Not from around here

The police are very…effective around here. Before moving to Monroe, we had each only been pulled over once.  Since we’ve lived in Monroe, we’ve each been pulled over once more within a month of moving in.

 
How’s that for a welcome to the neighborhood?*

 
I think it all started with the day we signed our mortgage in downtown Monroe.  We pulled into a parking spot and looked for a meter.  Free parking? Impossible! We went to school in Ann Arbor, where there is no such thing as free parking.  There is, however, such thing as $1.00 an hour parking at meters.  I quickly discovered there that it was cheaper to get tickets than continue to feed the meter (and easier, as you might imagine a day’s worth of meter quarters is hard to come by without some effort).  But FREE?! We were dreaming.

 
Anyway, the sign said “one hour” and this being our first home, we assumed the mortgage papers would be signed in under an hour.  Turns out they had to reprint some documents and we walked out of there just over an hour….just in time to see the policeman leave the ticket on Ryan’s car.

 
My response was hysterical laughter – we were doomed to get parking tickets in Monroe! The fiancé’s response was doom – this was a bad parking omen for our new city. The previous house owners joked with us that the policeman ran our records, saw we were still from out of town, and had flagged us. The mortgage company paid for the ticket (I wonder if they’ll pay for any tickets we get anywhere? Wouldn’t that be nice!)  I laughed until we each got pulled over within a month.

 
First, Ryan was pulled over for speeding in my car.  My car, speeding! Ha.  Then he couldn’t find my registration (oops!) and it turns out he was going 90 down I-75.  So yeah, I agree with that ticket even if I’m not totally confident my car can even GO 90, though I have no doubts he was speeding.

 
To which, of course, Ryan proclaimed, “YOUR stupid radar detector didn’t even go off!” To which I replied, “Then maybe you should have bought me a better quality one instead of that cheapo.”  I laughed when he told me he had thrown it out the window after he had been pulled over (and would have laughed more if he had then been pulled over for a littering charge!).

 
I didn’t laugh when I got pulled over a few weeks later.  It was the middle of the week, late at night – I was just leaving an 18 work day after parent teacher conferences (I’m a teacher if I hadn’t mentioned it already).  I do the exact speed limit the entire drive home, and then sure enough on Dixie I see someone pulled over.  This normally is the sign for, “you’re-safe-because-they’re-with-someone-else” so I continued the 45mph I was doing.  Two minutes later lights were flashing behind me.

 
I practically handcuffed myself.  I had no idea what I had done wrong but it must have been bad to be pulled over.  I was doomed, going to jail.  My students would read about me in the paper the next day and how I was in jail for doing the speed limit.

 
Thankfully, I had the registration this time and gave the police officer everything.  As she walked away to her car, I gathered up the courage to ask her why I was pulled over.

 
“Tail light’s out,” she replied.

 
As she ran my license, I laughed a hysterical witch doctor laugh. Pulled over for a tail light??? I have three! I’ve had my car four years and a light has never been out.  And here I was convinced I was going to jail for a burned out tail light.

 
She let me go and I turned in the sub to noticed yet another cop car out of the corner of my eye.  I kid you not, I almost parked my car there and walked the rest of the way….especially when I saw him pull out behind me.  I figured he’d have to take me to jail at this point because I was going to go crazy.  I started reviewing phone numbers to make my first call from my jail cell.

 
I guess another car committed some crime and saved me from being pulled over in my own subdivision.  Phew.

 
Needless to say, I read parking signs real close and check my lights every week like a good little driver.  These Monroe cops are thorough!

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*Yes, I am thankful for present and active police presence.  Just a little humor, that’s all.

We’re wedding planning right now, and have come to realize that we do an awful lot of consulting different venues and places only to come back to the first or second one we loved.  So we approached house hunting with a new philosophy: whichever one we like, we like.  We won’t care about the rest.  We pretty much immediately decided on Detroit Beach or Woodland Beach.  Why? I don’t know, really.  I loved the idea of living near the water, having grown up on the Atlantic and a small lake.  I loved the idea of being in a community and not just on our own somewhere.  Plus they were close to the highway, which was perfect for both of us.  So basically we drove down from Canton one day and just started looking for open houses.  We found a few that were totally not us and realized we were pickier than we thought.  For awhile we thought we’d just have to settle for a house that wasn’t “us” but that we could eventually make “us” (probably right before we moved to a bigger place!). 

 Anyway, the day our realtor set up 231062 appointments (ok, 7 is the real number, but it felt like a bazillion houses) we found THE house.  We knew it was THE house for 2 reasons: 1.) as we pulled into the subdivision we saw a bulldog.  We are avid bulldog fans and figured it was a sign from the big bulldog above.  And 2.) because it had these great high ceilings and a spacious garage that satisfied the small details we were both looking for.  Perfect. We’re nestled back in the sub, just 2 blocks away in 2 directions from my beloved lake.  The dogs have a nice big fenced yard and the house is spacious (though now that we’ve totally moved in, I’m already thinking we need more space!).  Our neighbors have been awesome and after some adjustments (i.e., the pink carpet throughout the house and the pool that we were not into) it really feels like home.    

 C’mon, I know it was the first question you were going to ask.  It’s the first question EVERYONE asks.  I can never tell if it’s genuine curiosity or just plain confusion.  Regardless, you’ll get your reasons.

First and foremost, we moved to Monroe because it is the midway point for both my fiancé and myself; he works at the Jeep plant in Toledo and I teach about 30 minutes north.  We figured this was the fairest way to appease us both, although if you ask me, I still drive further.

Second, we moved to Monroe because we could get a lot more for our buck, so to speak.  The house we bought here would easily cost $50,000 more in the community we previously lived in.  From the moment I knew there were subdivisions on Lake Erie I was hooked.  I grew up on a lake (a small one, though, more like a puddle compared to a Great Lake) and love the water. 

My fiancé and I grew up in Waterford and then re-met in college.  I lived in Ann Arbor during my undergraduate program and loved every minute of it, but could never imagine buying a house there – who wants to plan their wedding or weekend plans entirely around home games? I bleed maize and blue, but I certainly don’t want to schedule shopping trips and visits around football/basketball/hockey/conferences/graduations/big events for the rest of my life. Besides, the cost of living is astronomical there.  Lovely city to visit, costly to live in…especially for a teacher like myself.

We then moved to Canton.  Yes, another costly place but no planning around sporting events or things of that nature (at least, not at first….) And yes, we lived within walking distance from the new Ikea.  We were, in fact, there opening day.  A great place to live because it’s bulging with life, but living by Ikea certainly had it’s down falls – like the fact that some days we felt lucky enough to play the lotto if we could even make a left turn out of the apartment complex.  Ikea opened a few months before we moved and let’s just say we weren’t too sad to leave it behind us.  Again, nice to visit, but don’t want to live there.

So, there you have it: how we decided on Monroe.  Next up: how we decided on a house/subdivision.