Norman Rockwell Perfect

A few months ago I finally came up with a 4 mile walking route through the neighborhood.  It seemed appropriately challenging with plenty of hills, long enough to get in some good endurance, but at any point in the walk I could give up and be back home within a few minutes. Perfect.

Then a few days ago I decided to start running.  The problem is that my walk is ALL hills.  It's tough enough for me to run on flat surfaces, and I didn't want to complicate matters by adding in hills just yet.  So I scrapped my walking route, and now I go in the completely opposite direction.  A direction that is relatively flat.  Whew.

I actually run in the adjoining neighborhood.  We looked at buying a house in that neighborhood many years ago.  The main reason we chose not to was because the neighborhood creeped us out.  It's not like it was ghetto, or you would be worried about a drive-by or anything.  No, it was a completely different type of creepy.  As most neighborhoods around here, it's a planned community.  But that's not it either.  I think whoever planned it was going for a Norman Rockwell theme.  The houses have these cute little dormers.  The neighborhood doesn't have normal streetlights.  They have these lantern sorts of things which don't really provide much light, but they are cute.  There is a park and open space smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood with a road and houses all around it.  All of the families that live there seem to have a bazillion young kids because they are all playing harmoniously in the park.  Or dad and son are playing catch in the street. It's the eerie creepy are we in a 1950s sitcom kind of vibe.

When we looked at houses in that neighborhood a long time ago, it seemed like the whole street came out to greet us and give us the Grand Inquisition.  It was weird at the time to have a bazillion people interview you as you're looking at a house for sale.  And it's weird now to walk through the neighborhood because it still gives off that picture perfect, 1950s Norman Rockwell vibe.

So you might say that I'm a little paranoid.  But I must say that when I was walking through that neighborhood with a friend, and she said things along those same lines about the neighborhood without me saying anything.  Although she didn't allude to Norman Rockwell; she alluded to Stepford Wives.  Well, the gist is the same.

It is an interesting neighborhood to walk through.  It's like you toss out any troubles and problems when you enter, and your mind fills up with the thoughts of daffodils, happy children, ice cream trucks, and aprons.  It's almost like things along the lines of affairs, foreclosures, layoffs, and bounced checks don't exist while you are running on those sidewalks lined with lanterns. Creepy and weird initially, but maybe slightly comforting as time goes on.