Life in the Village

It's homecoming weekend in our Big 10 university town. Any day now we'll be moving back there, but for now we still live in a rural village twenty minutes away. Even though it is so far from anyone we know, it's a nice little place.

Our house is in a newer subdivision on the far edge of the village, just past the high school. The kids and I walk down Grand River Avenue, the main thoroughfare through town which, before the Interstate was built long ago, was the route from the capital city to Detroit. Anyway, the kids rollerblade or bike and I walk our dog. Together we walk to the community gazebo or the library. 

There is only one traffic light in the village. This is the downtown. There is a GREAT pizza place, a saloon, a Masonic lodge, and a consignment store. On each corner, there is a diner; the pharmacy; a newly-opened, long awaited ice cream shop; and a party store. Not long after we moved Griffin wanted me to take him to the party store, thinking that they would have cool tricks for performing at parties. He was quite disappointed by the reality and said, "Why do they call that a party store?! All they have is beer and snacks!" which pretty much sums up the Midwest definition of a "party store."

We moved here when Griffin was in first grade, younger than Bela is now. A really huge chunk of their lives has been spent in this house so I imagine that I'll have some sad feelings about leaving. However, not yet. Maybe because I'm too consumed with packing boxes; too excited about where everything will go in the new house; too happy with all of it to feel anything else.

Anyway, this would have been a much better post with photos, but by the time I drag my camera out of the closet to go around snapping pictures and then download them to my computer and upload them to the blog, it'll be another 31 days. Maybe I'll do something on Instagram one of these days... I would really like to photo-document the journey from our house on the edge of a cornfield through to the kids' schools in our college town and on to my downtown office within view of the state capitol building. It's kind of a wild ride.


This has been day 12 of the 31 Days of ... A Calm Life series.