I had just got home from work, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d propped the front door open so the cats could play on the porch (they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go outside, but they love to sit on the screened-in porch and pretend they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re outside). <\/p>\n
And, no surprise, two minutes later the house is invaded by little girls. E and two of her pals dashed in, asked me for a sharpie, and zipped right out the door again, brandishing the sharpies like warriors. I figured they were going to write on their hands or sneakers or something, which they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not supposed to do, so I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ask. But \u00e2\u20ac\u201c lord love her \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one of them calls merrily on the way out the door, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to go write on the wall!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n
Wall? <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What wall?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I called after her, but I already knew: my house is at the end of a dead end, right next to a giant brick sound wall. The highway runs by on the other side, but the wall is quite a nice one and you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear the traffic at all. <\/p>\n
I love the wall. They were still building it when I moved in, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen several stages of its construction. And it makes my end of the street into a quiet little island, cut off from the nonsense of the traffic and the shopping mall. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re connected by the Washington St Bridge to the neighborhood\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parks, schools, and playgrounds, and across another street and bridge there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a greenway path along a creek. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m literally two blocks from the nearest highway exit, but one summer, there were foxes in my yard. <\/p>\n
There is no graffiti on this wall. This