Every winter, ’bout this time, when the cold days have dragged on and on to the point where a 100 degree day (Celsius even!) sounds more tolerable than bundling up the kids AGAIN and having the boogies in my nose freeze for the forty-millionth time that day, and when getting the mail (at the end of my driveway) seems like a drastic undertaking, I start to have this fantasy in which we move to more temperate climates.
And because, in my fantasy-land, I am also slightly practical and don’t have visions of moving to a completely foreign country and having to learn a new language (you mean people don’t speak American EVERYWHERE?), I envision us moving to one of the coasts.
For a good 290 days of the year, I like where I live, honestly I do (and probably in part as a defense mechanism, as moving out of state would be brutal as far as custody arrangements go for The Big One), and besides a small jaunt away from here several years ago, I have lived in the same town most of my life. It’s a sweet river town, full of character and pep (and a number of the exact same strip malls), and it’s great BECAUSE I KNOW WHERE EVERYTHING IS (I never claimed to be adventuresome, now did I?).
But, for as teeny as my family is, I do happen to have some that live out of state in California, where I have been any number of times. And I genuinely love it out there, it’s interesting, it’s clean, people are nice, and if it weren’t for such amazingly high property prices, we might live out there for reals.
Well, the cost of living AND the fact that I am not positive that I am good-looking enough.
California is weird like that, and I’ll never forget being there as a teenager to attend my cousin’s wedding. A busboy (a BUSBOY!) in the joint where we were dining nearly caused me to choke on my steak, so uncanny was his resemblance to Brad Pitt (the 12 Monkeys/Seven version, whom I had many a naughty fantasy about).
A couple of years later, I was back again, and I noticed that even the bums on The Haight were sexy. BUMS were SEXY! Even the one who flashed me his penis was good looking (and well hung)!
It was like entering an alternate universe.
As I got older and every time I went back to Cali, I noticed more and more unlikely and attractive people. Airport baggage claim guys were hot! The chick at the rental car place looked as though she’d stepped off the runway to make my car rental experience a complete nightmare. I kept expecting the dude who took my toll money to start selling me shampoo, so magnificent was his shiny mane of hair, so full of body and style.
Just based on experience (and without real knowledge), I would even venture to guess that the people who worked at the DMV were extras on a movie set in their spare time (away from being nasty to people who were stupid enough to get into the wrong line– EVEN THOUGH IT WASN’T LABELED).
I don’t know about your state, but typically the DMV workers are thought to be the bitchy Missing Link anthropologists are always harping on about (I wonder if their studies would take them to the DMV, because it should), but I would venture a guess that in California, they, too, are beautiful, attractive, and of the highest genetic pedigree.
Even if I were rich enough to buy a shack in California, I’m fairly certain we’d be turned away at the border for being undesirably unattractive.
For now, I will take comfort living here in the Midwest, just outside of Chicago, knowing that while we may be ugly and dumpy, at least we’re landlocked, so no hurricane will make it to our doorstep.
DENIED ENTRY INTO CALIFORNIA DUE TO EXCESSIVE UNFLATTERING GENES.
March 17th, 2008 → 4:58 am
[...]            I think last week he might have been smoking some rare form of crack, because the haircut he gave me makes me look like a cocker spaniel with a mullet. Thanks, dude. And, so, I came home from the salon, close to tears, but reassuring myself it could not be so bad. Surely, everyone in LA is not as good-looking as they are made out to be. There have to be SOME people there who are not failed movie actors. I read a few blogs to make me feel better, and came across this post. Thanks for boosting my spirits, Becky. [...]