Community

I try to get to the gym at least three-five days a week to do my 40-45 minutes on the treadmill and bike. Yeah, I know, I'm unemployed and how dare I still keep paying towards a gym membership. Cut me some slack, okay, it's only $20 a month. And besides, it gives me more alone time to have my imaginary conversations with the voices inside my head.

Anyway, as I was driving, I noticed that all of us had our same color garbage and recycle bins lined up in front of our houses like good little conformists that we are, and it actually gave me a sense of community of sorts. Every Tuesday evening, we all drag our garbage stuff to the curb for pickup sometime on Wednesday. Before the recycling truck rolls by, there's a guy on a bike who scours the recycle bins of all of us (we're his favorite, by the way) to gather up the cans and bottles from the soda and other drinks that can be redeemed for money. Hey, anything I can do for someone else's economic health, right?

Being home has afforded me views into the neighborhood that I would not have seen had I still be working. Our elderly neighbor across the street lost his sweet wife in January. Each day, weather permitting, I see him with his walker and aide (or daughter) doing laps on our street. He gets into a pretty good stride at times, and I'll catch him on my goings and comings occasionally. This is a man who would run through the neighborhood when we first moved here 30 years ago (and he was younger than we are now). His wife used to say that you could not keep him still for a second, and in his 80s, it's still the truth.

I think I've figured out the new(er) neighbors and their family (two girls and a boy), but it's been difficult because the teenage girls look so much like their mother who is superwoman when it comes to gardening.

The summer camp is across the street and it's nice to see the field used for activities with kids. When our kids were young and into baseball, there was a baseball field with a fence around it. Local businesses wanted to display their signs along the fence, and the older neighbors put up such a stink that the businesses were voted down. Not too long after that, it seemed that the field wasn't used as much by local town sports teams, and it was dismantled. I always liked seeing the field filled with kids and parents, it was loud and lively and nice to come home to from work, even with the additional cars parked in front of the house.

Now we're the older neighbors, but we're of a different generation, and that may be why we view the kids playing basketball and soccer across the street as a good thing, even if it goes on to 10 p.m. Of course, our house is not directly across from the basketball courts, but still, why hassle kids shooting hoops...maybe it keeps them from shooting themselves up with drugs or bullets...I'm just saying, right?

All this is good, but I need to return to the land of the employed. I have outstanding credit card balances that are choking me, and while I appreciate unemployment benefits, they do not come close to being enough to keep payments up on a timely basis.

Well, I have to feed our "community" of stray cats now.