Home to heat

As was typical of my early-summer trips up to Illinois, we got a few very hot (for there) days - mid 90s. But then, a couple days before I was due to come back, the weather changed, the temperature dropped, and it was super nice.

(And of course, I came back to high-90s, high humidity, and so far my house has just cooled down to 78 after turning the AC back on after having it turned WAY up while I was gone. I don't anticipate it cooling down to "comfort" (about 74 for me) until after dark.)

I walked pretty much every day when I was up there - went out shortly after breakfast, walked for between 45 minutes and an hour. My parents' neighborhood (it is large, probably about 4 miles by a half-mile, though I could have easily-enough crossed the main thoroughfare into another neighborhood) and is very walkable:
- sidewalks nearly everywhere, and well-maintained sidewalks at that
- people either keep their dogs on a leash, or have them fenced in backyards. I met several dogs; one elderly pug stepped out and blocked my path and his owner laughed, "He likes people. His name is Barley" and the presumption was he wanted pets, so I petted him and told him he was a good boy and then he moved over and let me pass. The one dog that made me nervous was that barking dog the day I tripped, but even it was tethered to its porch. (That is different from here; people let their dogs roam and there are also feral or semi-feral dogs. A sad story before I left on break was of a woman in Ardmore who was attacked and killed by a pack of dogs - not large dogs either; most of them were dachshund cross-breeds)
- there are lots of shade trees; I forgot how much deep shade a maple tree throws off
- people are generally friendly and it seems a lot of people walk their dog/walk for exercise/jog early in the morning.

Also, there are interesting things to look at; a lot of people put a lot of effort into their landscaping and the HOA is not so draconian that you don't get some odd and interesting things (a tiny Japanese style bridge over a "stream" made of tumbled pebbles; poppies - I was once told it was illegal to have more than a certain number of them at one time (yes, these are the real thing, the poppies from which opium came), different kinds of statuary....).

I admit, the longer I stayed there, the more it felt like home again. Funny, because I've now lived here for twice as long as I lived there, and if you count "going off to college" as "moving to another place," I've lived here longer at this point than anywhere else. (West Virginia: Feb 1969-June 1969, not that I remember it; Ohio, June 1969 to either September 1987 or August 1989, depending on how you count; Michigan, if you count it, September 1987 to May 1991, and then Illinois, May 1991 to July 1999. And then here from July 1999 on.)

I suppose the thing about Illinois is that I lived there during what was (ironically, given stuff I've read about others in grad school) a peaceful and carefree time for me - I lived with my parents so rent and board were not worries; I didn't have to do the marketing and I rarely had to cook. I was only responsible for keeping my "bedsit" clean (the bedroom I used, the adjacent guest room that housed the tv I used and the cross-country ski exerciser). When things got bad, my mom even did my laundry a few times....so a big part of it, I realize now, was that I had "back up" - here, I have very little in the way of "back-up" and I can definitely feel it, the need to balance work-work, volunteer work, keeping-the-house-clean work, and yardwork. And all the stuff like grocery shopping and running errands, all the stupid boring stuff that eats up so much time when you're an adult.

And so that might be part of it. Or part of it might be the old "absence makes the heart grow fonder," even though the place HAS changed a lot since I last lived there - the downtown college town has upscaled itself to the point where grad students probably can't afford to shop or eat there any more, Golden West closed, the Famous-Barr became Macy's and then closed, the Penney's closed, the Bergner's is closing....the Eagle grocery store is long-gone. Still, there are some familiar places: Carl's ice cream shop, the Garlic Press, Sewing Studio....

And there are some things about the town I do slightly envy - they have three of the top-rated grocery chains (Hy-Vee, Meijer's, Fresh Market) whereas my town has Pruett's, which is nice as far as it goes but it small and does have limits on what it can carry, and then we have Wal-Mart, one of the lowest-rated chains (and I agree, though I admit my attitude is probably colored by the fact that it's the place EVERYONE has to shop in my county, and when it's crowded it's truly awful, and they have lousy service and restocking practices...).

I don't envy the traffic there though. And some of the ways things are done - if you want to dispose of any "corded appliance," you can't put it out for bulky waste; you have to take it to a drop-off point (which is only open a few hours a week) and drop it off: difficult for people with tight schedules or who have a hard time lifting and moving stuff. (I helped my mom dispose of several large old items - a broken carpet sweeper, a broken air filter).

I will say there were a lot of for-sale signs in their neighborhood, and some empty houses. Some of the state agencies have downsized, I guess, and State Farm (once upon a time the biggest employer) is in the process of moving some of its operations out of state. It's a little sad but it's how things go I guess. I didn't like seeing the empty houses; they seemed like dead things - either with the shades all drawn or no shades on windows looking into empty rooms. I preferred the houses with signs of life - cars and kids' bikes in the drives; recently-planted flowers in the garden; flags, whether American flags or the small decorative flags people have (like "welcome summer!") or the Cubs blue-W-on-white flag flown the day after a win (my parents' town is midway between Chicago and St. Louis but it seems that the Cubs fans - at least among vocal fans - outnumber the Cards fans by 4 to 1)

But yeah. Now I'm back where walking for fitness is challenging (unless you do the indoor track on campus, which is boring) and the Rangers are pretty much the preferred baseball team, and it's super hot, even at night....