The Power of Positive Thinking

I live in suburbia. This is the suburb to beat all suburbs. As my friend Meagaan says, other suburbs around the country are based on Orange County. We moved here for Scott's job, and the fact that he loves this job is why we'll be here for a while. I am thrilled that he is happy and learning at work and so I want to make this place, suburb-though-it-is, a happy place for me, too.

In that spirit, here is my list of top ten things I like about living in Orange County:

10. Where else can you catch a live show with Mike Baas?*

9. Every freeway has a carpool lane that is reserved for carpools all day long. I have 3 people in my car always, so I always am in compliance. I love this. And since Scott drives a hybrid, he gets to go in those lanes even by himself. It beats having to read the fine print about "during commute hours" and nonsense like that.

8. The Christmas lights. Seriously, is there like a rule that you have to have an obscene amount of whirring lights emanating from your property at Christmastime? In unison, all our neighbors put up lights and/or flags and/or snowmen and/or candy canes along the walkways and/or glowing nativity sets and/or flashing stars of David the first weekend after Thanksgiving. It's like it was mandatory. I loved it--it was such a treat to go for an evening walk and see all the houses lit up. However, I wondered after spending 6 hours and many swear words putting up my own lights, what would happen if we all spent that time and money volunteering and donating each winter instead of putting up lights. World peace? End of poverty?

7. The libraries. Each one has its own children's librarian and weekly story hour. Craft activity and everything. They are serious about kindergarten preparation here. It is like a sport in these parts.

6. Related to #7, some of the book store story times are so good they beat out the libraries. There is a Borders story time on Tuesdays at 11:30 for which you need to arrive at 11:00 to get a good spot. The woman who does it is a mix of funky alternachick, loo-loo lost her mind, and rap star. She makes funny noises with her tongue and gets 30 moms who are generally too cool to make fools of themselves in designer jeans to imitate her. This has made her my hero. Plus, she always wears orange. A sound system, puppet stage, a dancing monkey for each kid, and slinkies are involved. But I've only seen her actually read a book once. Hmmm. Grace wants to go everyday. Alas, it's only once a week.

5. The multitudes of playgrounds here. Good lord there must be one playground for every hundred people or something. And they're chalk-full of cool equipment, like twisty slides, mini-climbing walls, trip-trap bridges, those telephone things where you can speak to someone on the other side of the park, and zip lines, all over that special industrial material that's made from recycled things and bounces all falling kids upright onto their feet again like cats with nine lives. While we're on this topic, does anyone know what you call those merry-go-round things that aren't really merry-go-rounds that we all used to play on as kids? They whirl you and your 4 friends around in a circle until you fly off or barf? I just found a new park that has one of those! Yeah barfing merry-go-round thing!

4. Proximity to grandparents. Scott parents are awesome with our kids and live 20 minutes away. Yeah free babysitting! Plus I like hanging out with them. It's nice to have family close by to concur that your children really are the most beautiful, smartest, well-behaved, fastest learners on the planet ever.

3. Safety. Lake Forest, as well as the two towns that border us, are all on the list of top ten safest cities in America. We may lack any decent unique restaurants, but dammit we're safe.

2. Good public schools. Even though I still long to be able to afford private schools since I've been to them and taught in them, it is awesome that for free, your kid can go to a top-ranked school.

1. Weather. How great is it that we can go to parks to play all winter long? Seriously, there isn't even fog here.


*Mike, Sorry you ranked after the carpool lane thing. I put you at #10 just so that people would read about you first before they got bored an navigated away from my blog. :)