12 August 2008

Why I Live in Chicago

After visiting the U.P. I routinely ask myself the same question when I get home: Why do I live in Chicago? I was born in one of the most beautiful places in the country, lived there for 25 years, then moved on to the big city. At the time it made sense: I have a degree in Business Computer Information Systems, and jobs in that particular field are few and far between in that part of the country. After finally getting an offer to do what I (thought I) wanted to do, it didn't take me long to accept. When you're 24, moving from the country to the city sounds like fun.

Once I got here I discovered that the city wasn't really all that appealing to me, although I did fine the world's finest Hubby here. We both came to Chicago from other parts of the country because of our jobs. Over the course of time we have both decided (I think) that we're not really all that fond of the city life. (Hubby is slightly more pro city, as he fears that he wouldn't be able to play tennis if he were out in the wilderness.) The problem, then, becomes, well if we were to go somewhere else, where would we go? Bringing me to exhibit A:



If you click on the map and make it bigger, you'll see why we're never going to move. We would both like to be nearer to our families, and they both live in beautiful parts of the country. Wildly separate, no-where-near-each-other parts of the country. It takes us 5 hours to drive to Brother's in Detroit (when the traffic in northern Indiana isn't horrible, which it usually is,) 7 hours to drive to my parents' in Marquette, and a day in airports to get to Hubby's family in Kansas or Colorado. If we moved to be near any one set of relatives, it would make it very hard to visit the other set. Also, Husband grew up in New Mexico, so going farther north is not on his agenda.

So, since I think I'm stuck here in the Chicago suburbs for a while, I am attempting to make things as similar to the U.P. as I can. I purchased an mp3 of the sounds of water lapping on a rocky beach, I plugged in a new air freshener that's supposed to smell like sun and sand, and Sunday night we had a campfire.


I'll let you know if it works.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The roasted marshmallows are just as good here as in the motherland. I will say the pictures are lovely but your cats missed you. And DD did not stand for Dear Daughter but Desperate Daughter missing her other half.

Five Ferns Fibreholic said...

You could always move to Iowa and buy a farm and plant some corn. When you start hearing voices, you'll plow the corn under and build a baseball field.

If you're very lucky you'll have dead baseball players come to visit and play ball and if you're very lucky Kevin Costner will even make an appearance.