Way Over Yonder

For someone who isn’t going anywhere, I spend a lot of time thinking about where I’d like to be.

Hawaii

Hawaii (Photo credit: jmauerer)

I’ve never been to Hawaii, so it’s pure fantasy to say I’d like to live there.  But I know I love warm weather, and sun, and the beach. I’d have to give up my mixed reef tank, it’s illegal to buy most corals there, but I could have an excellent softie tank, with some beautiful fish.  Besides, I’d be able to see the corals in the ocean.  Wouldn’t that be something?  Unfortunately, I’d also love to live somewhere I could afford a little house and groceries, with a good school system for Flower Child, so Hawaii isn’t a likely scenario.

So many beautiful places to fantasize about, even limiting my game of “let’s pretend” to America.  Sometimes I think about going north, have you been to Vermont? Awesome sharp cheddar, real maple syrup, elderberry wine! It’s stunning; peaceful, sunny, and many parts are affordable.

Vermont

Vermont (Photo credit: Dougtone)

I love to read the descriptions and study the photographs posted by my online friends who live in various parts of the country. I envy their gardens, their scenery, their reasonable cost of living, and their space.  Then I keep reading. And hear about raccoons and deer and bear, and beavers and possums and snakes. *** I had to pause here, because my shudders made it impossible to work the keyboard.

Yes, it’s true, Mrs Fringe is a weenie. I’m willing to brave underwater creepy crawlies, willing to brave the subways, I’ll even, on occasion if need  be, brave the tourists in Times Square. But rabies and lyme disease and giardia? Oh my!

When I was a kid, I thought I was an animal lover.  I loved dogs, I even the loved the gazillion stray cats that lived in the neighborhood.  My parents told me I was an animal lover.  There were plenty of breadcrumbs, if I had thought to follow the trail. I hated the chickens at the live poultry place on McDonald Ave.  But they were there to be killed, plucked, and taken home for Sunday dinner, the F train roaring and clanking above, so I didn’t think of them as nature. I also didn’t think of them as dinner, I think I stopped eating chicken by the time I was eight.  I hated the zoo. But this was before the days when zoos became humane, who could love the scrawny, flea bitten lion tearing into a hunk of bloody raw meat in his cage? I loved the track. I loved Black Beauty. Very exciting. Beautiful animals, those thoroughbred horses. From a distance.  Up close, they’re really, really big. Scary. I was an adult before I found myself next to a cow.  They’re huge! And they stink. I know how to hold my breath on a steamy day in August when walking down the subway steps, so the waves of funk and urine don’t penetrate. But farm animals? There is no holding your breath for that stench. Pfft, clean smell of manure…I don’t think so.

Thinking back, again, they weren’t so much breadcrumbs on a trail as bright yellow strips of divider on an interstate highway.

Are you living where you want? If you could move, where would you go?

For all my fantasy time, I’m not sure where I want to end up. But I don’t want to be here.

Theater District/Times Square

 

25 comments

  2. I hear you! we are in the wilds of rural compared to you but I am the person who never goes to petting farms. the animals really seriously smell lol. I have been to Hawai, it was lovely but the carribean was just as nice and a lot closer ( to us both) I fancy Georgia myself. I love the moss growing on the trees and the wrap around porches with swing seats. you could drive, you lucky thing. at other times its the cotswolds in a small village and much too expensive house that tickles my fancy. but I am saving some mortgage for my dream cottage with a sea view in maderia. 🙂

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    1. A woman after my own heart! My icon photo is one of those moss covered trees, taken within an hour’s drive of Savannah, Georgia, in South Carolina. Those old homes are built for dreaming. And a cottage by the sea, sigh. My fantasy home is built from that salt air. 🙂

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  3. Most definitely a house by the sea…with a lagoon in the back yard so we may take a cruise on the boat when the mood struck. As for smelly animals, I agree- a urine soaked train load of them slathered and doused with perfume and cologne really does stink! Gimme the horse or cow any day. 😉

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      1. Well, not quite an island, just our familiar peninsula lovingly known as The Hook ❤

        …and I miss it already!! gonna be a long winter. 😥

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  4. I kinda like the idea of Vermont. Visited there when I was 16 & loved it. I love the idea of living in Seattle, if only it weren’t so darn grey & rainy. I wouldn’t mind living in the West again, mebbe somewhere on the outskirts of Denver, or slightly farther out.

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  5. I’m like you, I need sun, I really do. It’s too bad, cause there’s so many cool things there. So it’s settled, we’re moving to Vermont then? lol

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  6. Bears. You forgot bears. 😛 And coyotes, foxes and mountain lions! What’s a 18″ rat snake that has found its way into our living room compared to the bear my son encountered while fishing in our pond? 😉 But some of what you encounter every day without batting a day in the city would scare me more than our nature ever could. I love our particular location for the peace and the room to it affords our family and the easy access to high quality medical care, but it comes at a very steep cost. Our state has an incredibly high cost of living, and our part of it on the high side of the median. The only thing that keeps us right where we are is family.

    Given any choice at all? Something kinda rural with good schools and access to top notch medical care and better cost of living. But that is all practical. Practicalities aside… I’d still want something kinda rural but not too far from those I love. Somewhere with warm summers but not unbearably hot. Northern New England is beautiful. 🙂

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    1. So much of New England is beautiful! But cold. I’m really not so good with cold. Flower Child doesn’t do so well with either extreme anymore. Yes, good schools (specifically, good sped programs) and access to excellent medical care. When thinking purely about med stuff, I think Atlanta, but I really, really, don’t like the Atlanta area.

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  7. Humidity doesn’t mix well with respiratory disease, at least for us and overheating has been a very bad trigger for all of the issues the Empress deals with. Both her and Computer Guy both do better in (reasonable, not subzero) cold than in the extreme heat. At least as far as sickness goes, flu season seems to strike no matter where you live. And absolutely, spec ed is what we need as well.

    Cost of living as well as various services we’d have access to due to our income level (heating assistance and so on) in our previous location (a small city) would be so much better, but we’d pay the price in the form of an abysmal educational system. We could send the boys out to good regional schools, but where would that leave the Empress?

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    1. The million dollar question indeed. Seems impossible to be in a school system that serves the needs of all reasonably well.
      External temps have a huge influence on Flower Child’s well being, I completely understand how heat and humidity effect your two with respiratory issues. Every day a potential land mine, eh?
      Somebody call the plane, I’m going to head to Fantasy Island.

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  8. I’ve lived in the desert, the Cascades, the midwest, and now the Ozarks. I love things about each place, but I love the Ozarks for it’s wildlife and scenery. The people are pretty great too – the snakes, not so much.

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    1. I haven’t spent any real time in the Ozarks. I’m going to google the wildlife there. Would you believe it’s hard for me to imagine coming across a snake in nature? I think that only happened to me once, on a boat dock in Fl, so I’m not sure it even counts. 🙂
      Loving where you live is beautiful. Doesn’t magically resolve problems, but I think it enriches each day.

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      1. Anytime you come across a snake it counts:) I have a terrier that deals with them for me. I know they are part of the ecosystem, but good grief – there are thousands of acres of woods out there – why choose my porch?

        Your right about loving where you are – it does enrich things and makes all the tough things easier to deal with.

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        1. :adds terrier to the list of necessary critters: 🙂 I’m thinking, thinking, thinking. If I could really move, assuming I didn’t win the lottery, where would I go.

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          1. Another bonus of the Ozarks is the cost of living. I sold my house on a 25 foot lot in Columbus and bought a home twice the size on 6 acres and pocketed about 10K. I have probably spent it all on terriers and lawn mowers though…

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  9. Right where I am is pretty amazing at this point in my life. If I had a nice warm house, I could easily do Maine. The people around Georgetown Island are wonderful & seem to live to ripe old ages…..maybe it is the clamming in that cold water to get the last clams put up to tide them over the winter & then as early in the spring as they can because they ran out. I couldn’t take the Asbury Park, NJ ocean most of the summer the year we were stationed there.

    I loved the southern part of Missouri of all the places we moved growing up & said I’d like to end up there. Of course South Florida was a dream that would never come true but when it did, I found that we didn’t go to the beach all that much & trying to clean all that sand out of the house all the time with kids running in & out was not fun.

    Tennessee is the perfect spot since the grandkids are all close & Atlanta is only 4 hours if I want to see my sisters & moss covered trees. The outer regions of Atlanta are cities unto themselves so I enjoy my visits. The cost of living is good here, taxes are low, people are friendly & since I am retired, the lack of jobs are not a problem. Malls with major stores are 45 min. – 1 hour away so I spend less. Yup! Here is just fine by me.

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    1. Never been to TN, one of these days I’m going to get there 🙂 Maine is amazingly beautiful, I could see loving that coast forever.
      I love that you’ve lived in such varied places, do you feel it’s done anything for your perspective in general?
      Lack of shopping wouldn’t bother me, I rarely shop–and that’s here in the middle of NY!
      🙂

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  10. Don’t even know where I’d live if I could…but think it’s kinda weird that one of your commenters is living in the Ozarks (me, too) and another spent some time in southern MO (where I live). Small, small world. 🙂

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