The Wheelless Wonder

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...

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...