I do miss a few things

GH remarked lately that there is really nothing he misses about living in Utah County American Fork. I can almost agree, but there are a few things that I wish I could have brought up with me.

The two biggest ones are Costco and Target. I'm at the mercy of Sam's Club and Wal-Mart here, which is absolutely not the same thing at all. At Sam's you don't feel the Spirit, and at Wal-Mart you just want to kill yourself. So yes. I miss those two things. And Sunflower Farmer's Market. I miss that place, and there is nothing like it in the valley, so I need to get a begging campaign going. What if I need to buy hippie stuff or watch people cheat at strawberries, huh?

The other thing I miss is being able to run errands on foot. For the last four years, both in Salt Lake County and in Utah County, I lived within walking distance of the church, a grocery store and a library (not that I went to my UT County library unless I just wanted to be surrounded by books from the 70s and eighty million signs telling me to turn my cell phone off). In my last apartment, I also had a post office a few blocks away. The first time I ever took the newborn Dark Lord on a walk was to go drop off a package, and as I navigated his stroller through the January cold and slush I kept repeating, "It's okay, we're okay, we're doing fine, it's okay," over and over again because I was just sure that maybe the baby was going to freeze and die during those 20 minutes or maybe I would have a seizure and tip the stroller over and he would spill out and then freeze and die or maybe a truck was going to hit us and kill us both. (Ah . . . postpartum anxiety and terror . . . I don't miss you at all.) I really liked being able to walk to the grocery store, the library, the post office. I liked that in my last little city there were several bell towers and I could hear everything from hymns to show tunes to Beatles numbers when I stepped outside.

So. Even though I have traded up in absolutely every way, I do miss the walking. I maybe could walk to church or the post office here, but not if I wanted to get anything else done that day. Plus, it's hot outside. And as soon as it stops being hot, it's going to be really, really cold. In addition, as I have mentioned before (and then again) these aren't the most pedestrian-and-or-bike-friendly streets. There usually are no sidewalks, so you're pushing strollers in the gravel on the shoulder, hoping no tractors or runaway cows hit you.

On the plus side, the Dark Lord's grandma and great-grandma are both a short walk away, and just a little bit farther is the library--the same library, in fact, that featured in all my 2007-2008 adventures. A lot has changed since I left, but some of my favorite coworkers are still there and it's great to go in every week and chat with them and leave the Dark Lord unattended in the storytime pit. The weird part is using the library as a civilian. I . . . don't love that feeling. As soon as something comes up, I hope I can rectify the situation and get myself back into some kind of active library duty. I'll even volunteer if I have to--that's how badly I need to be on the other side of the check-out counter. (This is the same counter, by the way, that has signs asking people not to use it as a perch for their small children while checking out and which I sometimes enforced. Looking back, I'm amazed that no one ever told me to go &^%$ myself because I'm pretty sure that's what I would say now to anyone who tells me to put the DL down on the floor so that he can run out of the building and into traffic which is exactly what he will do if given any freedom whatsoever. The things first-hand experience teaches you . . . )

Anyway, here are some pictures from Tuesday's walk to the library & back, where TDL was plied with compliments and summer reading prizes. Is anybody else doing summer reading this year (officially or, just, you know, on your own?)