Each building that gets leveled in my neighborhood brings with its destruction the seesawing of anticipation and anxiety about what will take its place. There have been some victories on the southern stretch of Montrose: The pizza at Cane Rosso and the barbecue at the Pit Room are fine additions to an area that already has some pretty good stuff. If I need a guitar, one is for sale nearby at Rockin' Robin. Two record stores are a five-minute walk from my home. Whole Earth is just two blocks away, which is cool when I need hiking shoes.

But then there are the letdowns. Big Tex Storage looks like a rectangular Death Star on Richmond. Admittedly Big Tex as an upgrade over the raggedy Freaky Foods Shell on Richmond. Freaky Foods' '70s heyday, as a place to buy rolling papers and commune with other folks who bought rolling papers, had come and gone. Inexplicably Big Tex failed to swallow up the one other property on the block: the rickety King Cole Liquor, which next to its neighbor looks like a tag sticking out of a shirt.

Anyway, I had no particular affinity for Sherwin Williams because I do not like to paint. I guess I felt bad for the folks that worked at the Richmond location when it closed. The building felt like it was razed in a day.

Once the site was cleared, the seesawing began. I heard murmurs that another Starbucks was coming, which would pair nicely with the one just three blocks away. Or the twin Starbucks another mile or so away. They're sort of infamous now, thanks to Lewis Black.

Yesterday I saw a sign on part of the Sherwin Williams lot: Take 5 Oil Change.

I have no experience with Take 5, but a simple search frames it as a little company that started in Metairie, La., more than 30 years ago and gradually expanded its reach across the South. They boast having the fastest oil changes, which intrigues me, because oil changes always take longer than the time I budget for them. But here's the thing: Take 5 will become the third oil-change place within car-pushing range of my driveway.

"At least it's not another CVS," said my cynical 11-year-old daughter.

She still grumbles about the two mid-century homes that once housed a pet-adoption service from which we adopted our dog. That place was flattened so that a CVS could be 0.7 miles from our house, sparing us the 1.1-mile slog to our old CVS.

I can now walk to three CVSs in the middle of summer without breaking a sweat.

It's like a weirder version of the Talking Heads song, except everything turns into a pharmacy.

A year has passed since I last saw news about H-E-B's plans for development in Shepherd Plaza. I believe they're still waiting for Tuesday Morning's lease to run its course, which is two years away.

I love H-E-B. And I love having one 0.6 miles from my front door, which is far more convenient than the one that is 1.7 miles from my house. I suppose I should be excited by the prospect of having one 0.2 miles from my front door. That's 0.4 miles of time saved. That adds up over time.

And now there's a for-sale sign in front of King Cole Liquor. At least it's too small a space for another oil-change place. Or another CVS.