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What Do You DO All Those Hours in town?
This was a question my husband no doubt wanted to ask over the years when my girls and I would finally roll up our driveway in our red Subaru, it smelling hot from the 15-mile trip home. I never intended to take up three-quarters of a day on an outing. But when we just let it unfold, there were so many small adventures to be had:
The Candle Guessing Game: This works well in Target’s aisle of scented wax. Have one of the party close her eyes. Select a candle and have her sniff it. Then have her guess the scent. Summer clouds? Linen? Fall sweater weather? Cotton candy? You’d be surprised how difficult it can be to correctly identify a concept ostensibly captured in a smell.
Blanket Stroking: Younger daughter and I like to go into T.J. Maxx and caress the ultra-soft blankets on display. It’s soothing. Manufacturers are learning how to make these more luxurious every year. I’m doing you a service telling you about our little habit, so now that you know what your fellow shoppers are up to, perhaps you’ll be more inclined to wash the throws you buy before using them at home. By the way, my daughter and I gifted one another similar plush grey blankets for Christmas, so we didn’t just sample without purchasing. I use mine nearly every day.
Predicting Cookie Fortunes: Even fast Asian food restaurants hand out fortune cookies for the end of the meal. The girls and I try to figure out what our fortune cookies say before we open each one. “You will be pleasantly surprised this week.” “A financial windfall awaits you.” “Don’t be afraid to follow your dreams.” We’re usually wrong–or we guess the correct fortune for the wrong cookie.
Looking in Stores: Looking in stores can mean browsing, seriously looking and trying stuff on, and actually buying. The most time is consumed in trying on clothes. Looking in stores is often pleasant and relaxing, although there can be a mission attached to it, like buying back-to-school items.
Proposing Outrageous Outfits: My younger daughter and I will pass the time pointing out blouses in crazy colors and odd cuts for my conservative older child. “Hey, look–this has your name all over it.” “This would be a great color on you.” “I know you like bizarre logos on your t-shirts. Here’s a good one.”
Arguing About Where to Eat: We have lots of options, but it’s hard to nail down an establishment that fits all the criteria: the right price, with food everyone in the party wants. And these days, we require enough staffing so that we don’t wait forever to be served.
Grocery Shopping: This process can take hours.
Getting Lost: I’ve come a long way since our first years here, but it’s still easy for me to become disoriented in the rabbit warren of tree-lined roads with similar names that make up our town’s center. First Ave. East is parallel to and across the highway from First Ave. West. Or something like that. First Ave. crosses First Street, a whole other numbered system. It’s mind-blowing when I’m behind the wheel trying to figure it out on the go. And don’t get me started on the roads labeled EN (“East North?”). They are dead ends. Sometimes, I still take multiple wrong turns on the way home and end up on a long, circuitous route to our house. Shhh.
Taking Novelty Walks: On clear, breezy days, older daughter and I love to find new places to get our walking in for the day. We have two scenic parks in town and neighborhoods with historic homes. This is one of our biggest treats and worth the 30-minute delay getting home.
So what do we do all those hours? Errands, shopping, eating, strolling, driving around looking for streets, and acting kind of silly.
Published in General
I don’t think that’s unusual. It took me quite a while after moving to the Rochester, NY area to figure out that although East Main Street and West Main Street were two segments of the same road, East Henrietta Blvd. and West Henrietta Blvd. were two different roads that diverged from a common origin point to go in different directions (one to the southeast, one to the south). One road through my suburban town had four different names as it passed through town (south of the core village it was Nine Mile Point Road, then became South Ave., then North Ave., then Webster Road).
Our town was at the county line. In our county, addresses on north-south roads ascended as you moved from north (on the large lake that formed the northern boundary) to south. But in the adjacent county, addresses on north-south roads DESCENDED as you moved from north to south. So you had to make sure you knew which side of the county line you were on, especially if you were looking for an address on County Line Road, which was the boundary and had addresses on both sides of the road consistent with the respective county numbering systems.
In a southern California town we previously lived, in the street on which we lived had multiple disjointed segments through the town. On a map our 2500 block of Redlands Drive was aligned with the 2300 block of Redlands Drive to the south, but there was a gap between them, so you couldn’t just drive along Redlands Drive to get between two addresses on the same street name. Constantly confused delivery drivers.
That is very confusing, and I don’t understand why they set it up that way. The roads should just be given new names. I’ve seen this in Denver, and I think here in Montana, too.
I am glad for your response, because I’ve been twitted for getting overwhelmed at roads that are laid out numerically and alphabetically before.
My family is from the general area of Rochester, NY.
Standard practice for all textile/clothing purchases, even in the Before Times.
It sure can. I love grocery shopping. Every time I am astonished by the unimaginable bounty that is found in a full-service supermarket.
I have seen a street sign (small town in the Midwest, can’t remember exactly where) that said N WEST ST. Why does this exist?
There is in Pennsylvania a town named “North East.” It is in the northwest corner of the state (but the northeast corner to the little bit of Pennsylvania that contacts Lake Erie).
In Texas we have the town of “West,” which is not in the western part of Texas. The western part of Texas is generally called “west Texas,” so if you’re talking about the town of West, you need to specify either by saying “the town of West, Texas,” or “West comma Texas.”
I remember hearing about West, Texas a few years ago when the chemical plant blew up. I kept thinking the news people meant somewhere unspecified in west[ern] Texas.
Make memories.
I happen to live on North West Street. When giving my address over the phone, I have to explain “the North part of West Street”. Otherwise the address would be recorded as the non-existent “Northwest Street”