Parking in a real driveway

Some people love apartments and city living with all of the hustle and bustle and noise, and others love a nice house with a real driveway, mailbox on the curb, and the peace and quiet of a rural area. I am one of the latter. And against everything that we raised our kids around, my daughter loves living in the city with parking on the street or in a parking garage. I didn’t raise her this way, just saying.

I like stepping out my front door and seeing my truck right there in the driveway, or at worse having to open a garage door and back the car out. At my daughter’s apartment I open her front door and see miles and miles of duplicate doors down a long hallway with elevators somewhere down the line, I can’t ever remember which way they are located, yeah I know, the old country boy coming to the city situation…

Every time she has moved from one location to another I have strongly suggested that she find a place with a real driveway, I hate parking garages! I don’t like forgetting where I left my car, it’s not like I actually forgot where I left my car it’s just that all those cars stuck inside a parking structure kind of blend together.

This is why I can't find my car...

Then when you have two structures side by side with several levels serving the same place, man I get lost just thinking about it! Now throw in "Resident Parking" behind a gate that opens with a sensor, separating the cars that belong from the ones belonging to visitors of the residents, or shoppers for the surrounding businesses, yes these cars are caged in where they can't escape. I've only been inside that cage once…without my car!

My daughter lives in a very secure building, she has a sensor to open the gate to park her car, and one that opens the gate to gain entry into the building, and it also signals the elevator buttons to work, without that sensor you can push those buttons from now until doomsday and that elevator will not work.

I once followed a man through the gate and strolled over to that elevator thinking that we could surprise the daughter by showing up at her door, only to find myself essentially trapped on the first floor because without a sensor I was stuck, I couldn’t even take the stairs because guess what? Yep those doors were for residents only too. Our daughter just smiled when the elevator doors opened when she finally showed up downstairs to save us.

Her building to me looks like miles of concrete hallways where everything is the same; I can't get my bearings when nothing appears different. Upon leaving from a visit once, Cindy and I went down to the parking garage without supervision from our daughter, she did open the elevator door for us to get on, now she told us that all we had to do was push a button for the parking garage and step out and walk to our car, easy enough…Right?

We did just that and stepped out of the elevator and began the search for our car, when we finally found it the only problem was it was on the other side of a chain link fence that went from floor to ceiling. We were trapped inside the residents parking area with no sensor to open the elevators, doors, gates or anything, I laughed and asked Cindy to call our daughter to come down and save us for the second time that day, but on this level of the parking garage we found that there was no cell service. Cindy and I were seriously trapped, we had accidentally pushed the wrong button in the elevator, we later found out there is one for the parking garage and one for residents parking.

It took about forty five minutes of walking, checking doors, and pushing buttons before we found a gate that was unlocked, (where is a security  officer when you need them?) this unlocked gate took us to the other side, where we began a long walk back in the direction we just came from in search of our car.

Recently our daughter got a job offer in another town a couple hours away from where she now lives, this is a good thing in my opinion with what she has just been through, this will give her a fresh start I'm  hoping. As soon as she finds a place to live, the company that hired her is going to move her stuff up there and we will be able to take the grand dogs home to her, yes we are babysitting until she gets a place…

The other day she sent Cindy pictures of a place she had applied to rent, “it's really nice” Cindy was telling me, and they are charging a reasonable deposit for the pets too. After Cindy got finished oohing and ahhing over the pictures she passed her phone over for me to take a look, a tear rolled down my cheek when I saw that our daughter is going to rent a small house with a real driveway and everything.

A real mailbox next to a real driveway!

I think when we go to visit I'm going to just sit on her front porch and admire that piece of concrete that most of us call a driveway, because after all this is her first real driveway with a mailbox and everything!

Have you ever been lost in a parking structure? What type of place do you call home?