Moving blues

well, I suppose I have officially settled in (Don't go back to...) Rockville. (See also)It's not that it's all that bad as suburbs go; it's just that it's a suburb. I really liked being able to walk to the corner and hop on the metro - here I have to walk minimum half an hour to get there. I've never really understood why anyone would want to move to the burbs. What the hell was wrong with people in the 50's, anyway?
SO, to be specific: we didn't have aback yard living in DC. But we did have two public parks within walking distance (more, really, but there were two that we used alot). One was about he same distance that the metro is now for us, and the other was about five or so blocks away. The parks were almost always full of kids - obviously there were ebbs and flows at naptime hours, but by and large, there were always a few kids at either of them, and often there were lots of kids.
Here in Rockville, there are - oh, I don't know, 10 parks within walking distance of our house, and there are no kids in any of them. Once I went to a park and there were three or four kids from a cooperative preschool playing there (it was the church parking lot, but they didn't mind my son's joining in) and once my spouse took the babe to a park and there was one child there, who was leaving as he arrived. And once we went to a neighborhood park and there were three kidsplaying there, desultorily. All significantly older. I'm guessing this is more of that overscheduing, playgroup sickness. move to the burbs, and you have to join a playgroup, because people no longer just take their kids to go play. Apprently, in the burbs, even the nannies don't do this.
Okay, well, that sucks, but whatver, we can walk half an hour to metro, then ride another half hour, then wlak to the parks at the other end, where boychik's little friends are. Butthen there's the grocery store dilemma. It isn't really just grocery stores. It's just that there isn't really anything around. A fifteen minute walk (not too bad) will bring me to the library and a grocery store. But to actually do anything else, it's really pretty necessary to get into your car and drive.
And the library! OK, this is too weird. In DC, all you ever hear about are how little money DC has, and how all its public facilities stink. but the Cleveland park library - run by the DC government- has a prettyt okay selection of books. It's kids section is actually decent. And it has several very pleasant librarians, who know my son by name, and like to hang out with him - more or less.
The Twinbrook library, has.. not much. It's a very nice building. Much newer and nicer than Cleveland Park's, but uh, there seems to be a lack of soemthing. Something one usually finds in libraries, something. . . it's on the tip of my tongue, uh, uh, uh.. books!
The kids section is sparse, the adults section is...streamlined. There are computers, but not all that many. The audio section... I don't even know how to say this. They have a box of CDs. They do seem to have some more stuff if you want to learn languages, that's good. But - I'm sorry, libraries are supposed to have books.
I'm feeling very whiny about all this, but it's just too much to have alibrary close by, relatively speaking, and have it be so... disappointing.

I know we're spending less money to get twice as much space here, but can someone please remind me why I agreed to this?
I just keep chanting to myself: One year lease, one year lease, one year lease, one year lease.

it's actually a very nice house, but... it's in the burbs.