I am 110% b-u-r-n-t out soooooo.
Instead of posting “part 3” of my Caffe Nero love story, I’m going to save it for tomorrow and tell you a story about the unexpected text I got yesterday.
I recently got a new phone, and not all of my contacts were transferred over. I was sitting at my desk, typing away at an essay about Estonia when all of a sudden, I received this text.
Random Number: Do you have any string? Trying to make a tin can telephone up here.
Me: I have plenty of string, and I’m always up for making a tin-can telephone, but I think you may have the wrong number.
It turned out to be my upstairs neighbor so I started looking around for that forgotten yarn ball in every drawer, closet, shelf, etc. After a few minutes of searching, the closest thing I found was a bunch of fishing wire even though none of my current or previous roommates fished. The ball of yarn must’ve been thrown away, misplaced, or just never existed in the first place.
I felt bad for hyping up the fact that I had sting to contribute, so I reluctantly texted her back with an apology. I mentioned the fishing wire, and apparently…. Fishing wire is actually ideal for tin-can telephones. They borrowed the fishing wire, then my upstairs neighbor knocked on my door 20 minutes later. He returned the fishing wire and asked if I liked soup. As a thank you gift for letting them borrow the fishing wire, he gave me a packet of Japanese onion soup mix.
We went onto the porch and tested it out when I realized that this was the first interaction I’ve had with this specific upstairs neighbor. I’ve always had a quirky relationship with my neighbors. Over the quarantine, we organized back porch meet-ups where all the residents from the houses across the fence and then the ones from next door would meet up every day at 5. We would lean over the railings and just talk banter. This became an everyday thing. We called it the 5 o’clock happy hour.
One day, while trying to exchange some banana bread by tossing little sealed packages over the fence, someone jokingly recommended building a pulley. We laughed about it, at first.
The following week, we found ourselves trading banana bread and home-brewed beer from a little pulley with a wicker basket attached to it.
Neighbors are cool.
Goodnight y’all.
Aimee the Ramblin’ Woman 