While I was walking to a neighborhood pizzeria the other night, I realized that I live in one of the oddest neighborhoods that I’ve ever truly noticed. It’s in the outskirts of Boston, so it is urban, but borders on the suburban in spots. Right in my immediate vicinity, there are big old houses juxtaposed with big old apartment and condo buildings. There are gas stations everywhere. Pizzerias everywhere. Auto mechanic garages everywhere. A KFC, a K of C hall, some pseudo-strip malls, a couple of car washes, a bar that I’m nervous to enter, a church next door, and a school and a fire station across the street. There is a Dunkin Donuts with the strangest hours of operation ever – it seems to close at 4pm some days and 6:30pm other days, but always closes early.

While walking to the pizzeria, I passed one of the few houses on my main street (tucked right next to an auto mechanic garage, of course) and just as I was taking in how strange it was that they still had their Halloween decorations up in the front of the house, I noticed their Christmas tree in the window. Quite frankly, the juxtaposition was horrifying.

Last week, as Swedish Girl and I were returning home from a Black Friday shopping excursion, we passed the combination gas station/auto mechanic garage/used car lot, which is across the street from the package store and Salvadorean restaurant by the way, and as I was drooling over a late 1960s Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham convertible, we noticed how this was the most disapointing used car lot we’d ever seen. Not for its selection of cars, but for it’s laziness. Most used car dealers wash, wax, and vacuum the cars to make them look as appealing as possible. Not this place. The cars were dirty, dusty, and shabby (not the Caddy, though).

And with all of this going on around us, it is still home. It’s still were I look forward to ending up each night. Go figure.