It's been four days since I arrived in Ann Arbor, and if you follow my Twitter feed, you may know some details of the ridiculously wholesome turn my life has taken. You may know, for example, that when my neighbor's kid in New York helped me load my truck, he and his slacker shitwit buddy charged me two hours for practically nothing, whereas my neighbor's kids in A2 unloaded my entire truck in about 45 minutes and wouldn't accept any payment.
You may know that when I drove the truck down to Toledo to drop it off, Grandma Jellyspoon greeted me with a tin of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
You may know that when I got back to A2, that same neighbor had cut my front lawn.
You may know that, on the first day of school, the boys and I woke up at a time usually reserved for cursing at lunatics hurtling themselves down the West Side Highway. And that the walk to school took 8 minutes.
You may know that, about an hour later, Dave the Mailman rang my doorbell to introduce himself and welcome me to the neighborhood. And he didn't even look inside my house to see what he could steal later.
You may know that when I told my landlord I had signed for a package for her, she told me just to leave it on the front porch and she'd stop by for it later.
Take a moment. Have you processed this yet? I know I haven't. I mean, having a specific place to park my car without driving in concentric circles for half an hour was weird enough. But this? We've gone beyond concentric circles. We're now on one of those human gyroscopes that NASA uses to train cadets for zero gravity.
Have you kept it together so far? If so, excellent. You are made of hardy stuff and are ready to hear how revoltingly carefree my life has become:
Today, while I'm sitting here at my solar-heated, convection-cooled, cork-floored, bioswale-stormwater-filtered library branch, my kids are going to walk home from school by themselves. And if they get there a minute or two before I do, they can walk on in the front door, which I have left open for them.
Is this how people really live? If so, I think I can get used to it. After I work through these last few waves of nausea.
