Sunshine, and Complaints
It's summer. It's official! It's hot and muggy here, and I'm getting antsy. This is the time of year when I really wish we had a car. (With the caveat that I don't like driving. I wish we had a chauffeur, too, but that's at least slightly less likely than us ever having a car.) I want to get out of town, or at least out of our neighborhood, without a long public transit ordeal required. Now that Dutch is in underwear (hello, kitty!), public transit is even more painful. The other day when we were on the bus to daycare, she announced that she had to pee, so we had to get off, run around looking for a bathroom, and then wait for another bus. Cars are SO EASY. Whenever we get a ride, I'm amazed by how quickly we arrive at our destination.
Anyway, now it's summer, and I see listings in the paper for lovely events like free early evening concerts at the park, or even just the hours for the community pools, and it makes me cranky. We are just not emotionally equipped, as a family, to schlep off to a fun outing that will take two buses and 80 minutes each way. Anything we do outside the neighborhood on the weekend (like, say, grocery shopping!) requires a full-day commitment, pretty much, and anything "extra" to do is kind of overwhelming. A free concert that starts at 6:30 at the closest location this summer would mean leaving the apartment at 5:15, staying for 45 minutes, and getting home at 8:15, getting the weevil to bed around 9, leaving her cranky the following day. Which is fine, and if we were zestier, more energetic people, I'm sure we'd be dashing off for all sorts of fun festivities by public transit. But we're not, so we need the car that would cut the trip to 10-15 minutes. (Though there's a distinct possibility that we'd STILL not get out the door. I'll keep blaming public transit for now, though.)
We were thinking of buying a car a while back, but then we got off the daycare waitlist, and decided to spend money we don't have on that, instead. Someday, we might have daycare AND a car!
I should also mention, to remind myself as well as clarify for my vast readership, that I don't like cars. I think they're evil, generally speaking, polluting and dangerous and isolating and overall promoting of a depressingly self-centered approach to life. I hate that everything is set up to accommodate them. I yell daily at people in big cars who accidentally almost run me over in the middle of their cellphone conversations. I believe that everyone should regularly take public transit. I really hope that we can continue to live in a place where I can do all my commuting by public transit. If we had a car, we'd try to use it as little as possible. But gosh, I'd love to have a car (and oh, yes, a driver) in reserve, for those summer moments when I'd love to pile everything (hello, potty!) into the car and go to a park just outside town to put our feet in a creek. That's all. Oh, and for grocery shopping.
Anyway, now it's summer, and I see listings in the paper for lovely events like free early evening concerts at the park, or even just the hours for the community pools, and it makes me cranky. We are just not emotionally equipped, as a family, to schlep off to a fun outing that will take two buses and 80 minutes each way. Anything we do outside the neighborhood on the weekend (like, say, grocery shopping!) requires a full-day commitment, pretty much, and anything "extra" to do is kind of overwhelming. A free concert that starts at 6:30 at the closest location this summer would mean leaving the apartment at 5:15, staying for 45 minutes, and getting home at 8:15, getting the weevil to bed around 9, leaving her cranky the following day. Which is fine, and if we were zestier, more energetic people, I'm sure we'd be dashing off for all sorts of fun festivities by public transit. But we're not, so we need the car that would cut the trip to 10-15 minutes. (Though there's a distinct possibility that we'd STILL not get out the door. I'll keep blaming public transit for now, though.)
We were thinking of buying a car a while back, but then we got off the daycare waitlist, and decided to spend money we don't have on that, instead. Someday, we might have daycare AND a car!
I should also mention, to remind myself as well as clarify for my vast readership, that I don't like cars. I think they're evil, generally speaking, polluting and dangerous and isolating and overall promoting of a depressingly self-centered approach to life. I hate that everything is set up to accommodate them. I yell daily at people in big cars who accidentally almost run me over in the middle of their cellphone conversations. I believe that everyone should regularly take public transit. I really hope that we can continue to live in a place where I can do all my commuting by public transit. If we had a car, we'd try to use it as little as possible. But gosh, I'd love to have a car (and oh, yes, a driver) in reserve, for those summer moments when I'd love to pile everything (hello, potty!) into the car and go to a park just outside town to put our feet in a creek. That's all. Oh, and for grocery shopping.
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