Musings from a traffic jam

The Marquette Interchange freaks me out.

I realize that this revelation probably just adds another check mark in the "What makes Amy weird" box. 

Whatever.

Sure I may come from a town with a whopping population of 3,922. No we did not have any stoplights to worry about.

And parallel parking. What's that?!

But I'd like to think that in the brief 1.5 years that I've been driving in Milwaukee, I've inherited some city driver qualities that rival the best of them.

But still. That dang interchange. Freaks me out every time.

It's not that I don't enjoy not having to try out newfangled routes to get from point A to point B (ala the Interchange under construction that was pretty much all I've known of Milwaukee prior to this August). Or that it cuts portions of some drives in half. That I dig.

It's the overstimulation.

My first time skyrocketing from 43 southbound to 794 almost gave me a heart attack. Over here on one ramp, one car zoomed by. Over there another, and another, and yet another one, right above my head (or next to me or under me, whatever, I was too terrified to take notice). 

All around me. People going here. People going there. People going everywhere. Zooming off from one direction to the next.

One of my best friends from Marquette announced to me Wednesday an exciting pregnancy in her family and the equally exciting engagement of her best friend from home. Yet another member of the "bridesmaid list" (which for the record has been around for like 5 years, so don't go making any assumptions from that please) just moved into her first apartment that only she will call home. Two great college buds are no doubt picking out baby furniture as we speak. And here I am-- preparing to welcome Seth to Milwaukee tonight, for yet another few weeks of relationship heaven. 

It seems like just yesterday life was like the old Marquette Interchange. Things were under construction. Messy. It wasn't quite clear how to get from point A to point B, if that was even possible at all. Traffic didn't always flow smoothly but oh did we rock out to some jams while we were sitting in it bumper to bumper.

And we never believed that the construction would one day be over and we'd hit smooth sailing.

But today, everyone just seems to be sailing along, in a new and completely different world. The world of grad school and weddings, babies and buying houses.

How completely and totally exciting. But incredibly discombobulating.