There Is Motion at Your Front Door

Last May, my wife and baby and I moved from Austin to Dallas, into an actual house in an actual neighborhood on the east side of the city. We had a few weeks to set up before my wife was going to leave for about three months for job training. Aside from my child and wife, I knew no one in town. We spent a week filling our lives with the things we thought were supposed to go in houses: a sleek water heater that hummed like a cyclotron, new fuses, and a noise machine for our son. We learned about our surroundings, too.