You know you're a River Rat when ...

You know you're a River Rat (or Rattina) when …

1. Your daughter wants to do her nails, clothes, & make-up just like the guy at the coffee shop.
2. Your neighbor always has an extra two-by-four when you really need one.
3. Your other neighbor has offered to do your astrological chart.
4. Shopping trips to Safeway often become major social events.
5. Your children can readily identify poison oak by age 3.
6. Septic systems are a highly appropriate & exciting topic for conversation.
7. You have a chicken coop in your back yard.
8. You frequently come home to blinking digital clocks. Thank you, PG&E!
9. When a giant redwood grows too close to your house, you do the sensible thing & remodel your home to accommodate the redwood tree.
10. Summer family walks take hours because the kids keep stopping to pick blackberries, plums, & apricots growing along the side of the road.
    
11. You have a favorite “secret beach” somewhere along the River.
12. You actually KNOW what all those “NO LOW FLOW” signs mean, & it seriously matters to you.
13. You really miss the Halloween pumpkin festival at the farm on Westside Road (which has become yet another winery).
14. Speaking of wineries, you helped BUILD them, & now their wine is too danged expensive for you to drink.
15. You have a lovely hobby vineyard in your back yard, behind the chicken coop & the old, rusty camper.
16. Or, you grow other things in your back yard.
    
17. You’ve lived here for 10 years & your older neighbors still refer to you as “the new people down the road.”
18. You can't tailgate the annoyingly slow driver in front of you, because she waits tables at your favorite restaurant.
19. You have a KGGV FM bumper sticker on your car.
    
20. You care deeply about water quality in the River, but still sometimes wind up pee-ing in the River.

Got any new ones? I’d love to read them. Please post your ideas in the COMMENTS section. Also, feel free to email this to your friends, but PLEASE include a link to my blog!