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Happy Ypsilantiversary (to me)!

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A year ago, I moved across the state -- from Kalamazoo to Ypsilanti. (Yes, I have a penchant for oddly named Michigan cities. Next up: Hell and Bad Ax.) I'd been living in Kalamazoo for five years, which was about two to three years longer than I'd lived any place in my adult life. I had finally reached that point in my social life where my friends weren't just "work friends" or "people I know from that one class I took" -- but  friends -friends. If I wanted to go out for drinks at the last minute, I actually had people I could call who would go out to drinks with me and not be like, "Eww, that weird girl from that one class I took wants me to go to happy hour. How do I tell her that we don't really have a last-minute-happy-hour kind of relationship?" In addition to leaving the longest home I'd ever known, I also left a fifteen-year career in teaching for an office job. I will openly admit that I'm not good at many things (se
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What happens when you drive for the first time in 2 months

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Last weekend was the first time I had driven in over two months. I rented a car for the weekend to visit family and to go to a former colleague's retirement party in Southwest Michigan. And, apparently, when you sign up to rent the "standard" car, you end up with a huge SUV-type thing with key-less ignition. I felt like a soccer mom from outer space. If soccer moms drove around outer space with Ohio tags. Hey back at you, Ohio license plate. Even though I can't say I've missed driving that much, I have missed a few things about driving -- like grocery runs that don't take two hours and the lugging of my old lady grocery cart through the weedy, sidewalk-less sides of the road. I was also really curious to see how I'd feel driving after two months being wheelless. Whelp, in case you're also curious, this is how it went... First stop: Target. Because I'm basic, y'all.   I started my weekend with a Target run where I wandered the aisl
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Why I'm Going Car-free for One Year

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Until a month ago, my main mode of transportation was a 1999 beige Oldsmobile, which I affectionately called the Oldfolksmobile. It had lived the first part of its life in in my grandmother's Indiana garage, where it was only brought out for trips to the local Jewell-Osco to stock up on cigarettes, Wonder bread, Velveeta and vodka. (My grandmother was and forever will be my #oldladygoals.) The last part of its life wasn't nearly so cushy. A little over five years ago I packed my belongings into the Oldsmobile's roomy, beige interior and drove from my hometown in Buffalo, NY to my new home in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I've spent the last five years driving that car through snowbanks I'm too lazy to shovel and backwoods dirt roads in  Northern Michigan that I can't find on my GPS. The Oldsmobile sat outside in the snow during more than its fair share of polar vortexes because apartments with garages are not a thing that exist for us mere mortals in Michigan. I
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