Thursday 13-Observances From The Past Two Weeks

I've noticed a few interesting things since living in suburbia. Thought I'd jot them down and hopefully come up with 13.

1. The instant we got the new phone number hooked up we have been inundated with sales calls for alarm systems. I'm not talking one or two calls, more like 3 or 4 a day. They start out with "Hi welcome to the neighborhood. Can we come out and do an estimate on your house and provide you with cheap alarm service? Did you know it will save you on your home owners insurance?"Sorry Jack we already have an alarm. Makes you wonder if we moved to a bad neighborhood.

2. Today was a new sales call,"Hi welcome to the neighborhood. If your new house needs carpet cleaning or carpet stretching we're the peeps for you." Uhm..maybe I'm new to the whole "new house business" but isn't it most likely your new house comes with nice clean stretched carpet? The house isn't new per say..but the carpet is awesomely clean. How long that lasts is yet to be seen.

3. For some strange reason, I'm overly paranoid about the trash. (I covered this earlier..I know)

4. The library was a bit of a disappointment. I never visited the Tyler library for this same reason. The library is housed in the very nice town administration building. Looks can be deceiving. It's located in a very smallish office building..for a library I like lots of space to spread out and feel comfy and lots of books that are fairly recent. I've never felt so packed like a sardine as I did in this one. It was kind of funny cause the librarian gave me the "tour" just standing at her desk. This shelf, adult fiction. This shelf non fiction. These two shelves tween. These two shelves childrens. I realize that the library is never at the top of the food chain when it comes to the town finances. My smallish hometown in Oklahoma has an awesome library the old was nice and the new one is even better. I just don't get it. Maybe I'll check out the next town overs library and see if they are any better.

5. My mail person must somehow be incompetent or illiterate. I have yet to receive any mail that is actually ours. House number 1713 is no where near 1821. Yes, I did fill out all of the forwarding information. You'd think after two weeks, it would get here. I'm a wee bit concerned.

6. The pick up system for this school is very impressively organized. I expected to sit in carpool forever, but it really wasn't so bad and the teachers get things going really fast with the whole car tag number for the riders. I guess in hillbilly country they don't think about things like pick up organization. They just throw them all out in front and hope for the best that they are picked up by the right person. It's not that bad, but there was no organization at Gameboy's old school.

7. We live .8 miles from the school, easy walking distance for the boys. My boys get a little spaced out at times and they probably wouldn't get home til dark. Yeah, I'm probably over paranoid. For now I pick up. When the weather turns really nice..like say spring, Bossyboy and I will walk to the school to get them.

8. They could ride the bus...but supposedly if you live less than 2 miles from the school, the bus charges . Yeah, thanks but no thanks. If I'm that desperate, then they can walk.

9. While filling out paper work for school; the hardest part for me is the contact info section. Pretty much if the school can't get a hold of you or your spouse who can they contact? If they can't get a hold of either me or hubs at my cell, home phone, his cell, his work phone than we've both died. Is it wrong that I did put my parents in OK down but still put my phone and the hubs phone as back up?

10. The next section of paper work is the section on who to contact other than the parents when there's barely a hint of snow/ice outside and we decide to cancel school for the rest of the day. In bold letters it stated LOCAL CONTACTS. In other words we want to get the heck out of dodge and the grandparents living in OK will not work. Again, if I can't be reached than something is urgently wrong or when you call , caller ID is showing as Unknown.

11. I do realize that we are in the northern part of Texas. This means we WILL get all the snow from Oklahoma. It's not very comforting when the former owner/landlord left us the snow shovel. Much obliged though! The boys are excited about the snow concept.

12. One thing I have really noticed is that the wind does come sweeping down the plains here. There are no trees whatsoever in suburbia land, which hubs says why we get all the wind. I'm sure they were all chopped down to build houses. I take that back, there are trees here. They are all young saplings grown by each homeowner, it's not the same as a good East Texas pine tree though. :(

13. So far I haven't received a welcoming committee knocking on my door. No one bringing cookies or stopping to say hello. Everyone seems to pretty much keep to their self and shut away locked up with their alarms on. Although if an ambulance stops right outside a neighbor's door, EVERYONE comes out to check on things. I'm ok with the no welcome rings right now. I'm still trying to get my bearings.

I do apologize that this list sounds like a list of complaints. That was not my intent, I guess you could say I'm still trying to adjust and just feel out of my league.
That pretty much covers it. I'm sure it's way more than you ever cared to know about my first experiences in suburbia.