Fantasy Day

I wake up and stumble downstairs in jammies, because there's no one installed in the kitchen at an indecently early hour doing dishes and mopping.

I leave my home without having to go through a series of gates and wave to a dozen guards on the way out. Nor are there guards at the entrance to my daughter's school where I drop her off, who ask questions about her behavior or demeanor that in my own culture are none of their business.

The street is wide and smooth, with no inexplicable speed bumps or outrageously poorly maintained asphalt, and no one attempts to make 3 or 4 lanes out of what is painted as 2 lanes.

Children are walking to school in shoes, on sidewalks, and I don't have to swerve into oncoming traffic to go around men struggling to push an overloaded cart up the hill.

There's a the drive-through at Starbuck's, and the cashier is curt but polite, and doesn't ask what else is in my wallet when I hand her some bills that require change.

There are traffic lights, stop signs, and signs indicating street names. I do not see anyone driving the wrong way in my lane even once, and buses and trucks are able to maintain a speed greater than 15km an hour.

At the grocery store, I find a parking space that is not on the sidewalk. I do not have to be searched to enter the store; nor is there a soldier sitting outside the store with a rifle. At the butcher, when there is a busted sewer drainage pipe and they have to dig under the floor to repair it, they actually close the shop, rather than continuing to do business with an open sewer pipe in the store.

After school/work conversation with the neighbors does not revolve around the recommended frequency of deworming or best places to use for importing heavy duty shocks and struts.

For dinner I pull out some frozen risotto, salad-in-a-bag, baby carrots, and hummus, and steak that is so fresh I can't even smell the "eau de butcher".

We enjoy a peaceful dinner uninterrupted by people asking us to test our house alarm or distrubingly loud crashing or popping noises from the road across the way.

Later, we sit down and flip through way-more-than-8-including-sports-and-news channels. Nothing is on, so we settle on my default: House Hunters International. Thing is, that show always makes me wish I could live someplace that's more interesting.