We left the suburbs of Pittsburgh to leave a culture and lifestyle behind that we disliked and to which we refused to expose any forthcoming children in our lives. The irony is that this suburb has one of the top ranked public school districts in the state and in the country. Maybe sometime (e:Drew) will even expound on his thoughts on why it's difficult to live out a christian mission in a rich suburb, but I digress...

We fulfilled a long time desire of wanting to live in an urban community (although I have to admit that my ultimate dream is to live in a particular urban community in Philly). So here we are and we love it for a number of reasons. I, for one, love how the old houses are built so that the porches are close to the sidewalk so that one can sit on their porch and comfortably greet their neighbors and passerbyers. Again, I digress....

Here, finally, comes the point. In this Pittsburgh suburb, folks were very wealthy and lived a very wealthy life style. The youth group kids at our church felt free to make fun of our beat up Geo Metro followed by our 10 year old beat up Acura Integra. A committee at church even removed some patio furniture off the front porch of our manse because it was unattractive. Yet, I NEVER felt an inkling of pressure to try to keep up with the Joneses...as the saying goes. In part, because it was absolutely a financial impossibility. I mean, we could have bought a few things of the life style, but barely.

I actually feel more community pressure and more angst from that pressure here in Buffalo. A common conversational topic around the neighborhood is house repair/renovation. And we have had and will continue to have some major repairs/renovations. We discussed house painting with a Buffalo friend who stated that if he had a house like ours he would paint it himself, absolutely. Oh, yes, it's that easy. Nights after work, weekend by weekend, bit by bit, you can paint your own house standing on scaffolding three stories high to reach up to the attic. Yeah, no thanks, we hired painters. We discussed our roof repairs with neighbors who said so matter of factly oh it's nothing to put a new roof on. They replaced their roof over the course of five years, section by section! Kewl, but I think I'll just save the money and have contractors do the work. (e:Drew) and I even joke about the potential shunning we might receive if people knew that the porch ceiling was repaired with vinyl instead of replacing the damaged wood <gasp>.

Don't get me wrong. I did a lot of minor repairs when we moved in. Sticky doors now close. I installed cabinet hardware so cabinets close. Tarnished copper door knobs are now a shiny rose color. I patched walls and did touch up painting all over the house. Interior painting is on the to do list down the road. But am I not worthy unless I sacrifice every weekend and summer evening to the idol that is my house?!

So we were told that it would be inevitable. Our time would come regardless of what precautions we took...

So it finally happened. This morning I discovered the remnants of an attempt to steal our car stereo. Apparently we made it easy to get into the car so they were able to start taking apart the console around the stereo, but the ingenuity of our vehicle beat them and they were unable to finish the job. Our 10 yr old beat up Acura Integra is made so even stereo installation people struggle to install a new stereo into the vehicle let alone a thug who's trying to steal the stereo on the fly...

So it's a bummer that someone was messing with our car. I feel like an idiot for not being more careful about locking my car doors. I was really angry, but that diminished pretty quickly...Overall, I'm glad we still have our car stereo. And if that's the worst that happens to us, we're doing pretty good.