In the fall of 2006 my husband and I bought a house in Washington, DC. We moved our stuff from our two separate houses just seven days before our wedding — that whole season was a wee bit stressful.
My family and I were dropped off the last of my stuff the night before our rehearsal dinner. Just moments before we arrived that night, there was a drive-by shooting that broke the windows on my next-door neighbor’s car. It was not exactly the welcome I was looking for.
But, well, you live with enough drive-by shootings and they just seem like part of the neighborhood. Kind of like the rats, whom we have named.
I started this blog as a place to journal our life in the city. At the time, I thought we lived three blocks east of gentrification. I said at the time: “I love our neighborhood. I love it just the way it is — minus the shootings. I love my house, my neighbors. I love the cast of characters, the crazy activity, the racial and economic diversity, the cultural differences.”
Four years later, I still love our neighborhood. But the gentrification line has definitely shifted. Now we are on the frontlines.
My DC-centric blogging took a long winter’s nap for a year or so, but now that I have a tiny new writing assistant on the way, it is time to start up again. After a couple of years wondering if it would ever happen, we are thrilled to be expecting our first child circa Thanksgiving 2010. This blog will be a place to share baby developments and the wild and crazy life in DC.
