The Pittsburgh Left

No, it's not a political constituency. It's a way to drive. Found on the excellent user-maintained travel site wikitravel.org:

Visitors may want to be careful of the "Pittsburgh Left." At red light intersections, a driver wishing to turn left will do so as soon as the light turns green, regardless of whether another vehicle would normally continue straight through the intersection. While not done much by the younger generation, the Pittsburgh Left still has its adherents.

I think Mr. Incredible could add a few more irritating Pittsburgh driving habits and traffic patterns to this entry, but here's another one that is oh-so-true:

Another traffic irregularity that often confuses outside drivers is the "left only" lane. You can be driving straight down the road and suddenly the lane you are in becomes a "Left Turn Only" lane, although you did not change lanes. This is common in other cities in the right lane but not the left. However, there is no rule for when this will happen in Pittsburgh, and it can happen in right lanes also, so drivers tend to drift back and forth from left lane to right without signaling. If you are new to the city keep an eye on the signs leading up to each intersection.

I know things like this really irk many people -- and I'll admit they get me sometimes, too -- but for the most part I guess I accept them as some of the last vestiges of local flavor. It's getting so you can go just about anywhere and find a KFC but there's no local café in sight. And everybody in the country wears pretty much the same clothes and buys their housewares at Target.

So, as annoying as it is, I salute the Pittsburgh Left for its uncompromising disregard for homogeneity.

Predictable

I walk out the back door at 7:44 a.m. and wind around the house, my bag swinging from my shoulder, heavy with the same items as yesterday: lunch, water bottle, cell phone, wallet. A weed — that for some reason I’ve never bothered to pull or spray with Roundup — hangs in an arc over the sidewalk next to the house, swaying slightly in the breeze but not in any danger of dying, despite its lack of soil. I step on it, like I do every day, hoping that this will cripple the plant and lead to its eventual decline. I should bend down and pull it up, but I don’t have the time — I have to catch the 8:53 bus.

Down the steps, then, and up the street I go. A neighbor is bending over, fussing about her flower beds, like she was yesterday, with her butt in the air and no regard for what passersby might think. Another neighbor, dressed in blue scrubs and bearing a stainless steel coffee mug, heads for his car. Right on time.

I turn into the alley. Two blocks ahead, a 77F bus heads up Stanton Avenue.

Clunk. Someone drops trash in the dumpster from the third floor of some notoriously run-down apartments.

“71A — Downtown” says the recorded message as a bus opens its doors on Negley Avenue one block over. The disembodied voice echoes through the alley just as it does every ten minutes.

I’ve reached Stanton Avenue. A man in a grey business suit and light pink shirt stands at the corner, pacing slowly in his whiter-than-white sneakers and dragging heavily on his cigarette as he waits for the bus. His square face reminds me of a pale, pissed off Lawrence Fishburne every morning.

The bus arrives. A woman with the most curiously sprayed and sculpted hairstyle gets off the bus, her pointed features sending the same message as always: leave me alone. I flash my blue bus pass and the driver, a cheery, middle-aged woman with a youthful haircut, smiles and pushes a fare button. In the first row, a man rises to give me the window seat next to him.

“Good morning!” he says. “And how are we doing today?”

“Pretty well. How about you?” I respond, settling my bag on my lap and pulling out my book.

“Nice weather we’re having,” he remarks.

“Yes, yes it is,” I reply, diving headfirst into my novel to avoid further conversation. I’ve already heard everything he has to say: Babyland is being renovated, the city should really do something about this or that building, that program on Randy Pausch last night was really “touching” and the Mayor is an imbecile. I wish it weren’t true, but there’s nothing new under his sun.

The regulars get on and off at their respective stops. A tall woman with foamy black hair boards in Friendship, wearing her button-front denim skirt, plastic-rimmed glasses from the 80s and toting a small workout bag. She sits down, her legs a little too far apart for other riders’ comfort (especially considering the short, button-front skirt) and takes out her Hebrew scriptures, a thick rubber-banded packet of tattered, unbound pages. She meditates on each page for several minutes as the bus draws nearer to our destination, flipping each sheet over and placing it at the back of the stack before continuing on.

“Liberty and 10th,” the disembodied voice of the bus calls out, announcing my stop. It’s 8:16.

I rise, thank the driver, and head out into the sea of familiar faces going the same directions with the same expressions as yesterday — hoping that today will bring something fresh, something new their way.

Country roads / take me home

You’d think, living in the middle of one of the most backwoods cities in the country, that I’d have just about enough of the country here in Pittsburgh. Also, considering that our fair city is one of the most tree-lined in the nation, I really do have a lot to be grateful for when it comes to shade and freshly made oxygen balancing out the oppression of the urban jungle.

But somehow, it just ain’t enough for this country girl. On our way home to Dillsburg last weekend to visit with friends and family, Lewis the mutt and Mr. Incredible just about got drunk on fresh spring air flowing through the car as we passed into Central Pennsylvania (it smelled good to me, too, but I was the designated driver and had to control myself).

We love our neighbors, the diversity of the people around us, the many events and opportunities the city offers (especially for foodies like us) . . . but this is what we miss:

The willow tree in our old backyard. It was probably destined to die sometime soon anyway, but the way it swayed in the breeze, thrashed in thunderstorms and provided a 15-foot diameter of dappled shade—I will never stop missing that.

Driving down the road in the dark. The city never sleeps, so they say, for which I’m grateful, when I’m a pedestrian after dark. But on the other hand, it never really gets dark. There’s something seductive about driving down a main country road in the dark: it makes you want to run away with the person you love and follow whatever crazy dreams you’ve always had, but never acted on.

Having a yard where our dog can run around and poop. That’s probably enough explanation for that topic.

Seasons in the country. We have spring in the city, yes, and it is stunning in its own way, as flowering trees and shrubs lend extra grace to century-old architecture that you’d never find in the country. But spring in the country means that when the trees begin to leaf out, you see masses—even mountains—of bright green tips against dark bark. And when trees bloom, there are clouds of white and pink blossoms filling the sky. You can’t miss it, and you can’t help being overcome by the drama of country seasons.

That’s probably only the short list of what we miss. We also miss our friends and our family . . . although in some cases, moving away has only shown us how strong our relationships are.

We’ll move back to the country someday to start our commune (any takers? I’m serious), and when we do I’m sure we’ll miss the comforts of city life, like only filling up our gas tank once a month, only needing one car, not having a yard to mow and living on the same block as our friends from church. We’ll miss Trader Joe’s and the other three grocery stores within a mile and a half of our house. And the convenience of the farmer’s market.

But overall, when we move away from the city, I’m pretty sure that those country roads are going to take us home to the place where we belong.

(Not West Virginia, though. I hope.)

Juxtaposition

We country folk tend to think that there is no wildlife in the city (except, of course, for pigeons, squirrels and rabbits and they don’t count because people feed them processed, greasy food in the park—they’re just mooching off the urban system). But as I write this, an immense bird is soaring between skyscrapers, diving then recovering altitude and swooshing past the office windows, barely missing the cold, hard steel of our building with its daring wings. As I look out again, I see that there are now several hawks (at least, I think they are hawks) soaring through this part of downtown.

Just this morning a fellow bus rider, who lives in the neighborhood of Morningside, informed me he had deer in his backyard this morning, and last fall Mr. Incredible and Lewis caught a long glimpse of a beautiful buck in our neighborhood. (In fact, deer present quite a problem for the City of Pittsburgh from time to time, when they leave the safety of the city’s expansive parks and venture out onto busy streets and highways. Every Pittsburgher has one of these stories to tell, of the day they were driving down __________ Blvd. and had to slam on their brakes because deer were crossing.)

Driving through the Strip District at rush hour one morning, I spotted an even weirder sight: two wild turkeys waddling and gobbling along the Amtrak rails, looking very much at home.

So perhaps we country folk are a little naïve when it comes to how easily nature can be crowded out of a space. From what I can see—turkeys amongst railroad tracks, deer prancing in the median strip, and osprey skydiving downtown—these wild animals will make do with any space we give them, no matter how humble. They are built for survival.

Work in progress

Because I am tired of everyone badgering me to post photos of our new bedroom . . . here they are. As you can see, we're lacking all the finishing touches: trim around the windows and doors, art on the walls, curtains, etc.

But we're really enjoying the carpet, which has a great texture to it, and our super-organized closet. Hopefully someday soon I'll be able to post photos of the completed project!

Houseguests, etc.

I already know I'm going to get in trouble for not having taken photos . . . I'm sorry! I just keep forgetting to pick up the camera!

We had the pleasure of entertaining some dear friends last night and this morning -- Mr. & Mrs. Smith -- and it was the first time we'd had guests since moving into our new bedroom. (It's so much nicer to have guests when it doesn't involve uprooting yourself from your super-messy bedroom to sleep on the futon, and washing the same set of sheets three times during the weekend. Not that it's not worth it when you have to do things that way; it's just not fun.)

Anyway, it was lovely to sit around the dinner table, enjoying Mexican-ish comfort food with an old friend and her husband, and then to hit the local bagel place for breakfast this morning before a little tour of CMU's campus and the surrounding neighborhoods.

And tonight . . . we were planning on going out on a date -- a super-rare occurrence -- but a couple from church just called and asked us to go with them to a Lebanese restaurant on the South Side. Do you think we could pass that up? I think not.

Weekends like this one make all the other days in between worth living.

Postgame carnage

Yes, those are napkins. I had a tight decorating budget.

And a lot of fun sniffing Sharpies.

The bedroom project -- before

This footage was taken a few weeks ago--October 14, to be exact--and boy, have we come a long way with this project! It's now painted, carpeted, and some of the trim is up, plus we have super-awesome organizer in our amply sized closet. So, since we were getting close to completion, and because the guest bedroom was getting increasingly small and cluttered, we made the move last night! All the bed linens were washed in preparation, and we spent our first night in a new, clean, huge bedroom!

I'll post the "after" photos soon--maybe even some video footage--but I want to wait until I can get some good morning shots of the room. Situated on the second floor of the front of the house, it gets some lovely morning light, especially in the colder months. But for now, enjoy my cinematography.

Full circle

I just found this photo on Friendship Community Presbyterian Church's website—they're celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, which is a really neat time for Mr. Wonderful and me to be here, 25 years after I born into the community of this church. It's amazing how some things never change—like my mom and dad's appearance, the total and utter cuteness of my smile, and the warmth of the community at Friendship Church.

There are other things that don't change, too—like the way my mom has to hold that rubber ball because I can't maintain my own grasp of it, and the way my overall straps always fall off my shoulder . . . but I guess I don't feel so sentimental about those kinds of things.

Highland Park: a photo tour

Hooray for Highland Park! This week, our neighborhood got itself on the National Registry of Historic Places -- and it's not hard to see why.

What I'm reading

Thursday Next: First Among Sequels
by Jasper Fforde

This, I think, is the last of the Thursday Next series, and I can't wait to find out how it ends! (Of course, if I stopped reading four books at one time, I might find out sooner.






Moon Handbook: Pittsburgh
by Dan Eldredge

A good guide to Pittsburgh, with a surprisingly casual, insider's perspective (usually these things are all ads and endorsements).







The Moving Finger
by Agatha Christie

One of my guilty pleasures. Actually, this one is quite well-crafted--one of Christie's favorites, and not nearly as formulaic as some of her other works. It's a Miss Marple mystery, but I'm halfway through and Miss Marple hasn't shown up yet, so that's a pretty shocking change of pace. Seriously, I love Christie's mystery novels, and this is a great one.




Food and Faith: Justice, Joy, and Daily Bread
edited by Michael Schut

With a collection of essays by the likes of Wendell Berry (yes, that was a huge selling point for me), this book explores . . . well, justice, joy, and daily bread. Heh heh. So far, I've read a thought-provoking piece on food as sacrament, and I thought it was very well done. I can't wait to read the rest of it. I'm sure it will be a blog-entry starter for me for the next few months, given that food and faith are two of my favorite topics!

Hired.

Well, it's finally happened. I'm no longer unemployed! I got a job at McCrory & McDowell LLC (that's right; a company with a suffix!), which is an accounting and consulting firm in downtown Pittsburgh. I'll start work there on Thursday.

It's an administrative support job, which of course I know everyone thinks is a step down from editor . . . but it's also a step down in responsibility, and that will be a welcome change. The compensation for this position more than provides for our needs, and I feel good about the work environment, so I'm looking forward to it. They're actually going to let me do some editing and proofreading, too, so I'll get to use my editorial skills a bit, which is good.

I promise I'll put up a real post sometime soon . . . I know the Pittsburghy updates are getting old!

And now, it would seem

I have job opportunities coming out of my ears. Well, maybe not quite, but compared to a few weeks ago, yes. Out of my ears. I just had a second interview today for a job downtown, and that went well . . . we'll see. Then I have another interview on Friday (only a part-time position, but still worth going to) and I got a preliminary offer from the place where I'm temping! Sheesh! :)

Sending down roots

Mr. Wonderful is at school right now, experiencing anew those glorious days known as freshman/transfer orientation week. Part of me pities him the 18-year-old folly he'll have to deal with over the next few days (and years); the other part of me is very proud of him for taking the plunge and going back to finish college.

The house is looking and feeling a bit more like home, as you can see from the dining room photos . . . and although the master bedroom had to get a lot worse before it could get any better (it's currently ripped apart!) we're definitely on our way to transforming our new sleeping quarters into a peaceful, organized haven.

Lewis seems to be struggling with the transition -- he's been displaying all sorts of unpleasant behavior lately -- and I'm not quite sure what to do with him. If you think of it, please pray for him and us; we're just not sure yet how to help him.

We're getting used to riding the bus now -- learning the subtle art of when to pay, where to get on and off, and how to walk steadily and gracefully up and down the aisle while the bus is lurching forward.

We're also trying to figure out precisely what neighborhood we live in; we seem to be just barely on one side or the other of several dividing lines. Does that mean we're in a neighborly no man's land? Or that we have multiple citizenships?

I'm still looking for a job (and not being too successful -- at least, no one except for Trader Joe's has called me for an interview). But I'm holding out hope that something will come through soon. Specifically, I'm hoping and praying for a phone call or e-mail tomorrow, because as much fun as it would be to work at Trader Joe's, I'm pretty sure it won't pay the bills for long. Anyway, I'm committed to working for the good of this city, and I will give just about any job my all -- so it's just a matter of time before someone sees that and decides to try me out.

We visited a new church today -- Eastminster Presbyterian. Sometimes I think the Pittsburgh church situation is a little like the scene in The Blues Brothers when Jake and Elwood enter a bar and ask what kind of music they play there -- "Oh, we've got both kinds: country and western," is the reply. Well, here in Pittsburgh, they've got lots of church diversity: there's Reformed Presbyterian, Presbyterian Church in America, Presbyterian Church USA, and even a few Orthodox Presbyterian congregations. WOW! It's a good thing I'm basically O.K. with Calvinism (Mr. Wonderful, however, is not -- he's an Arminian through and through, hence the dozens of late-night arguments we've had over the past seven years regarding predestination, free will, and the sovereignty of God. So this should be a little challenging for him).

Anyway, Eastminster seemed like a friendly church, and I like its tagline -- "Christ-centered and intentionally cross-cultural." However, today was an atypical service, as the pastor was on vacation (August is a terrible time for church-shopping). So we'll probably go back some other Sunday, and see what we think then. I'd still really like to go to Friendship Community Church (also Presbyterian, heh heh) but we promised ourselves we'd look around first, so we will.

It's easy for me to feel down -- and alone -- here in our new place, with no co-workers or small group or good friends nearby, and the house in such a state. But tomorrow will come, as fresh and full of surprises as the farmer's market I go to on Mondays. And thankfully, the God who surprised me last week with the sweetest and most tender beets I've ever tasted -- purchased from a rough-looking crowd of teenagers in a torn-up parking lot -- that God has an imagination vaster than mine will ever be. So if I can find farm-fresh beets in the hood, who knows? Maybe even I will find a place here in Pittsburgh to send down roots of my own.

The dining room: before . . .

. . . and after

Trying to decide if I like it here.

It occurred to me today, when I was asking my husband for the millionth time if he was O.K., that maybe I'm not sold on living here. Me--the change addict, the person who's been so optimistic about moving to a new city--could it be that I'm having a little trouble adjusting?

Yeah, it's possible. I don't want to admit it, though. So I guess that's why I'm posting it on my blog?

Lewis and Mr. Incredible are doing well so far. The move was rough, but we had so many great friends and family members helping us, and they kept us from completely losing it on multiple occasions.

We're basically moved into our new house now; at least, we're not really camping anymore! Tomorrow, Mr. Incredible goes back to work (from home) and I pound the pavement, looking for a job. I'm looking forward to it; resuming the job search will give me something to focus on other than the fact that our whole house needs to be remodeled. Hopefully this week we'll be able to start work on the master bedroom; we may actually end up blowing in insulation, drywalling over the plaster walls, and redoing all the electrical work before we even get to the fun cosmetic stuff . . . but if we can accomplish it, I'm sure we'll be very happy with the result.

On a more positive note, however, I am absolutely loving our neighborhood and our location here in the city. Our walks with Lewis are the perfect opportunity to take in the incredible architecture that surrounds us on all sides. From the dramatically sloped roofs of English-style cottages to the bricked arches of 1900s-era stately homes, it's hard to be bored when walking the dog. And, as I suspected, one of my big budget downfalls (although perhaps a good thing for my health) is Whole Foods. We never had one within driving distance at home in Central Pa., and now we live closer to Whole Foods than to Giant Eagle, the "normal" grocery store. There's supposedly a farmer's market tomorrow in our neighborhood, so I might just have to check that out, too.

As I write this, Mr. Incredible is excitedly watching the Steelers' first pre-season game. It's been a highly anticipated game ever since their coach of many years (I think more than 12) threw in the towel at the end of the 2006 season. With a new (and very young) coach, everyone is watching and waiting to see what the Steelers are going to look like this year. Mr. Incredible, a devoted fan, is enthusiastic--but only time will tell. That's basically how I feel right now. This move feels like the right thing to do, and while I may have lots of high hopes for our life in Pittsburgh, I just need to wait and see how it all plays out.

Fitting my life in a U-Haul truck

Tomorrow is the day. Not the day when we actually leave Central Pa., but when we finally forsake the comfort and ultimate suburbanness of this place we've renovated, decorated, and laughed and cried over for more than two years. I'll admit that it's hard, now that I'm faced with the full reality of the situation, to leave this clean, comfortable home for one that will require serious scouring before we even begin to think about repainting and unpacking our boxes.

But we are blessed to have this opportunity, and I know the Pittsburgh house will someday feel every bit as hospitable and homey as our little starter home here in Lewisberry.

Just as I haven't been blogging for months and months, I still probably won't be around much, at least until we get unpacked in Pittsburgh, and I find a job. But everyone is welcome to visit--there's plenty of space in our new abode!

Three weeks' notice

The minutes and hours are passing me by, and I'm too stressed to enjoy them! At least, that's how I've felt recently. We'll be settling on our current house three weeks from yesterday, and from there . . . I don't know where we'll be! But I hope we'll end up here (just the right side of the duplex, not the whole thing):



It's a great old house, and hopefully we can move there in early August!

46

Instead of apologizing for my unbelievably long absence, I'm just going to post. So don't try to make me feel guilty for not writing; just be grateful I'm here now. O.K.?

O.K.

Why do we even say that? It's not even a word.

O.K., focus.

Sorry. I'm really going to write now. O.K.?

The last few months have been an agonizing combination of waiting and preparing, working tirelessly on our house so we can sell it--but knowing for sure if we would sell it anyway.

Thankfully, God and Carnegie Mellon University saw fit to let Mr. Incredible know that he is accepted into their computer science program for the fall . . . so now obsessive mail-checking and "well, we don't know if we're moving or not" conversations are over. And we are so grateful!

There are still so many details to work out . . . how will we sell our little house? Where will I work once in Pittsburgh? Will we rent or buy? And as we consider the last question, we must always be asking, "where will Lewis poop?" Sorry, but it's a fact of life. The dog is going with us, and so is his business.

But in the meantime, I have 46 more days to work, to contribute to the Brethren in Christ. I have longer than that to be with friends and family while we're still here--but suddenly, three months doesn't seem like a very long time.

I'll write more later . . . I just felt like I needed to break the ice and post a little update. Here's a photo of our house--anyone in the market for a 1940s bungalow with a backyard view of Central PA farmland?

O.K., that was fun. Be back soon.