Never judge a book by its cover

That's a saying we've all heard since we were, oh, I don't know... since we were able to understand the English language. Yet, it never rang so true to me until Hurricane Ike.

And here's another one... God works in mysterious ways.

I am a firm believer of both sayings after tonight.

When we first moved into our house, we didn't really know the neighbors across the street (the ones in the HUGE houses that we affectionately called the "low rent district"). We still don't really know one of them, but the others we have become friends with. But that wasn't always the case. One Halloween they had their lights off and didn't answer the door for trick-or-treaters. I was appalled (that happens to be a fun night for me). We didn't understand how they couldn't like to have little kids in cute costumes begging for candy, so we gave them some nickname along the lines of "mean neighbors."

Then, along comes Hurricane Ike. In the days before the storm was to hit, we helped them move stuff, and they helped us move stuff. They were fortunate, and didn't have any damage to their house like we did (although, they had all the debris from the Bay and the canal on their back deck and pool... they're right on the water, so you can imagine what a mess that was). Anway, I diegress. As we were cleaning our house out after the storm, here come B & G, with a pot of homemade soup, plastic bowls and spoons (Jay was nice enough to take the time to go over there and hook up their generator to their main power so that they were able to cook, etc.). They had made us food, and insisted that we take a break to eat. They sat there and talked to us for awhile while we ate, offered their sympathies, shared their stories, etc.

Since then, we see at least one of them almost every time we're at the house. We've shared our stories. They've seen our progress. We've talked about getting together. And we finally did tonight. The "mean neighbors" are now the "rich neighbors," (hey, I call it like I see it) and we've become friends with them. They had us over to their house for dinner, and even bought us a gift (who does that when you're the ones who invited someone over to dinner??). They are the absolute sweetest people around. Truly. And, unfortunately for us, are moving to Florida. It makes me want to cry (and I almost did when I got in the truck to come back to the townhouse... but that could also be attributed to the amount of wine I drank), because (and I admit it), I did judge a book by it's cover, and I was so off base it's not even funny. I'm going to miss B&G, and I'm kicking myself in the ass for not making an effort to get to know them before now. It's kinda sad that it took an event the magnitude of Hurricane Ike to bring us together, but that's how God works in mysterious ways.