I make no secret of the fact that I desperately want to leave southern California.
I’m fairly certain that it’s killing me, Southern California that is. I don’t know what will get to me first, abject poverty (we can’t afford landscapers OR a housekeeper), cancer (I’ve lived by a lot of freeways and I heard it from someone’s friend whose doctor read it on the internet that that is pretty much a death sentence) or vanity (the pressure to look like an over developed ten-year old is dangerous), but I feel my mortality knocking at the front door and though the flier it left advertised a new pizza joint, I read between the lines and between the lines was a lot of white space and white space is what you see right before you get to the pearly gates, at least that’s the way it was in the movie Oh God, which starred George Burns, who was old enough to actually know what heaven looks like and would never have lied to me.
“The cigar I smoke now has angel wings.” (image via wikipedia)
I want to live!
And I want to do it surrounded by people who are not impossibly beautiful. I don’t begrudge regular beautiful people. Just the impossibly beautiful ones who’ve had so many expensive treatments and procedures done and then cleverly lied about it, so that 70 is the new 40 and silent screen movie stars look younger than I do. I can’t afford these treatments and procedures but I feel the pressure and it’s only a matter of time before I end up desperate in some alley behind a restaurant with Danny Bonaduce injecting discarded pork fat into my cheeks right before he runs back to Celebrity Rehab or into traffic…I mean he could go anywhere because he’s Danny Bonaduce and notoriously unstable, much like a face full of discarded pork fat.
Try Danny Bonaduce’s Back Alley Pork Fat Beauty Treatments and you too could look forever young like a troubled child star! (image via biography.com)
I want to live somewhere where people look their age, but still have all of their teeth. And know what an organic vegetable is. And don’t think that Budweiser is the only acceptable beer to drink. And say please and thank you. And know their neighbors. And don’t talk on the phone through dinner.
I’ve long thought that that somewhere lay in the South East. I’ve made no secret of this either. But lately there have been some headlines out of that region which are troubling my inner hypochondriac.
First, there has been an epidemic of Necrotizing Fascitis. I’ve read of three cases in and around Georgia. THREE. And that is three more than there should be. So it is obviously out of control. Nobody knows how these people contracted this terrible disease, which leaves me no way to obsessively avoid it. However, here’s what I do know: one of the victims was a mother, two of the victims were women and all three were human. I’m a mother, a woman and a human. Clearly I’m in a high risk group.
Then I read an article about tiny ticks in the area that are infecting people with Mammalian Meat Allergies. Now unsuspecting people in the South East are getting hives and even anaphylaxis after innocently eating a mammal, like a cow or a manatee. I’ve often eaten to the point of discomfort, but I’ve never stopped breathing and I’d like to keep it that way. And since, last I heard, they are still making burgers out of mammals and I have been known to periodically have a small but passionate love affair with a juicy burger, especially after a long day hiking in tick country, I am once again vulnerable.
(Note: I’m not advocating the eating of manatees. I personally think it’s a bad idea. However, a female manatee is referred to as a cow and so I can see how the mistake could be made. Don’t shoot the messenger, people.)
Manatees should be cherished, not eaten. I call this one, Maynard. (image via wikipedia)
Am I supposed to move someplace where my limbs will rot, so that I can’t even pick up the burger, which will bring me ecstasy and then make me stop breathing? Does anyone else see the inherent problems here? Where’s a run of the mill paranoid hypochondriac supposed to live anymore?
Fathead Follies 
I am more aware of my mortality, too. But instead of wondering whether I should move to the Southeast, I think about New York, where cancer is even more certain–the tiny pollution particles that supposedly will kill us all are apparently off the charts on any random street corner in Manhattan. Where, indeed, is a paranoid hypochondriac wanting culture, organic food sources and a healthy environment supposed to go?
The Village? Maybe I’m thinking of clubs and not healthy environments.
The wildfires are under control. Come west. But not south. I’m from the south and let me tell you, I ain’t never goin’ back.
I LOVE the south, probably because I didn’t grow up there and have a massive love affair with pie. However, I would relocate to Colorado in a heartbeat…if it stops burning, because with all of those carcinogens in the air I’m bound to wind up with cancer.
Good point. Pie trumps cancer.
PORTLAND!!!! Just let me know 30 days in advance so I can give the renters notice to move out.
I’ve still got to bring Hubs to Portland. I’m hoping to get up there in August for my casual class reunion (read: beerfest.)
Southern CA is very nearly a planet unto itself. I’ve traveled all over the world to cities big and small and never been anywhere like LA. It’s …. uhm…. special. 🙂 When I lived in small town AZ I worked with a girl that had inherited a crappy tiny house in a bad part of town in So. CA. She sold it and moved away and RETIRED on that money in her 30s because it was so much cheaper to live elsewhere! Where I live now, in MI, you can buy a nice 3 br house for $35k! And you would get a yard and everything. Of course… you have to shovel snow 9 months out of the year. I guess no place is perfect. Lol
Yes the cost of living out here makes me crazy. If only I liked snow more…
Okay, as a former resident of Southern California, I hear you loud and clear. BEAUTY BEAUTY BEAUTY! SKINNY SKINNY SKINNY! RICH RICH RICH! It gave me a headache.
Come to Iowa. We know how to live. And you can meet The Kidling in person.
America’s heartland and the Kidling? Well now that is a tantalizing offer.
Could anything possibly be better?
America’s heartland and the Kidling with cake & ice cream. That would make me very happy.
I love this post. I’m ready to move to Iowa.
It is the best place. I am, of course, partial to my fair city, but there are other good places as well.
Cheers!
Well, Florida is where crazy goes to blend if that helps in your decision making. We do have the gentle sea cows here, and as much as I love manatees, I don’t get how sailors used to mistake them for mermaids.
I love Florida–lived there in graduate school.
I think that when you’re reeeeally lonely after being on a ship for a very long time with a bunch of other toothless, stinky guys you severely lower your standards. At least that’s my theory, because I’ve wondered the very same thing.
Check out New Mexico. It’s relatively low in population *like Canada* and you’re guaranteed to be more attractive than many of the people (native and import). The air is clean and the hippies are rich (because organic food tastes better that way, and dreadlocks smell nicer when washed). And aside from the plague carried by armadillos (which in truth are more east in Texas) you’re reasonably safe. 🙂 There’s no waterfront property though.
oh, and it’s GORGEOUS weather and scenery. And food. Their brand of mexican food is to DIE for.
So now there’s a mexican food plague too? That disease would definitely claim me, because I can’t say no to carne asada.
There are a lot of pros to New Mexico, but the Armadillo Plague is scary. I don’t want to end up as a flattened ball on the side of the highway, let alone a flattened ball with chapped lips (because it’s a dry heat and when you’re suffering from the Armadillo Plague you tend to forget to apply your Chapstick).
How did I miss this post for so long? God, I felt exactly the same way when I was living in San Diego. Urgh, hated it. I mean, except for the weather, that was pretty groovy.
The weather is fantastic. I remind myself of that daily to keep a positive attitude.