My hatred for driving, specifically in South Florida, began when Honeybun\u00a0was a tiny little thing.\u00a0 I went back to work when she was only 6 weeks old and by the time she was 6 months I was working at 4 different places (1 childcare job, 3 teaching dance).\u00a0 Each job was 20-40 minutes from home and 20-40 minutes from one another.\u00a0 Some days were easy where I would go to my childcare job in the morning then home for the afternoon and to the dance studio to teach for 1 hour.\u00a0 Other days I worked the childcare job, went home for lunch, took Honeybun\u00a0back to the childcare center, taught 2 hours of dance with an hour break in the middle then went straight to another studio and taught another hour.\u00a0 I found myself stuck in my car for hours some days and was sometimes driving over an hour roundtrip for 1 hour of work.<\/p>\n
When Honeybun\u00a0was 18 months we moved to Dublin and chose not to get a car.\u00a0 We were less than a 10 minute walk to the train that ran straight into town, about 10 minutes to our little village with a decent grocery store, pharmacies and restaurants and no more than a 15 minute walk to one of many bus stops that would take us nearly anywhere we needed to go.\u00a0 Except for the few times it down poured on us or when I had to walk 2+ miles to get places because the bus schedules were off, I really enjoyed not having a car.\u00a0 Not having to put kids in and out of car seats, not having to remember to fill with gas, not having to worry about parallel parking while driving on the wrong side on streets where the tiniest of cars barely fit.\u00a0 We would load up the buggy and off we went. \u00a0There were no arguments about getting back into their seats when we were ready to come home because they never had to get out in the first place!<\/p>\n
When we decided to relocate back to Florida, the number one criteria for me in choosing a new home was location.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to have to drive every day, I wanted things within walking distance and I wanted to feel safe walking.\u00a0 There are very few areas in South Florida where you can have this luxury, but we were able to find a great one.\u00a0 I\u2019m less than 10 minutes to a Super Target, tons of restaurants, a pharmacy and Honeybun’s\u00a0preschool is only about 12 minutes walking. Walking here is not as nice as in Dublin and I have to be very careful with my girls as right turners often do not check the crosswalks and we have had many times where if I hadn\u2019t been paying attention we would have been \u201csmushed flat like a pancake\u201d as Honeybun\u00a0would put it. \u00a0But, for the most part, we have been able to continue our pedestrian lifestyle. \u00a0Even when I do take the car it’s rarely more than a few miles each way as we have most everything we need in our neighborhood and I’ve even had times when my car hasn’t moved for a week (unfortunately resulting more than once in a car that didn’t want to start).<\/p>\n
I use my car as little as possible because I hate the drivers here and am trying to shield my kids from the inappropriate behaviors driving brings out in me.\u00a0 A few examples:<\/p>\n
–Before we moved to Dublin Honeybun\u00a0got in the habit of repeating some of my often used car slogans such as \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d\u00a0 and \u201cBeep Beep, get out of the way!\u201d<\/p>\n
–Every time a car honks, Honeybun\u00a0(and now sometimes Sugarplum) asks \u201cWho\u2019s Honking at us?\u201d and I usually have to admit it\u2019s me.<\/p>\n
–Yesterday while driving out of a parking lot, a car failed to stop at a stop sign when I had the right of way so I honked.\u00a0 The guy actually stopped when he got next to me and flipped me off and honked back, I was very thankful in that moment for his very darkly tinted windows and the fact my girls did not notice his actions.<\/p>\n
–After honking at someone one night and explaining to Honeybun\u00a0he had done something not very smart and almost made us miss the light she replied \u201cMommy, maybe we should go back to Dublin.\u00a0 People are nicer to you there.\u201d<\/p>\n
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My hatred for driving, specifically in South Florida, began when Honeybun\u00a0was a tiny little thing.\u00a0 I went back to work when she was only 6 weeks old and by the time she was 6 months I was working at 4 different places (1 childcare job, 3 teaching dance).\u00a0 Each job was 20-40 minutes from home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,12],"tags":[34,35],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-mommys-life","category-tiny-travellers","tag-driving","tag-south-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3077,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/3077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}