Texasness

I haven't blogged for a while. This one's going to be enormous as a result. I've been thinking lately about Texas and why the adjustment has been kinda rough. Some days it's all good. Some days it's harder. It's a great place to live. It really is. It's just different from where I come from so it's taking some getting used to.
In the meantime I've started a little list. Not by any means a list of things that are super hard, I'm dealing with those, just a list of things that are different. I'm sure the list will grow as time goes on but this is my 5 weeks of living in Texas list.

Funny things that are different in Texas:

1. Sideways stop lights. Why?

2. Lots of these little guys.

They're not mean, they don't hurt me. They're tiny and I guess they could be cute... but they just kind of creep me out. Maybe it's the fact that many of them are transparent. Maybe it's the fact that I have dreams about finding them in my food or crawling on my sleeping baby.
Sometimes I drive up our driveway late at night after work and as I open the garage door there are a whole bunch of these tiny lizards that were just hanging out on the door and they go scrambling down to the bottom as the door moves up. They get to the bottom, hang off the edge, and fall off. It's kind of creepy. It makes me feel like I'm Indiana Jones going through some lizard-infested cave in the amazon.

You may have to enlarge the picture to see this little guy. They're really tiny. 3. So many freeways. I tried to go exploring a couple of weeks ago and scope out the closest mall. My GPS took me on 3 different freeways, one of which was a toll freeway. Nope, I didn't have change at the time. Three different freeways just to get to the mall. Thank heavens for our GPS. I don't think I would have found my way home.
4. More crime than I'm used to. In our little shopping center two stores have been broken into since I've been here and one manager was held up at gunpoint for the deposit on her way to the bank in the morning. It's not super scary. Just makes you more aware of the things we should be doing to be safe and cautious anyway.
5. Football is a religion. I bet you didn't know that in Utah, but here football actually is a religion. The school song is sung in hushed reverence, many around us even removed their hats. The least important game of the season is attended by ninety-seven thousand people who come to worship. EVERYONE in attendance is wearing their burnt orange "worship attire". It's insane. It's also interesting to me, as a Mormon who tries not to curse, that there is so much cursing going on during this particular religious service. They have a chant that they say any time something exciting happens. It's like saying "Goooooo cougars!" but not. Probably 30 times a game they chant, (pardon the profanity) "Give them h*$@, Give them h*#%, Make them eat s@#*!" Wow.

This is Bevo, the University of Texas mascot.

My cousin Amberly is really good at finding little things to be grateful for in any given situation. So, following her example, I've also made a list I've made of things I'm grateful for in Texas.

1. My sweetheart. He's awesome. He's handsome. He likes to cuddle me when I'm happy, sad, barfing, pretty much any time at all. He cleans the house. He tells me to buy maternity clothes which we affectionately call my "stretchy pants" when I worry about the price. He misses me and texts me all day when he's at school. He's SO excited about our baby boy and it's adoreable. He's just the greatest husband in the whole world and he makes Texas fun.

This is Glenn's "first day of graduate school" picture. Now seriously, who wouldn't have fun with this guy around?

2. My house. I love my house so much. I have everything I need to be more than comfortable.
3. My ward. There are a lot of people our age and even though we haven't made any tight friends yet, it's comforting to be around a whole bunch of people who are in our same situation. Plus, I love going to church here. It's like a break from the rest of the world and a chance to recharge spiritually for the next week.
3. Gloomy days. I'm usually not a fan of lots of gloom. For some reason gloomy days, especially if they're rainy, just feel so cozy here.
4. Stores that I recognize. It sounds funny, but sometimes it's nice to just walk around in a Target when everything seems foreign. I used to live across the street from a Target. I like Target. It feels like home.
5. Lots of festivals and fun things going on. Glenn attended a hot sauce festival our second week here. Basically a whole lot of free chips and different hot sauces. He ate hot sauce and chips for 2 hours straight. Then there was the bat festival where a bunch of people gather to watch the bats come out at night from under Congress Bridge. There are a lot of fun reasons to get out and celebrate as a community.

6. Cheap gas. I haven't seen gas higher than $3.70 here. I just filled up today for $3.54 a gallon. It's still not awesome, but it sure is better than back home!
7. Lots of outlet malls. I'm not a huge spender but I really like to look and I REALLY like getting a good deal. So outlet malls make me quite happy!
8. Driving here may be complicated, especially for me, but the freeway systems are very forgiving. If I get off at the wrong exit it's easy to get back in the right direction because each exit has a U-turn where you can just drive under the freeway go back the other way. It's like Texas' way of saying, "It's okay that you messed up. Let's just try that again." It's nice for someone who makes a lot of mistakes and misses a lot of exits.