As a recent escapee from Silicon Valley, I knew it would be different here in the Sacramento area. I got a good house for a good price (just before the market fell off another cliff, landing me in the High Hopes Heap) but I couldn’t quite manage the cute Midtown bungalows I liked. So I landed in Citrus Heights, on a lovely quiet street, backed onto a creek with kid-trails. In my research before buying, the negatives I heard were all about skunks and helicopters, but I knew these were pretty good negatives compared to my former San Jose home on a heavily trafficked street (and I mean that in all senses) that included graffiti and abandoned shopping carts and—well, traffic.

I like it here—don’t get me wrong! It’s just that I find myself alone in a cute, shingled ranch-style house (Randall Parks! Whoever the heck that is) with one bedroom per cat (I refuse to say, on the grounds that I may sound like the proverbial neighborhood cat-lady) surrounded by lovely, happy, active retirees. Yes, there’s a spattering of young families in my new neighborhood, but if you walk into the local Walgreens, or the Safeway or the Home Depot, you will see what I mean. They raised their families here and found it so nice they saw no reason to move away. Who wants cookie-cutter communities filled with golf carts when you can stay home and live like the Waltons? Randy Parks! Duh.

My cousin PK grew up in this neighborhood and my aunt and uncle live right around the corner from me. PK says she likes to think of us as girls from The Heights—and she wiggles her eyebrows and teaches me to snap my fingers low (a la The Jets). We’re the Cool Girls from The Heights. Don’t mess with us. We might have a rumble down at—at—BevMo or someplace. My aunt just rolls her eyes. But she’s a former second-grade teacher; what would she know about rumbles?

One of the first things I wanted to find in my new hometown was the bookstore. I’m an avid reader, as are my aunt and cousin, and I knew they would know where the best one was.

I asked Aunt P but she looked puzzled. “There’s a Barnes and Noble right down Greenback,” she told me, slowly and gently, using the voice she used to use on the second graders, because I’d have to be an idiot if I didn’t know where the mall was.

PK snorted a little. “We should open one of those! Problem is, we’d have to name it Guns, Jugs & Those Things You Read to get anyone around here to come in.”

Aunt P gave her The Look. “You are not encouraging a wholesome view of our nice community to The New Girl,” she said.

Well, we went on a hunt, and while it is true that the nearby burbs don’t seem to have any independent family-with-cats-owned bookstores that we found, we did discover lots of used bookstores, most notably The Book Lovers on Madison at Manzanita (he has cats in there!) and Kai’s Books on Auburn Folsom in Granite Bay (they post reviews and recommendations). The best bookstores of the ilk I was imagining (new literary in addition to used) are, of course, all the way Downtown and Midtown: Beers on S Street and—guess what?—The Avid Reader at the Tower. A little bit of a drive, but worth it. 

Another need I had was a good place to walk—in nature and for more than ten minutes. I have a nice little creek with a 10-15 minute path behind my house, and a few little neighborhood parks, but I didn't know where else to go, away from traffic noise. Everyone kept telling me I needed to go to “the River” but I had no clue where to access the trails, where was safe, etc.

Then I discovered Meetup.com, and on that there are hiking and walking groups! Who knew? (Not my family.) There are meetups for mah jong, for Chihuahua owners, for moms-who-jog, for eating sushi, for UFO-sightings—anything you can dream up, there’s probably a meetup for it. And it’s usually free.

Anyway, I joined one called TrailMix and have worked up to hiking most weeknights, some weekends, and discovered all the ins and outs of the Parkway and a lot of the parks in and around the cities here. We have two rivers! We have nearby mountains! Now I’m not saying there isn’t wild life in Citrus Heights—and not just at the It’ll Do Saloon—because we do have a lot of turkeys and skunks. But on my walks by the river, I've seen great blue heron, egrets, a fox, lots of deer and a coyote. There are bridges and paths and real wildlife—oh, my! Now I say “Bay Area, Schmay Area—we got nature right here, baby!”

You probably know all this. But since I work from home, I don’t have the advantage of hanging out by the water cooler to connect with people who walk really really fast. The cats are nice but not very talkative (unless it's dinnertime), so I have been looking for ways to connect with the rest of the universe. And I found it.
I’m The New Girl.