A bit of a rant: I am now Zero for Two in evening excursions.
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Last week I tried to go to a La Leche League meeting. I had looked it up online, found its location, and Google Mapped it. However, I got lost several times trying to find my way to it, even though I had directions and my destination was a hospital! Good thing I didn’t have some sort of emergency… Anyway, the roads here in Austin are (+) in good repair; and (-) impossible to navigate if you haven’t been on them before. They are super impossible to navigate at night because nothing is illuminated. (There’s no income tax in Texas, so I guess things like illumination just don’t happen.) They are hard to navigate in general because they are (1) completely unintuitive and (2) unsigned. I am amazed at how unsigned they are. Most intersections of two major roads have no signs. Some entrances and exits to highways have no signs. So I finally found the hospital, 20 minutes late, and wandered around trying to find room 2-B. There were no directional signs in the hospital or maps near the entrances or information desks. So I wandered. I eventually found 2-A and 2-C, and in total frustration called one of the LLL leaders. She very nicely informed me that the meeting that night had been moved to a LLL leader’s house. Just that one meeting out of the 12 monthly ones they’ve had all year. Big Sigh. (Oh, and that 2-B was “right there” where 2-A and 2-C were and if I come next month, I’ll be able to find it.)
Tonight I decided to go try getting new glasses (since I managed to step on my old ones just a couple days before moving to Texas and haven’t had a chance to get new ones since). I found a LensCrafters at, of all places, the infamous Arboretum mall that had so dashed my hopes of there being an actual arboretum in Austin. Seemed simple enough — it was at the intersection of two major highways, and how hard could it be to find a massive mall? Answer: really hard. I got off the highway at the right exit and couldn’t find it! There were no signs or other indications of it, and so I drove for a bit to where I thought it ought to be. I found myself in a maze of strip-malls. Turns out the Arboretum isn’t an inside mall like we have up north, but rather a bazillion stores with attached parking lots seemingly randomly strewn about. And there were some signs saying Store X is this way and Store Y is that way, but they were small and not lit, so I couldn’t read them without stopping in the middle of the road. I eventually called Ben who looked up the mall online and got me there. Where I found out that Texas law prohibits fulfilling glasses prescriptions more than a year old. (Which mine is by a couple months.) And the optometrist had already gone home for the evening. Big Sigh. So then I had to try to figure out how to get out of the mall. So I turned around and went back the way I came. But that doesn’t work here. There are so many one ways and access roads and divided highways that you can’t just go back the way you came. I eventually had to make a couple U-turns (which are totally standard here — I have to make two every day to get Sean to daycare) and traverse a random unmarked road to get back to a highway. Except I decided not to get on the highway because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get off again. That, it turns out, was the right decision. I followed the horrible access roads back home, which was the correct way to navigate this intersection:
I would like to point out that this is just the intersection of two highways. A simple clover-leaf would do the trick anywhere else. But not here. It’s those awful access roads, I think. Blah.
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And now for the mandatory cute Sean picture.
Ooh, look! Mommy and Daddy got me a cool gate to pull up on!
Ah! My camera can’t keep up! Within the past two weeks Sean has for the first time:
Put together the sequence of moves to go from lying to standing
Pulled up on everything possible in our apartment
Stood on his own for a couple seconds
Figured out how to crawl without falling down onto his stomach
Moved away from us to go play with something out-of-reach
Climbed up stairs
Slept for over an hour at daycare
Gotten a 7th tooth
Waved bye-bye
Started saying sounds that clearly refer to objects: mama, dada; dog, duck, deer (Yeah, those all sound like “daw!” But it’s clear what he’s referring to.) And baby
Hand-signing “all done” when he’s finished with something and wants to do something else
Gone down for naps gently, awake, without rocking, and even eagerly at times
Given clearly intentional hugs
I’m probably forgetting something. It’s been fun! (Though I’m not a fan of Daylight Savings throwing a wrench into our Paradise of Good Sleep.)
Whenever I move somewhere new, I inevitably run into the unique things about the new place that are somewhat mysterious to an outsider. As I live there longer, these oddities become the norm, and I forget that they were strange to begin with. Having lived in the Twin Cities for almost six years, I’d gotten used to the term ‘ramp’ referring to a parking garage (but not the substituting of ‘gray duck’ for ‘goose’ in the kids’ circle game). Now here I am in Austin, Texas. And the questions began the very first day. Most of them I’ve gotten answered. Here are my accumulated (thus far) Austin oddities and observations: (some of which may pertain to all of Texas)
1) We live just off “Loop 1.” Sounds like one might get kinda confused on such a road – sorta like the ring roads around London. Right? Nope. Highway 1 is a north-south highway that parallels Interstate 35. “Loop” here just means “highway.”
2) “Loop 1” is also known as “Mopac”. Weird name. Probably not a surname. Maybe an acronym? Or an abbreviation? But I never saw it spelled out anywhere. Always just “Mopac.” Finally I found out that it stands for Missouri (MO) Pacific (PAC), which was the company that owned the railroad right-of-way along which the highway was built. Ah.
3) Several of the roads here are labeled “R.M.” and “F.M.” In fact, we live pretty close to “R.M. 2222,” which seems like a pretty striking name for a road – especially when contrasted with “Loop 1.” Turns out that the abbreviations stand for “Ranch-to-Market” and “Farm-to-Market.” So our “R.M. 2222” is sometimes called “Ranch Road” locally. Wackyness.
4) The department of motor vehicles here doesn’t seem to want to deal much with motor vehicles. I have to go to the county tax office to register and title my car; and I have to go to the department of public safety to get my driver’s license.
5) I have to write my check for my registration and title directly to “Nelda Wells Spears,” which sounds completely sketchy and corrupt. The tax agent assures me that it’s on the books, and that it’s how the county tax assessor is honored – by having the name Nelda Wells Spears everywhere in the office. I pointed out that it’s gotta be a pain to switch everything when Nelda is voted out of office. Yep, he agrees and tells me it costs about $50,000 to switch out all the stamps, letterhead, and signage. Tax dollars well spent.
6) Speaking of taxes, there’s no income tax here, so boy, do they pile on the fees. It cost me $177.30 to register and title my car, not counting the $30 safety and emissions inspection. The amount includes a “reflectorization” fee, a “county road and bridge” fee, an “automation” fee, and a “child safety fund” fee. And $90 is a “new resident” fee. Welcome to Texas!
7) More on Texas government. Somewhere in some voter information literature, I was reading about how much the various elected officials make. Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, yadda, yadda. All making six-figures. No real surprise. Wait. Here’s one: Railroad Commissioner. In fact, there are three of them. Also six-figure types. What in the world do they do? It’s not like there’s an overabundance of railroads here. A little Internet check…
“The Railroad Commission has primary regulatory jurisdiction over oil and natural gas industry, pipeline transporters, natural gas & hazardous liquid pipeline industry, natural gas utilities, the LP-gas industry, and coal & uranium surface mining operations.”
We now return to our regular series: We’re In Trouble! Sean is pulling up as much as he can — especially on mom, who is nice and soft and makes sure he doesn’t bang his head on the hard floor when he falls.
On Sunday we found a park with soft grass in the shade. It even had a playground to boot! Sean liked that.
“Oh, look! A camera!”
Sean on the day he turned nine months old:
Statistics: he’s about 21 pounds heavy. I say about because at his current pediatrician, they weigh with clothes and diaper on. And he’s 29.5 inches long. A tall boy.
Sean has been pulling himself up for a week or so. It began with the rocking chair, which has a convenient lower cross-bar to grab. We wanted to get this on video, so we sat a cheerful Sean down in front of the rocking chair. “No, I don’t perform for cameras,” Sean said. Did he just stick his tongue out at us?!? Oh, we’re in trouble…
I’m introducing a new series of posts called the “We’re In Trouble” (WIT) series. The name comes from the exclamation either Ben or I make whenever Sean does something that indicates that the reign of Toddler Terror is imminent.
In this installment: the concept of language, which eventually leads to the word ‘No!’ being said over and over and over again. Right now we’re experiencing the cute beginnings: ‘hi.’ Sean waves hi, and will sometimes say a breathy “haaa” along with it. Haven’t been able to get the “haaa” on video yet, but here’s the wave.
