St. Louis
Well, the time is drawing near. We have one week and four days until we head out to our new home. I've been thinking about the things I'll miss here in St. Louis. Most of them are the humans, but I'll miss other things like;
-Going to the zoo on a fall day and buying a bag of kettle corn.
-Kirkwood farmer's market, although when I first went to KFM I was sorely disappointed because the farmer's market I was used to was a huge parking lot full of actual farmers selling locally grown produce and homemade delicacies, but I grew to love the flowers and fruit sold at KFM.
-Michelle's Cafe
-Solid Rock Cafe, Eureka's Christian coffee house, too cute.
-Chesterfield Mall movie theatre, it's so new and clean I don't feel like I'm sitting in filth.
-St. Louis Bread Co., it's called Panera in Kansas, but we're going to keep calling it Bread Co.
-Ballwin Christian Learning Center, what a great resource for home schoolers to use.
-My church, goodness there won't be another one like it.
-Cardinals baseball, even though I'm not a fan, my husband and son are and I like watching them enjoy baseball and St. Louis is 1st rate when it comes to baseball. Okay, nevermind, this is a lie, I hate baseball.
-The free activities that are so readily available here to entertain my kids on a boring day like the parks with fountains, Grant's Farm, St. Louis Science Center and the Art Museum.
Now, do you want to know the stuff I won't miss? Yes, you do.
- Top of my list Missouri Department of Motor Vehicles.....I hate you. Strong words, but I can't think of a more true feeling that I have for that organization.
-People asking me what high school I went to. It's weird people.
-I44, I270, Manchester, Lindbergh, Ballas, Ladue, Watson, Sappington. I won't miss driving and getting stuck in traffic on any of those roads.
-Driving 20 minutes to get anywhere.
-City taxes taken out of my husband's paycheck
-Parking fees taken out of my husband's paycheck
-My family being 5 and 10 hours away.
-The bigness of everything. Everything has to be bigger and better. Like the perfectly good swimming pool that was torn out to make a gigantic water park and the baseball stadium torn down to build a bigger one and on and on. I guess it's called progress, but to me it's called silly. St. Louis is just too big for this girl.
-One of the problems with having so many wonderful resources at your fingertips is the feeling that you need to constantly be doing something. It's hard to find people around here that can just be still and be happy. I've never seen so many people fill their time with so much stuff. It's a little nuts and a bit infectious, so I won't miss thinking I need to be constantly filling my time with "stuff". I know that's critical of me, but it was one of my first impressions of this place and it hasn't subsided for nine years.
That's it. Eleven more days. I think I'll run the gamut of emotions before the big day. I'm trying to stay as happy and positive as I can for my kids. They are not going to leave this place without a lot of tears being shed, for that matter I don't think I will either.
3 comments:
I hear you. Though I have to admit that there are even days when I miss Manchester Road. No kidding. I miss Kaldi's, the City Coffeehouse with their wonderful crepes, Baskin Robbins, Ted Drewes, the Art Museum, a mall that has more than one department store, good used bookstores like Dunaways, seeing the Purina checkerboard when I would drive across to Illinois, my church and the people there, Babler State Park, Forest Park, and a million other things. And sometimes, I even miss the crazy traffic that would give me time to catch up via cellphone with my friends (I know, I deserve a lecture on the dangers of this), as well as listen to the radio. Here, the longest commute is 20 minutes if I want to go from one end of town to the other and hit all the red lights. Sadly, I have no one here to just call and chat with on my cell phone, and my hubby wouldn't really appreciate paying large long-distance fees for me to call the States.
Okay, I know this was your post. But you just shared a bit of "therapy" with me. =) No one hear gets it, but it's nice to see that you do.
I hope you have a wonderful move to Kansas, and that you and your kids soon find it feeling exactly like the home you've dreamed. And I hope you guys are able to ride the roller coaster of emotions in the meantime.
That would be "here", not "hear"....I've been having issues with homophones lately.
And one last thing...you are right about the high school thing. It is weird. People here ask me where I'm from, and when I say St. Louis, Missouri (because no one will have heard of Wildwood), they ask me, "No, where did you come from?" And they want to know where my original ancestors came from. Not being Mennonite (like everyone else here), I don't have that whole family history recorded, so I just usually say "from Adam just outside the Garden of Eden". Most of them don't find me humorous. It's quite a bummer.
Inkling, I find the Adam comment very funny, but what do I know? I'll also miss Sunsai, a Japanese place in Kirkwood and HM a new favorite clothing spot for Ellen and me.
You should ask for phone minutes or cards or something like that for your b-day or Christmas or just because they love you so you can call when you need to hear a familiar voice.
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