Our place out here in the middle of nowhere is a sanctuary away from the pressures of the world for both The Girl and me. It’s also a place where we can escape people. Both she and myself are borderline introverts. Seeing patients all day long taxes us and so it’s nice to come home to the quietude of nature.

Trouble still finds us though, as I’ve posted about previously (and have yet to finish writing about). It seems that people are people no matter where they are. Take a conversation that I had with one of our other neighbours last year for instance:

“So you’re doing some landscaping huh?” he said.

“Yeah, they’re getting started,” I said.

“Wow, looks like a big job,” he said.

“Uh huh. We’re planning on it taking at least 3 months,” I said. At this point I started inching away from him because I knew where the conversation was heading.

“Must be costing a lot,” he said.

“Yup, it sure is,” I said. Inch..inch…

“If you don’t mind me asking, how much is it costing you?”

Pause.

“You mean the landscaping,” I asked. I couldn’t believe he just came out and asked. Would it be bad for me to say that, yes, I did mind him asking?

“Uh huh,” he said. Now he inched closer to me closing the gap that I’d slowly been creating.

“Well it’s costing about half as much as our house is worth,” I said. I was quite proud of the fact that I was able to avoid giving an actual figure.

He wasn’t satisfied though, “Really!?”

“Yup,” I said and started inching away again.

“So like $50,000?”

I think my face took on a look of incredulity here because of the obvious magnitude of the work involved. I said, “Our house is worth more than $100,000.”

We were one of the last people to move into this neighbourhood. All of the pre-existing neighbours had been through our house while it was being built, and all knew how much the house was listed for.

“$150,000?” He went on.

And so it continued until he got close enough to the figure and then I said, “Yeah, it’s around there.”

Wow, huh?

It’s almost one year later now, and I still don’t know what the best way would have been to tell him that it wasn’t really any of his business. Living out in the middle of nowhere and not having lots of neighbours means having to maintain decent relations with them.

What would you have done in this situation?