- heat (it's 100 degrees out there today, and we still have six months to go. If we're lucky. We wore flip-flops to Thanksgiving dinner last year. Heck, we wear flip-flops year round. At least my sister who lives in the Midwest insists on doing so when she visits. Even if her toes are turning blue, they're a lot warmer than they'd be in Missouri.)
- cactus--some of which my neighbor insisted on planting too close to the sidewalk, and now her yard is a threat to our clothing and skin when we walk to church. Some days I wish we lived where people landscaped with lilacs and juniper. Make that most days, except in winter, because I don't do the whole freeze-your-tush-off thing anymore, as proven by my very existent tush.
- gated communities
As for the latter, it's not like people here are less friendly that they would be in other regions of this great country. It's just a bonus that developers like to include in order to convince buyers that they're moving into an exclusive enclave--one that will encourage a certain life-style, while discouraging riff-raff and pizza-delivery persons. I'm not sure what the life-style it's meant to encourage is, unless it's the life-style lived by those who don't mind attempting to punch in access numbers to open a gate at three in the morning after a long car trip to the nether ends of the civilized world with a screaming baby and whiny kids who just want to get into their own beds! Sounds like a treat! Sign me up!
As for me and my house, well, we're not quite so fancy. Said house is in an older section of town--one that is becoming more economically diverse, interpret as you will. Our street is straight and runs due east and west--no hoity-toity curves for us! It has no landscape flora-/olde English-/quasi Mediterranean-inspired name. Plain old numbered streets will do for the plain old likes of us! Houses on this street are completely individualized. There are two two-storied homes--both of which I've lived in (such nomads we are!), one cream-stuccoed house, several block/brick homes. There are no gates, except leading into the back yards. Trust me, no developer every took a gander at this site.
Every now and then I get posh neighborhood envy. "Look at them there," I think to myself, "with their cozy, curvy streets and their private community parks. Look at the landscaping on that block--such precisely-trimmed cypresses. And how quaintly named they are! I want to live in Meadowgreeene Towne Village and Estates." Rats.
I got back a little of my own this week. HA!
With Anders crawling around here like a slightly shaky but very determined millipede (seriously, I have no idea how he coordinates those hands and feet, except that there is a rather deliberate placement of each) we have had to take defensive action. Non-board books have been banished from the lower shelves. Floors are patrolled with extra vigilance for Legos, marbles, and stray hair chihuahuas.
But my finest moment was the move I made when I realized electrical wires had the same attraction for the tiny tiger that ice cream and brownie dough have for me:
Even if I don't live in a gated community, I live with a gated desk. I'm moving up in the world.
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