Week 1 in review

The Pitts lives up to it's name.

Pittsburgh as advertised:


Pittsburgh as a reality:


Alright alright, so it may not be AS drastic as I make it seem but the past week has been an interested experience for me.

As of today we have officially been living in pitts for 1 week - though only in our house for 4 days... oh how many posts I could write about the Dingbats (more on that later). We took a red-eye from WA last week - my master planning being that Lex would sleep on the plane. How do I never see things as they really WILL be?!? Lex was awake for 3 of the 5 hours, factoring in a 3 hour time change; voila two super-sized sleep-deprived parents and one mini tornado of destruction. chalk that up to "one of those things I will never do again with a 2 year old".
After arriving, we stopped by our house to find it still occupied, shock of all shocks, by the dingbats. So we checked into a hotel, closed the curtains and feel asleep while the sweet chant in my head sang "it's all a dream... you'll wake up back in LA... it's all nothing but a big back-country scary dream!"

You can imagine my disappointment when I opened my eyes and nothing had changed... After a few nights in the hotel, we finally got into our house last Saturday, and reconnected with the world through internet last Thursday.
In that past few days Lexi and I have done a lot of walking - and even managed to know where we were some of the time. The streets around here are like nothing I have ever seen before. The first question people ask when they discover we've just moved here is, "do you have gps?". We were pretty happy to be able to answer "yes" until we discovered that not even our gps knows where we are usually. I take it as a sign that most of the time the gps thinks we are in the middle of one of the three rivers... I'm thinking it could mean one of two things: 1-the pitts is just as twisted and confused as I think it is, or 2-the gps is trying to do me a favor and lead my to the middle of the river to put me out of my misery... it's anyones' guess really!

The people around here are very nice - in that "I am heavily medicated to deal with the fact that I live here" sort of way. I met a young girl at the playground today who told me her life story in about 10 minutes flat. Trust me I got all the details about how her mom and dad are de-vorsed, and she never gets to see her mom. But she has over 100 cousins who live in pitts (interesting seg-way into my ever evolving theory of inbreeding around here...), and how she can ride her bike outside, but JUST until the black people come out but then she has to go home cause they steal all the 'good stuff'. Yes, it was an interesting crash course in my new life. Honestly, I could have stayed all day to get her take on world politics and the crisis in the middle east, but just then she saw - you know - a black person and had to hurry home just in case, I've never seen little legs peddle SO quick!

Church was an interesting experience (sidebar: I feel as tho I may possibly be using the word "interesting" A LOT... I have tried to think of other ways to express things around here, but for now interesting is really the best that I can do...). How can I adequately sum up 3 hours of awkward conversation openers. A couple of the most memorable:
"We tried to live in your house, even got their first...", insert awkward silence.
"We live in Stanton Hills too! but, we don't live in the safe end...", ahhhh - sorry about that. Be sure to let us know how that works out for you.
"You used to live in LA? WHY on earth would you move to Pittsburgh, did you not have a choice?", certainly wasn't for the company, I can tell you that much at this point.
"how old are you? Oh don't worry there are like 5 other girls in the ward that old OR older!" 5... that many huh?

Living in the East so close to historical sites, I am feeling a connection with the founding fathers. They lived by the moto "give me liberty or give me death". I admit that I am not quite that convicted to my cause (maybe if there was no light at the end of the 3 year tunnel), however, I think that my moto for my life in the pitts will be "give me liberty or give me drugs!".
All the natives I meet assure me that things will get better... then they smile that toothless grin and tell me there is "nun-udder place in this here world they'd rather live..."
comforting... so comforting...