The Helpless Neighbor: EverydayQB Challenge-Week Two Update

For the past month I’ve been the helpless neighbor. We moved into a new duplex in a cul-de-sac of houses and duplexes about five months ago and we love where we live. This is the first time we’ve actually had a yard to take care of and a garage to fill up with junk. Because of these new additions to our living we don’t have a lot of tools, etc. that are needed in maintenance of a home. In come our awesome neighbors. The other people in our cul-de-sac have helped us with lawnmowers, tools and other things and have offered us kindness and assistance. It has been great to receive such generous giving and kindness from our neighbors and we are enjoying getting to them.

I am also the helpless neighbor because I am forgetful. Two weeks ago, in the rush to get out the door in the morning, I locked our car key and house key in our house. We didn’t have a spare key or any windows open and so we were forced to call our landlord so he could open our house for us. Our neighbor allowed us to wait in her home for the landlord because it was cold outside.

So, trying to prevent this situation from occurring again, I took our spare car key and spare house key and put it outside in a safe place in case it happened again.

Fast forward to yesterday, ready and motivated to go to the gym, weigh in and work out, striving towards my goal of losing 2lbs a week. While we were driving to the gym, I realized I had forgotten to put some clothes in the dryer that I needed later on that night. So we ran back to the house and I rushed inside, set the keys on the washer, changed the laundry and went back outside and locked the door behind me out of habit. The moment I stepped out the door I realized I had done it again. The keys were locked inside. No problem! I’ve put our spare keys in a safe place outside. I went to grab the spare key and unlock the house. Unfortunately, I hadn’t check to make sure that the spare house key was actually the spare house key. It was, in fact, the house key from our previous apartment. So, we were locked out again.

As I realized I had to call my landlord for the second time in the month to unlock our apartment, I also realized that both our phones were inside. After a moment of despair and frustration, our next door neighbor, connected to us by a half wall of our duplex, comes around the corner. I tell him of our plight and ask if we can use his phone to call the landlord. He told me he could do one better. The crawl space above his garage was connected to mine and I could crawl over to my garage and drop down into it and open the door from the inside.

I figured it was worth the risk, even though I’m a big guy, to avoid the embarassment of calling the landlord again, so we started to put the ladder up. My neighbor started telling me about how they’d done this before with another neighbor, when that same neighbor walked by. I’ll be honest, I had visions of myself falling through the ceiling and spending months in the hospital from the fall, and at that very moment, the very neighbor that had competed this task before walked by and asked what we were doing. He then offered to crawl through the space and open our door. I willingly accepted his generous offer and he effectively got us back into our home.

This exciting story is all to say that we ran out of time to work out yesterday. However, may it be know, I still lost not 1lb, or 2lbs, but 3lbs, this past week, beating my goal by 1lb. I ate much better (minus Easter weekend) and worked out a few more times. I still have yet to reach my goal of five times a week but we are getting closer.

My point is this: We need each other. Having people that support you and are willing to come alongside you in your distress is paramount in a healthy and successful life. We are blessed to have great neighbors, friends and family that we can count on in our time of need. Hopefully you do too.