Along with people living underground are people using their garages to store *stuff* while their vehicles line up on the driveway. I'd thought that was primarily a warmer climate thing, where there are no basements for storage, but it has become more common here.

Then there are the off-site 'garages' for stuff. I get a kick out of one near me. It's called "Life Storage". Shall we parse that?

George Carlin was right: We have too much *stuff*.

Another thing that surprised me is how much stuff people have and how many times people renovate the house they live in.

Arcy, are you saying people in Kentucky don't have basements? Because they do. My street is a very long U-shaped road and all of the center homes have basements, as do at least one of the outer ones. Homes on my street were built in the late 1980s. I don't like the backyards of the inner homes, though, they slope downward and are a lot smaller than the outer homes like mine.

The only surprise I've had recently is that a box of crackers from Aldi's were so horribly tasteless. I'm going to take them back. They were a variety pack but all taste like what I'd imagine drywall to taste like if I attempted to eat it.

Not surprised by my recent contractor. They damaged a piece of flooring in the center of my ktichen and tried to blame it on someone else. Nope, you and your workers were slamming stuff around, including my backdoor that last day and when I went to check on a crashing sound I heard, your heavy saw was in the same spot where I later found the gouge. He told me he would fix it but he has all my money now and so far hasn't given me a day he is returning. I doubt he will. He also damaged the element in my fairly new water heater and after I got a plumber to come fix it, that plumber also tightened up my old faucet that had been leaking. This is after the contractor told me I would need a new one and was going to charge me more to replace it.

My brother’s house in theBird Rock area of La Jolla has a basement. It was built in 1952 and had several renovations.

Can’t think of anything surprising lately, Life has been a bit humdrum, which is fine with me.

I’m also surprised about the number of comments about basements.

Speaking of George Carlin. This really surprised me this week. So much so that I watched the entire thing! I got sucked in by a robot I guess? It was actually really good and that is the scary part.

Joan, that is impressive, but scary too.

George Carlin was right: We have too much *stuff*.”

LOL, chisue, George was right about a lot of things! You mentioned people using garages for stuff instead of their vehicles. We do park our cars in the garage but most of our neighbors don’t. Like us, most of them have plenty of parking space with both long, circular front driveways and side driveways leading to a garage in back with a parking area. Even with that, they still park all vehicles in front.

Regarding basements here in SoCal, DH grew up in La Canada/Flintridge in a home built in 1932 with a basement. Not uncommon here in many of those older homes. I’ll have to check when basements started fading out here in new builds…likely post-WW II.

I grew up in Hollywood in a two story house built in the mid-1920s (I looked it up long ago) that had no basement. My wife grew up in an older section of North Hollywood in a house built in the mid-teens (looked up by realtor when sold a few years ago). Spanish style, no basement.

A few years ago I was surprised to learn that we have roadrunners in our area. Lived here all my life and never saw one until one late night when I was driving down a major highway and there it was, a roadrunner running down the side of the road. Every so often it would hop into the brush and than back out and continues its journey.

Another surprise was to find that I appear to have a gift managing horses. A great rider I will never be, having started so late and having somewhat of a disability. But people who have been in the game a long time often will ask my assistance or even my opinion and are happy to trust me around their horses. I am still surprised at myself at how I fit seamlessly into a whole different way of life, albeit part time, from all the things I've done before.

I'm surprised how fulfilling life can be in your senior years. Being in one's seventies seemed so old when I was in my fifties. I feel younger in spirit now than I did back then.

I love seeing animals unexpectantly. .

Good for you have found something so special at this time of life. Horeses are just magnificent!

In Texas, some people had storm cellars, to provide protection from tornadoes, but they were separate from the houses, and you would have to go through a yard to get to one. My grandparents' neighbor had one, but they really aren't that common. I did not know anyone in Texas with a basement.

In California, you could get trapped in a basement during an earthquake, if the building pancakes, which happened to some apartment buildings in Northridge. A lot of apartment buildings have parking beneath the building at ground level, and so a lot of cars got destroyed.

Having lived my entire life in NYC, all houses had basements. 12 yrs ago we moved to Florida and not a basement in sight.

There were basements in Ohio where I lived as a young child. In California there were very few basements. Now in Colorado we have basements, I love them, whether for storage or extra living quarters.

A neighbor gave me some starfruit from his tree. I had never had starfruit before. I was surprised how good tasting it is!

Wildchild, the first time we came here, to look at the place we ended up buying, we saw a roadrunner. I was surprised because this is East Texas, and I would have thought they would be more of a west Texas creature.

I also discovered another little animal that I wasn't familiar with....an Eastern bushy tailed packrat, that made his home under a more than 3' pile of sticks, in an old building that was a chicken house....far back on the property. I felt an immediate connection with a "packrat" and took him food and a variety of gifts ...shiny buttons, little McDonald's toys, and fiberfill for his comfort.

Yes, I am weird, and no, I don't care.

I surprised myself with the landscape paintings I've created.

Back in the first house I had with my husband (that sat on solid rock, so there was no basement, no way to dig), I got up one day and he had on his goggles and his work clothes and a sawzall in his hands. He announced that he was going to put a hole in our ceiling?! By the end of the day, we had a hole in the ceiling, and he had a friend come in and installed stairs. Unforgettable, and a big surprise.

“I grew up in Hollywood in a two story house built in the mid-1920s (I looked it up long ago) that had no basement.”

Elmer, I grew up in Sierra Madre with no basements I knew of, even in older homes. DH’s grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles were all from the South Pasadena/La Canada area in older homes. All of them had basements.

Basements: On the peninsula in the Bay Area basements in new homes are becoming more common. Both in townhouse style homes and 10,000 sq.ft. + homes, because they don't add to the FAR.

Critters: We live on the peninsula in a city, but on an acre. I have seen two deers which was very surprising. Ducks come land in the pool in the spring and fall, but just two. Today I saw a bird with a long neck fly by, maybe a crane. And one day right before Thanksgiving I found my dog staring out the glass door at something. It was a Turkey. I posted on Nextdoor and got no end of funny responses.

And one day, I found a man sitting against a tree in our front yard inside our gate. That was surprising!

I don't have a basement, but I would rather have a second garage because they are much easier to access.

Tuesday evening I was on a Zoom with friends when I heard my cat Rocky making small sounds. I looked down, and he was right next to my chair. So I scooped him up and put him on my lap. He struggled as if he didn't want to do that, which was unusual, but I started petting him. And that's when I realized he had a mouse hanging from his mouth. Yup, I was surprised!

Since this seems to have become a thread about basements, I'll add that my 1850 house has a dungeon. Dirt floor, some rock slabs, a sump pump in a ditch, and an overabundance of cobwebs. :-)

Alisade, I am wondering if dirt floor basement was common in the old days. Does yours have high ceiling? I went to an open house to check out a historic home, it also has a dirt floor in the basement, the basement ceiling is very high, maybe 14’-16’, there are no windows. I have never seen anything like it. I thought it would great to make it into a walkout/drive-out basement garage.

14’-16’ high! That surprises me. 🙂

The first house that I lived in as a child, built around 1935 I’d guess, had a dirt floor basement and housed a humongous furnace and my mother’s washing machine. There was a raised wooden boardwalk around the furnace and to two small rooms and I’d ride my kiddie trike around it, pretending it was a railroad track while my mother did the laundry.

Basements have come a long way since then. Full/oversized windows, patio doors, heated floors, 9 foot ceilings. If you have to dig below the frostline, you may as well do it right.

I'm continuing to be syrorised about how many are interested in basements!

Alisande, I don't have a cat. I use catch and release. I saw that I caught one, the plastic is opaque. When I took it to the park, I was super surprised to release 4 mice!

Interesting that they each followed along. Especially since they would have eaten the food I left at the entranceof the trap.

I was surprised by my 15 pound dog, Frank. The ruffed grouse are always taunting him and last year he caught one and brought it to the house.

My son installed a Nest camera at our place in upstate PA so that we would be aware of the snow conditions in our driveway. We often see bears on the property and of course turkey and deer are common but I didn't realize that the bears also walk across the deck.

Sorry the photo of the bobcat is so blurry.

Marie, have you seen bears when you

My community Florida is on a preserve. I saw a panther! I looked at him, he looked at me and he scurried off, I was stunned.

I later found out that they do not bother people.

Summersrhythm, my basement celing is just the opposite--very low. I have to warn every one who goes down there (usually to inspect/clean the heating system. They always say they're used to it, so I guess a lot of the old houses around here have similar dungeons.

Maire, the bear is making himself at home! I love the pic of the turkeys. We have flocks of various sizes that come through here often, some quite large. I can photograph them only from inside the house because if they see me they hurry away. The deer and song birds are much more accepting of my presence.

My daughter and I took a tour of an old mansion on our Main street several years ago. They were doing tours and in the process of renovating it. My daughter knew the young guy doing our two person tour and talked him into letting us look at the basement. It was creepy, dirt floor and rock walls from what I remember. Something you would see in a horror movie, which my daughter loves. lol.

Eld we see bears quite often. Here's a mama with 3 cubs walking through the back yard.

The turkeys are kind of funny creatures - they often peck at their reflection in the windows.

The house I grew up in in Michigan, about 40 miles north of Detroit, had a very nice (called back then a) finished basement. Finished ceiling and floors. main room down there had furniture, art on the walls, tv, pool table, bar with refrigerator, cabs, barware, and bar stools. The basement also had a nice shop for my dad to repair things in, etc. Mom had a separate laundry room. There was a huge storage closet along one entire wall. A separate walk-in pantry. And, a large bedroom with 2 twin bunkbeds for some of my brothers. All our neighbors had similar basements back then. When we moved here to New Mexico, I was totally surprised that no one had a basement. In all our many years here, I’ve still never seen even one!

Lynn, we lived in Farmington Hills, Michigan when I was little. Everyone we knew had a basement.

“The turkeys are kind of funny creatures - they often peck at their reflection in the windows.”

maire_cate, we have peacocks roaming around here that do that. They’ll also do it to their reflection in car doors and can do some damage.🥴

Chloe, peacocks! May I ask where you live?

eld, we’re in Southern CA along the San Gabriel foothills just east of Pasadena. We used to have peacocks ”visit” from the LA County Arboretum in Arcadia, CA. Word has it that they’ve somewhat colonized in the foothills around us. They can be quite bold...and loud! My dentist was the one who told me a peacock(s) really ruined the side of her car with their beaks. Whenever they’ve been in our yard there’s never been more than two. I only have videos that I couldn’t post here but found this pic online. This neighborhood had quite a few!

Chloe - how exotic! and much prettier than a turkey,

Chloe beat me to it, peacocks can be very aggressive and peck at their own reflection in car doors. That's what I remember from petting zoos in California. Weird, but there you go.

What surprised me today?! They have heart-shaped pasta. Amy Lou, seen it before? I haven't.

https://www.barilla.com/en-us/recipes/blue-box/barilla-heart-pasta-mac-and-cheese

Rob, I’ve seen the heart-shaped pasta but not from Barilla. Good to know!

maire_cate, the video I tried to post showed two female peacocks in our yard. Kind of bland in appearance. They were here most of the day, and I started calling them Lucy and Ethel. Then they went over the wall to our neighbor’s house.

We have peacocks here as well - some say it's from a long ago animal attraction.

Been trying hard of think of something that surprised me recently, and I can't think of anything that doesn't have something to do with things in the news that we cannot discuss here 😏

BTW, male cardinals will go after their reflection too. We used to have one in our yard that would attack the side mirror and closed window on our car.

And my friend in CT has one of those spooky basements in their old farmhouse - with stone foundation walls that seep, an earthen floor and spiders everywhere. She told me that early on, she tried clearing away the cobwebs and they were back by the next day 😳

I am also surprised at how interested people are in basements. Almost every home I remember in NY had a basement. Some had old infrastructure in place from back in the coal shoveling days. I have never seen a basement in Fl.

I had two memories of things that surprised me today, both happened at the same house. We had some storm damage once and had to stay elsewhere for two weeks while it was fixed. During this time a bunny made a den in my dog run. I found this out when my little hound dog caught a baby bunny. The surprise was that this little bunny sounded exactly like a dog squeaky toy! I started screaming to drop it and the bunny got dropped and promptly hopped into the pool. Then I had to fish it out and dry and put it back in its den. I just remember be hysterical when I discovered dog sqeak toys were designed to sound like baby prey. I never gave dog toys much thought until I heard that bunny squeaking just like a toy. LOL

The other surprise was in that same back yard. It was on the South Fork of the St Lucie River. We heard this noise out back that sounded like a dinosaur! We discovered an alligator on the opposite bank making a sound that I had never heard in real life. We went and got a camera and it swam out to the middle of the river and posed for us. Wish I had video of the sound though. It was insane! Exactly what I would imagine a dinosaur would have sounded like. The pictures are on the other computer, here is an interent example of the sound. It was so loud and so out of place amplified on that patio. We were crazy surprised!

Joan's comment reminded that I was a bit surprised that someone was surprised that so many people lived in homes without basements 😁

I've always been a bit envious of people with basements - and attics. Older homes - like early 20th century old houses here sometimes have attics. And I know the Vinoy hotel and hospitals around here have basements.

One of my cousins in WI has a fully finished basement in their ca. late 1980s house - it even has a full kitchen.

I have no experience living in a house with basement or attic storage. It's the garage and closets we have to use and that's it. We park cars in the garages as a priority (and need to do so easily without having to negotiate around clutter) so that further limits storage space.

I wish the Marie Kondo/George Carlin approach to unneeded "stuff" had a firmer anchor in our household - it doesn't due to the other resident here. But since space is limited, at least some effort needs to be expended regularly to separate what needs to be retained and what doesn't. Stuff in the second category is disposed of. Having more household storage would undo that benefit.

We recently looked at a house in our town (considering downsizing), that we loved, except for a couple of drawbacks. One was, it dit not have a basement, which I found unusual around here. It wasn’t the deal-killer, but added with two other factors added up to no deal.

What surprised me: after years of playing in church bell choirs, I joined a performing handbell ensemble. It is more challenging than I imagined! Great fun, but with great opportunities to screw up, as well as great opportunities to learn. It really flexes the brain.

In my 1840 house not only do we have a full-size basement but a full-size attic so it would be great for a hoarder. In the basement where we have stone walls, there is a small area I would guess was a coal bin. I use it for an indoor greenhouse now. I'm guessing someone same day would turn this four-bedroom into six using the big attic.

I would love to see a peacock in my yard. The best I can do is my little albino squirrel with pink eyes. And yesterday in the snow , four gorgeous bluebirds.

FWIW, I'm sort of glad the peacocks aren't in our neighborhood. They're very noisy and bad tempered too. They're in an old neighborhood on the nearby mainland with many big old houses and mansions on large properties. I often see them on my way to work - and some people have put up peacock crossing signs, since they obliviously make their way back and forth across the busy main road, often stopping traffic.

Peacocks can be very noisy and sound like cats.

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=600263652&channel=iphone_bm&q=peacock+call+sounds+like+cats&tbm=vid&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwis94n75u-DAxVyJkQIHaadBlAQ0pQJegQIChAB&biw=1366&bih=893&dpr=2#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:45745b1c,vid:Y1htSZrHp9Q,st:0

I know people who have had cars damaged by Fl Peacocks. They are prettier from a distance. This reminded me of another strange Florida animal thing.

We arrive at one of the state parks, or maybe it was the Everglades? Whichever park it was, when we pulled in we noticed that half if the vehicles are covered in tarps. Then we notice there is a box of tarps available for use so we started asking questions.

We quickly found out that the vultures like to mess with the cars and they cause considerable damage. At this time of the day they were not active in this area so half the cars were uncovered.

They have a program where they are trying to encourage the vultures to use a playground. Silly humans, we are the ones in their playground.

Anyway, I was very surprised to find myself covering our car with tarps because sometimes the birds come back in the afternoon. Also, check out the pretty little mobile for the vultures. LOL

That reminded me of an event years ago - I was driving over the Howard-Frankland bridge from Tampa, and a low flying pelican let loose onto the car in front of me - it looked like someone had splashed a gallon of white paint on that car 😲

My parents had peacock and a peahen in central Texas - they had wandered onto their farm and had decided to move into the empty chicken coop in their back yard. The peacock came first, and he was a bit neurotic, as he was starved for attention. He would strut for any pair of eyes, and when I brought my cats to the farm for the summer when I was a student, one of the cats was agoraphobic and was terrified of the peacock. When I took this cat outdoors, he would stare frozen in fear at the peacock, and the peacock loved this attention and would strut for my cat for as long as possible.

My mother thought that the peacocks made good watchdogs because they would make a huge amount of noise whenever anyone would enter the driveway. I still have feathers from this peacock.

My daughter's experience with a peacock was a great surprise to both of us. We went to a farm to buy iris. The lady had lots of chickens and peacocks. As we got out of the car, my teen daughter was attacked by a peacock. He/she flew over and aimed for her head. Long cut to her head, and you know how head cuts bleed. We raced to the car and went home. Surprise! no iris bought.

Ladypat, my goodness. What an experience.