First Halloween...

Pumpkin costume was bought 2 weeks back, cute portraits were taken at Picture People, chocolates were stocked 1 week before, on the D-day Amma finished work early, Daddy came home early, but there was NO trick/treat. It turned out to be a big bummer. I was cursing our condo community so much yesterday and blaming ourselves on the choice for our new home.

This is our first home, we bought it only 3 months back and are pretty new to the community. We know only 2 couples (thanks to my mother who is willing to even talk to the dogs, cats, birds, trees when both of us leave for work). I thought it was because of the as-usual-us who never in our 5 years of living together have ever been neighborhood friendly. Previously we used to live in apartments, so we would definitely bump into people when walking down the corridor, at the laundry, in the elevator, in the parking lot and in the other common areas. In spite of all this, I used to know about 3 families in that apartment, and only after my mother came down to our home for the 1st time(we were in apartment then) did we start making more friends(?!). We did not even know there was an Indian family living right across from ours. So much for our neighborhood networking skills.

Now here at the new place, there is no such thing as a common area. You have to either knock somebody’s door to strike a conversation or should wait on the porch for someone to walk by with their dogs/cats in tow. Not my type at all. I was looking forward to Halloween, partly due to the networking opportunities it presents, strangers can knock your door and you can go knocking stranger’s doors. (Now this is the NEW me post-Nikki, looking forward to networking, rather schmoozing I should say. It is not that we are non-friendly creatures, but we are always hard-pressed for time, week days go by in a haze and we hang out with non-neighbor friends during most weekends, and some weekends we keep it for ourselves). I & DH cannot afford to be like this anymore. We have to get friendly with our neighbors at least for Nikki’s sake, so he will get playmates and develop some social skills. I was waiting for the first person to knock the door, so we can set out going knocking others. Nobody, not even ONE SINGLE SOUL turned up. Probably they were scared away by my pumpkin painting that was placed on the porch.

I saw Halloween decorations in front of many of the houses and thought there will be celebrations. Heck, I have seen at least about 3-4 kids when I went for a walk once with Nikki around the condo. Where were they? In my 3+ years of being in the US, I haven’t seen a Halloween pass by so uneventful. I bought a big pumpkin a month ago, spent 2 hours painting it, got a few more decorations for the porch not heeding(when did I?) to DH’s protests, all in vain. I had hopes until 7.30 PM and started ranting after that. DH was happy that he can eat all the chocolates, he did not go trick/treating with Nikki in spite of me prodding him so much to take the first step. I will email the Condo association asking if there are so many heart patients in the condo, that they decided to ban trick/treating. That is the only reason I can think of.


Hmmm… ** BIG SIGHHH ***. Next Halloween, hopefully Nikki will have fun at least at his day care. We cannot obviously sell this and buy a new house just so we can celebrate Halloween.