Monday, March 14, 2005

Why I Love New England

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"Very funny. Put the pussy in the snow. Let me back inside. Now. Or the bed gets the hairballs I'm working on."

Complaining about living in New England is like complaining about your family: it's okay if a member of the family complains about crazy aunt Sue, but if some guy in line at the bank cracks a joke about her being off her meds you get offended. I caught some slack in the comments section of my Random Things post for complaining about the snow that fell on Friday and Saturday which is understandable since I was in a sour mood and looking to bitch. That's the wonder of the internet, and since I published my bitching y'all have the right to give me what-for when I've said something dumb. But, since ~bc has reminded me of my freedom to move anywhere I'd like I'd like to take this opportunity to explain why, through foot upon slushy foot of snow I stay in New England.

  • My friends and family are here. I've given a lot of thought to moving to London (not known for it's great weather but it doesn't snow too often) but the cost of living over there is prohibitive (also sorely lacking the dual citizenship marrying a chap would bring, so it would be a temporary move) but leaving long-weekend road trips, beers with Butchie and the Tin Knockas and $6 pitchers of PBR keeps me here when the flakes start to fall.
  • As the Standells say, I love that dirty water. Boston is a great city: small enough to understand how to get around, big enough to avoid people I went to high school with. I love walking through the Common, staring at tourists and ogling cute businessmen as they walk home from work even when I nearly fall on my ass due to the glare ice on the paths.
  • I try to remember all the good things that happen in Boston in the spring. I love the Boston Marathon, WBOS Earthfest, the Red Sox filling the sports section with news other than basketball and rugby, the Swan Boats returning to the park, drinking beers on my porch and watching the T rumble by for hours and sleeping with my bedroom windows open.
  • The fine beaches of New England. Nothing better than Narragansett Town Beach in summer, the fine sand between your toes listening to the waves crashing and the old guys on Harleys driving along the sea wall to impress each other.
  • The fact I can be at my Mom's house in under two hours, doing free laundry and eating some most excellent mashed potatoes.
  • I've been to the Midwest, and it sucked. Only flat and corn for hundreds of miles. I'm sure there was something interesting, but other than the Iowa-80, I didn't see anything that was of interest to me out there.
  • Florida? Brings nothing but heartache and woe. Also, it would be fine to winter in Florida but the fact that the houses come with industrial-strength netting built around the back porch to keep the seagull-sized mosquitoes at bay makes any other season in Florida really unappealing.
  • California? I hate traffic. And fake boobies.
  • The Mews
  • Boston Beer Works
  • My job
  • Brookline Booksmith
  • Proximity to Portland, ME, where I plan to spend the summer weekends I'm not in Rhode Island because, apparently, that's where the hotties are
  • Rollerblading on the Esplanade
  • Mojitos at Bonfire
  • Clam chowder
  • Cannoli
  • Red Sox!
  • Paw Sox!
  • Celtics?!
  • Blue states! Florida=Red State.
  • Free Shakespeare in the summer
  • Free movies on the Hatch Shell in the summer
  • Ice skating on the Frog Pond in the winter
  • Snow days! Can't have a snow day without snow.
  • You have an excuse to buy more clothes (or a red wool coat)-- summer and winter wardrobes
It's a Buddhist thing, really. A friend of mine pointed this out to me, saying that New Englanders know how to enjoy summer because we only have a few months out of the year to be outdoors. You can't have pleasure without knowing suffering. Right now I'm not caught for more than an hour at a time without hand lotion and the skin on my face is about to flake off. But when the weather warms up and I drag my spring clothes out of their plastic bins winter will be a faraway memory as muggy nights at Fenway/McCoy, weekends in Maine and flip-flops replace my walks through the park with my face buried in a scarf.

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