play with them.  To do this, I go into unnecessarily complicated detail about the relationship of the yards and our proximity as neighbors.

This has to do with the whole not wanting to lie about things situation.   These neighbors aren’t our next-door-neighbors, who have totally different children that my children also like, but are in high school so the relationship is one of sitter/sittee instead of playmates.    I get into explanations such as: “they’re two houses away but  our yards are connected at one point, sort of around a bend and we can see each other and yell across from our decks.”   This is total not-necessary conversational information, but I go into it to be clear, only I think it makes it not clear once I’m done doing that rambling thing I’m so good at doing.

What I needed was a good way to describe these neighbors without having to explain it.    I was talking to a friend the other day and the phrase, “back yard neighbors” just suddenly came out of my mouth.  I was so excited about coming up with this clear and succinct explanation of the proximal relationship between our houses that I stopped telling the story and exclaimed, “that’s it! That’s what they are.  They’re our back yard neighbors!”  

I’m not sure my friend was as excited by my new phrase as I was.

The Big Boy Update:  My son said to me yesterday, “mom, I’m going to throw my pajamas over the bridge, okay?”   We have a walkway across a two-story vaulted area in our house and my children’s room is at one side of the “bridge” as we call it.   They know nothing is ever (EVER) allowed to go over the bridge.   But my son has caught on to the one exception: dirty clothes and linens.   I thought I had been sly, throwing them over when he wasn’t looking, but apparently he’s seen it enough to have figured it out.   He was testing me, or rather asking permission, to throw his dirty clothes over.  I told him he could do so and that he’d found out a special exception to the rule.   I think he enjoyed throwing his clothes down.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I woke up early in the morning two nights ago and felt something warm beside me.   I reached out to hold my husband’s hand and discovered it had gotten substantially smaller.  At some point in the night my daughter had gotten into bed with us, something she never does.   She was sleeping so quietly and soundly that I left her there until morning.

Fitness Update:  I swam 1.25 miles today or a little over 2000 meters.   Just as I was finishing, Uncle Jonathan joined me at the pool to go to the fitness room.   As we left the pool deck it suddenly started pouring rain.   It had clouded up in the last ten minutes of my swim.   I did some upper body and a little additional cardio work and he and I had a good time catching up.