Good morning

It almost seems like it was all a dream. Like I just woke up from a 3 year dream in which I lived in Texas to find myself driving through the Fort Pitt Tunnel in a thunderstorm. So much more is the same than is different, most of all how I feel. It’s as if the last 3 years just fell away and left the same simple girl who walked to her neighborhood bar for wings and beer and the Stanley Cup playoffs, and all was right with the world.

Yesterday evening I manufactured a reason to drive around town, listening to the music I listened to the last time I lived here, and it truly felt as if no time had passed at all. When you leave a place, it is frozen in that moment for you – how painful it must be to return to a beloved place and find that it has left behind that home of memory and is all but unrecognizable. I don’t think that can ever happen to Pittsburgh. Even when it’s different, it’s the same.

And I realize something else. I’m not sure who I am now, in the context of this blog. I had this whole identity centered on being far away, and being back sort of takes the wind out of those sails. Sure, I can probably get some more mileage out of the whole, “Wow, everything looks the same except that new Qdoba near my house!” thing, but the fact is that I never really wanted to say too much about me and my actual life experiences. I planned to talk more about what it means to be part of the diaspora, how to remember and honor the place where you come from. I don’t want to become a metaphor – the enthusiastic, outward-focused, cheerleading, all-too-brief O’Connor era gives way to the selfish, childish, mind-numbingly unhelpful Ravenstahl era. No one wants to read an index of all the banal stuff I do now that I’m back in Pittsburgh, any more than they want to read someone’s name on garbage cans.

But I don’t know yet how I’m going to keep this blog from becoming a garbage can. I don’t know where I fit. Who am I, now that I’m no longer Out of the ‘Burgh?

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Been waiting to say…

Toto, we’re home. Home! And this is my room, and you’re all here. And I’m not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all, and – oh, Auntie Em – there’s no place like home!

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The final countdown

Tomorrow I leave Austin, TX, forever.

Things that I will miss: Nephew and his parents, PF’s, Tex-Mex food.

Things that I will not miss: Everything else.

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Stuck on Pittsburgh

Sometimes, it takes fresh eyes to see something obvious. Like when Mr. TR’s friend VO, who drove up in the UHaul with the hubby, asked if Pittsburghers get issued the Steelers, OBX, and Sunoco stickers when we buy a car, or if we have to wait until we get the title.

Stickers?

But he’s right, there’s a small trifecta of pretty standard bumper stickers in Pittsburgh that might not mean anything to outsiders – and sometimes barely mean anything to me!

First – sports. This is pretty self explanatory. Some form of logo for the Steelers, Bucs, or Pens is de rigeur – my Steelers sticker graces the car I purchased in Texas and has never yet been in Pittsburgh.

 

 

 

 

Second, OBX. This one is probably pretty obscure if you’re not from the east coast. If you live anywhere in the eastern third of the U.S., especially the land-locked, cold Great Lakes and Appalachian areas, “OBX” calls to mind warm sandy beaches and idyllic lighthouses. Considering the Outer Banks are the nicest vacation spot within easy driving distance of Pittsburgh, it’s no surprise how many people advertise on their cars that they like to go there:

And finally, we come to the one that stumped me. Honestly, I never even noticed that probably a quarter of the cars in the ‘Burgh have a Sunoco sticker plastered on them. Or if I noticed, I never really thought about it. There’s a GetGo and a Shell station in my neighborhood that both generally had cheaper gas, so I rarely went into Sunoco, and I don’t listen to enough radio to know about the long-since-ended contest in which Sunoco planned to give away a few thousand bucks’ worth of gas to someone sporting their sticker:

So, how ’bout it? Be honest – what’s on your car?

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STOP @%&^*$ LOSING

 

Courtesy Millvale Blog

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If ever I would leave you…

How could it be in springtime? Knowing how in spring I’m bewitched by you so?

Oh no, not in springtime, summer, winter, or fall! 

No, never could I leave you at all.

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Hey Texas, find your mind

NOT in Pittsburgh

Yes, I’m back in Texas. I don’t want to talk about it.

But at least I can go back to being entertained by the H1N1 flu sideshow that is running amok in the streets of Oz-tin. When I hugged a friend’s child this afternoon, his mom asked me if anyone had coughed on me on the plane (probably, but I was sleeping so I can’t be sure) and if there were any swine flu cases in Pennsylvania (I don’t care).

Like I need to tell Pittsburghers to be practical, but let me just personally exhort you to remain calm, even if the case count in PA (which I did finally look up) exceeds one.

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Sorry everybody

The streak has ended, in a puddle of cold wet disappointment. We still have the best ERA in the league, we still don’t have a losing record. But I lost.

Sorry. I’ll do better next time.

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Like a virgin

Last night I arrived in Pittsburgh for a long-overdue visit with Mr. TR, and today I had the disconcerting experience of being treated like a tourist.

First, Mr. TR and I went by the insurance office to finalize our homeowners’ policy for the house we’ll be closing on next month. I had commented myself when we got dressed this morning – he in his Fleury jersey and I in my Clemente t-shirt – that anywhere else we’d look like we were trying too hard, but in the ‘Burgh we just look normal, so I was taken aback when the receptionist (who didn’t seem to have great people skills anyway, for a receptionist) remarked, “You’re really getting into the relocation thing, aren’t you?” Not entirely sure how to respond to that, I opted for the direct route. “We’re moving back,” was my only explanation, which satisfied her. 

Stranger still was lunch at Primanti, which went fine until I ordered my I.C. Light (yeah, go ahead, laugh) and the waitress asked for my ID. I handed over my Texas driver’s license, which was met with suspicion. After a long minute of looking back and forth between me and the license (which admittedly resembles more a frequent shoe-shopper card from DSW than a form of legal identification), she finally said she’d have to show it to her manager.

Super.

I guess my out-of-state identification was satisfactory to the manager, because the server did return with beer, along with a slight sense of mistrust. Had we been there before?, she wanted to know. Did we need our sandwiches explained to us? We’re okay, we reassured her – Mr. TR even ordered his sandwich with egg, which did seem to break the ice a bit. By the end of the meal, it seems the Texas ID debacle was forgotten, and we were treated with the same benign neglect one expects from any normal visit to Primanti’s. 

Perhaps we seemed too normal to really be from Texas.

I was struck, however, by the strength of my reaction to being viewed as an outsider. I almost desperately wanted to explain myself, why I belong here, why you’d be wrong to make judgments about me based on my driver’s license. But I didn’t. It’s easier to show people than tell them – I’m no Primanti virgin.

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