Small Town Living

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Twelve Things I’ve Learned So Far (About Grosse Pointe)

I’ve been living in Grosse Pointe for a little over two weeks now. Here are twelve things I’ve learned so far…

1.  The Starbucks in the Village makes a better dry cappuccino than any San Francisco branch. (milk foams better here, too. humidity levels?)

2.  Every second car is an SUV or truck. Every 20th car is a cop car. Every 50th car is foreign.

3.  An unexpected snowstorm in April is magical, revitalizing and cathartic.

snow in april

4.  Detroit-style pizza is going to be the death of me. (If I can’t fit into my swimsuit this summer, I blame you, Buddy’s!)

5.  I can make a perfect grilled cheese on an electric stove. Sushi rice, not so much. Pork cutlets, a struggle. Stove = 2, Me = 1.

stove.grilledcheese6.  Nope, that’s not a cute cottage, that’s a garage.

garage7.  Fire hydrants are red.

hydrant

8.  Squirrels are creepy.

9.  Japanese beetles are not ladybugs (and they are all over the apartment. and also creepy).

10.  A quarter will get you anywhere from 20 minutes, to and hour and 15 minutes, at a meter (and look at them!).

meters11. Detroit is beautiful.

detroit212.  An after-dinner family walk makes everything better.

walk

Quote: 2

“These are the same sort of women as those I encountered 20 years ago…who told me that they NEVER leave Grosse Pointe unless they are forced to. When they travel to Paris or Hawaii or Turks & Caicos for their holidays, they call a limo service and ‘close their eyes when the car travels through Detroit’ to the airport.”

– From the Comments section of Grosse Pointe Today
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Workshops at the War Memorial

chef holding tomatoes

My mother-in-law, a Grosse Pointe Farms resident, came to visit us after Christmas, as has been tradition since we moved into our TIC-turned-condo in 2006. On this visit she brought with her a brochure from the Grosse Pointe War Memorial.

A sampling of classes/lectures offered:

Miss Mustard Seed Furniture Painting Workshop (where one can learn the “pickled affect”), Wedding Ballroom Dancing (when regular ballroom dancing at a wedding just won’t do), Bridge 101, Asian Fusion Cooking (“What do you get when you combine east and west? You get an incredible and tasty Asian Fusion! You are hearing about this all over the place and it has become extremely popular”), Puppet Art and Facebook for Seniors.

That is all.

Image courtesy of stockimages via http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

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Burning Questions

Here are some of the burning questions that will be answered in this blog.

  • Will I be the only Filipino in town? (Per Wikipedia, as of the 2010 census, there were 1.6% Asian and 0.1% Pacific Islanders, and only 1.5% being of two or more races)
  • Will I be known as “the old mom”?
  • Where will we live?
  • Will I be able to find chicken katsu? pho? organic frozen yogurt? coconut rice?
  • Will the local coffee shop figure out how to make a macchiato to my liking? (And when they do, will the baristas whisper whenever I walk in?)
  • What about my music?
  • Will I successfully lobby city hall to:  approve a composting program, start an anti bottled water public service campaign, ban styrofoam and smoking, and upgrade the public school lunch program? (You think I’m kidding. I’ve already bookmarked a page called,”start municipal composting in your town“)
  • Will I then be known as the “crazy hippie lady”?
  • Will I finally learn how to ride a bike?
  • Will I wear fur? (Everybody’s doing it and I sort of really want to) Lilly Pulitzer? Loafers?
  • Will I crash my car after the first snowfall?
  • Will I join a shooting range, garden club or both?

Add a question in the comments section and I will be sure to address it in a future post!