The Street Where We Live

I thought I'd throw a song reference into this title to spice things up a bit. To tell the truth, while I'm not running out of topics to cover this month, I am running out of energy from writing these every day. The writing process is happening later and later in the day, and so nothing else gets done once the kids are in bed. How do days fill up so quickly? I don't have half as much on my calendar as I did back in Michigan! I'm planning to keep up with more regular posts once we hit November, but not every day.

But I digress. I realized I haven't given you many glimpses of what our immediate surroundings look like, and I thought you might find them interesting.

Our apartment building sits a little back from a main road, directly across from the campus where Kraig is teaching. If you head east on the road, you'll end up in more congested areas. If you head west, you'll soon be traveling through cornfields separated by occasional gated communities, horse farms and the barracks of a nearby military base. Jon's greatest thrill are the army trucks and cars filled with camouflaged soldiers that regularly travel back and forth on our road.

When it rains, the part of the road directly in front of our building becomes a river for a few hours. There are no ditches or drains off of it, so everything sits until it gradually seeps into the ground on one side of the road or the other, or evaporates in the sun. When we lived in the front first floor, it was incredibly noisy with the splashing of vehicles heading back and forth. Last week I meant to take my camera out so I could get some pictures of the terrific potholes that had developed, but I missed my chance. On Tuesday a truck came by and some men patched up all the holes. The good news is that we no longer have to worry about breaking an axle on our van. The bad news is now you just have to imagine the road pitted with hazards.

Most of the day things aren't too busy, but from three and five in the afternoon the traffic can back up like this:

The crazy thing is that within minutes it can look like this:

It all depends on what is happening at the light of the intersection just a bit further east, or how many cars are trying to get out of the university parking lot (through that silver exit building in the right of the photo).

Each day I'm thankful that the kids and I are home before the traffic kicks in. And each day I am thankful that the length of Kraig's journey from his office to home is a walk across campus, through a gate, and across this street.

We're already thinking through what we where we would want to live if we ended up living here more than a year. We're strongly leaning toward finding a home in the gated community (coto) that's directly beside us. For twelve years Kraig studied and worked in Detroit, a good forty minute drive from home. Now, he's across the street. We're thoroughly spoiled. It's not a perfect street by any means, but we'll take it.