"Toto, I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore"

Oh, come on.

You knew it was coming, right?

The title??

Kansas girl moves to California??? So what if it's cliche. I have a hard time coming up with blog titles. Don't judge.

So here are just a few things that I'm learning about California:

That school on Beverly Hills 90210? Yeah. They all really do look like that out here. Even the elementary school's "lunch room" is a patio of tables set up outside.
( I tried to explain to my youngest daughter this is not only because of the mild weather, but also because it HARDLY. EVER. RAINS. She's still not convinced. :o( )

There is lots of important driving information not only on street signs, but also on the streets themselves. Stuff like "keep intersection clear," and speed limits and the like. Right on the paved road. This seems like an okay practice to me (the whole, "keep your eyes on the road" thing), except for during bumper-to-bumper traffic, when one can't even see the paved road. Then you could miss some important stuff.

Speaking of driving...Two people in a vehicle is considered a car pool for the purposes of accessing the car pool lane on the freeway and prime parking spots. Two seems like a low number to me.

It's possible to exist fairly comfortably in a dwelling that only has a window unit air conditioner.

And on that note...extremely high humidity gets the little red "severe weather alert" red exclamation mark on weather.com out here. We've had three of those days so far and I've yet to exit my house and immediately find myself dripping with sweat. These people have no idea what extremely high humidity is. Just saying.

Gasoline should be purchased with cash. Always. It was $3.65/gallon at the gas station with cash and $4.10?!?!?! for debit/credit card transactions. Yikes!!

No talking on cell phones while driving. Unless using a hands-free device. My kids reminded me of this yesterday when I, out of habit, grabbed my phone to call Better Half while driving down the road.

I've yet to see a squirrel, but the little lizards that dart across the sidewalks are kind of cute. All bets are off if I ever find one in my house, however.

I guess I'm gonna want to have an "earthquake" kit and I'll need to "earthquake proof" my house. I'll add that to the growing list of things I need to Google.

Food isn't that much more expensive out here. Neither is gas (if you pay with cash). Housing. Is. Kids' activities. Are. One of the kids had a form in his registration packet to sign up for an after school debate club. The cost was $350! I am not kidding about this. I didn't protest when he said he didn't want to do it.

There are bugs out here. I have not seen any mosquitoes, but there are plenty of other kinds of bugs. This is a big disappointment to me.

The people we have met have been very nice. And yet I feel a lot like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz." All she wants are her people back "home."


"This was a real, a truly live place. And I remembered that some of it wasn't very nice, but most of it was beautiful. But just the same, all I kept saying to everybody was, 'I want to go home.' "
~Dorothy

Because there really is "no place like home." And I have a feeling that Kansas is going to be "home" to this girl for a long time.