Nebraska

We are coming up on seven months living in the Nebraska Panhandle.
The house in Utah was sold on January 28. Not for as much as we were hoping, but we made some money at least. As I told one person here, I guess we are now committed to living in Nebraska. Right now, we have been renting a small 3 bedroom, 1 and ¼ bathroom house. It presents some interesting challenges as far as bathing. Everyone needs to be aware of when everybody else wants to take a shower. Most of the time it works out, but there are the inevitable conflicts. I think when we do buy a house; the kids will appreciate the extra room for a short time.
Of course, everyone asked how I like it here. It’s different, both good and bad. The biggest difference when we first got here was the lack of mountains. The kids commented on that immediately. There is a lack of variety of businesses. For grocery, there is Walmart, Safeway, and the Panhandle Co-op. There are a number of Mexican restaurants, a few Oriental, and a couple of chain ones (Chili’s and Applebee’s). No Starbucks, no Burger King. I think one of the biggest annoyances for me is the directions. If I ask a local where something is, the answer is in relation to something else instead of an address or street. The Walmart? It’s by the Home Depot, not Avenue I off highway 26. It’s ok if you know the town, and I am getting better with it. But I still like to know at least the street, and I still Google things for the address a lot.
On the positive side, everything is no more than five minutes away. It took about two months to get over the anxiety that if a Scout meeting was at 7, I didn’t need to be ready to go at 6:30. Even when the distance was the same, in Layton I needed to allow for traffic. Although sometimes I don’t know what to do with an extra 25 minutes.