August 3, 2020

Things I liked about Pittsburgh.

We have a collection of magnets. It's a bit kitschy but we buy at least one in each place we live and usually any tourist attractions we visit. We pick them up on vacations too. Scott brought home quite the collection from his five months deployed to eastern Europe a few years ago. It's just a thing we do. They make me happy. I hate clutter but I like my magnets. We don't use them, Wells doesn't play with them, sometimes they fall and break and I painstakingly glue them back together...they serve the sole purpose of decoration for remembrance's sake. 

When I got to Kansas, I realized I'd forgotten to pick one up in Pittsburgh. 

I asked Scott to get one for me on his way out of town. 

"Nope." 

He refused. He doesn't want one. Now, that's usually the type of line I would put out there; I'm the negative one, after all. And I'm too far into this 11 years of collecting magnets-thing to stop now. But anyway. No Pittsburgh magnet. We do have a Pittsburgh Christmas ornament. We also get ornaments in each location. 

But there are some things I WILL miss about Pittsburgh. 

Fox's Pizza. I grew up eating this and we ordered it a few times in the last year. Probably my very favorite pizza chain. 

Turkey Hill ice cream. Being able to buy it in the grocery store, that is. I just really like it. 

The library. The Allegheny County library system was amazing and easy to navigate. There were 3 branches within 2 miles of our house. They were everywhere! I'm still getting ebooks (shhh) but the people who worked there were so nice and helpful. 

Doctors. I do like the medical care we received. At first, it was just so. different. being on the east coast. I specifically disliked the practice Wells was going to. Over time, I don't know if they warmed up, or if I just adjusted my expectations, but I really liked his NP toward the end. I liked my dentist/hygienist a lot too. I hate finding new dentists. And, I should say, we never saw a single bill. That, to me, is amazing, given that we were receiving civilian care. Obviously we pay for insurance in one way or another, but it makes the constant transitioning as smooth as possible, knowing that we will have medical care if we're away from a base. 

Being 10 minutes from both Walmart and Target. It's fair to say that nothing was 10 minutes away in Pittsburgh, unless you were driving to the nearest stoplight. But there was a Walmart and a Target within a few miles so it wasn't a full-day project to go there, like it was in Colorado when we lived 40ish minutes from the store. 

Washer/dryer. Our rental came with a washer and dryer, which means we didn't have to buy a set and we didn't have to move a set in or move a set out. They were just there, and they were decently new and reliable. This was a great comfort, moving into a new place. 
Here, we had to buy a washer/dryer and wait over a week for delivery. Two weeks total is a long time to go without washing clothes.

And, finally, it was nice (very, very nice) to be within half a day's drive of our families. We could let Wells meet his cousins and spend time with his grandparents. 

When we first got our orders to go to Pittsburgh, we were given a choice between 3 places. One place ended up disappearing from the list so it came down to two, and we chose Pittsburgh specifically because we wanted to be close to our parents; Wells wouldn't remember it, but all of the adults would. 

That's it. That's the list. 

Everything else...the zoo, the hiking, the baseball games, etc...are things we could've done anywhere, really. So, sure The Children's Museum in Pittsburgh is fun, but Wells couldn't truly appreciate it yet, and yeah, the Aviary was interesting, but we also were exposed to measles there, and there were lots of great restaurants, but there's great restaurants everywhere, right?

All in all, it was another stop along our military journey. One that included being locked down for a global pandemic. So we'll definitely never forget it. 



3 comments:

  1. Always good & meh about places... onward & upward to new adventures

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  2. Im the same with Keychains. By golly we need to get you a magnet!

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  3. Can you believe that I am from Pittsburgh and I ended up 36 years later living less than a mile from a Fox's pizza in Alabama?!?!?! There are three locations here from the Pittsburgh family!!!

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