Living in the Little Boxes (on the hillside . . . and they all look just the same).

Once upon a time, light years ago (also known as when I was in high school), I had this journal that asked various questions and one of them was, “what is your biggest fear?”  I wrote that it would be waking up in my 30s, married, with a couple of kids and living in a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, and realizing I had settled.  It wasn’t that I was afraid of being 30, or being married, or having kids or a dog or a picket fence (although I really do not want a picket fence).  I guess I was scared of the possibility of rushing into all of those things we feel we are “supposed” to do, and then waking up one day and realizing I never did the things I wanted to do, or worse, the things I was meant to do.

Enter: 2013.  Here I am: 28, married, no kids yet (but two dogs), and doing something both the husband and I said we never wanted to do: living in a house in the suburbs, in a neighborhood where all of the houses look the same.   Am I living my worst fear?  Have I woken up in a nightmare?  Not a chance!  We absolutely love it.  When we first decided to rent this house we said,  “but we would never buy in a neighborhood like this.  We do not want to live in a neighborhood where all of the houses look the same.”   And now we’re even talked about buying in this area.  I suppose I am like those people who swear they will never drive a minivan, and then the second they are pregnant with baby #2 they hightail it to the minivan dealership.  Luckily for me, I already preempted such crazy behavior by buying a new SUV last month that will accommodate two children and hopefully ward off any crazy “OMG I NEED A MINIVAN” ideas.  Because maybe I can give in to the whole suburbs thing, but I will not give in to the minivan.  😉

Despite the fact that we now live in the suburbs, and love it, we still didn’t think of ourselves as “suburb people.”   I think Dave probably still thinks of himself as a small town kind of person, and I still think of myself as a city girl.  Then, on a plane ride last week on the way back to San Diego, the flight attendant asked us if we lived in the suburbs.  We said yes.  She then asked us if we had dogs.  We said yes.  And then it dawned on us.   Oh my goodness, we are suburb people.  Apparently we not only live in the suburbs now, we also look like and/or act like people who live in the suburbs.  

A short time ago I was single and living in a loft in downtown Los Angeles with a view of city lights and the Staples center.  Now I’m married and living in a house that looks so much like the other houses in the neighborhood that my dad put a soda bottle on the front porch while he was here so he could remember which house was ours after he went for walks.  The only place we can walk is to hiking trails.  We consider driving to the strip mall a couple of miles away “going into town.”  We drive Audis.  We own too many Apple products.  We like wine and cheese.  We subscribe to Sunset and Redbook magazines.  We are kind of like the people I may or may not have made fun of in the past.  We look a lot like a pair of suburban snobs.  Except minus the snob part because I don’t think we’re snobs 😉  Would I change it?  Absolutely not.  I love that I had that time of being a single girl in the city.  But now I love this time of being married in suburbia and planning our grown up lives together even more.

So there you have it.  I’m a suburbs person (suburban person?).  But now this suburban woman needs to get to work.