I totally take where I live for granted. But not in the way most of you are thinking I mean. For 10 years I lived in a small mountain town that rolled up the sidewalks at 11 PM in the summer and 8 PM in the winter. Groceries are much higher priced there than in stores down in "the valley" and forget the cost of gasoline! There is no Wal-mart, Target or K-mart. No running to the store in the middle of the night when you run out of diapers or formula or just want ice cream.
So on our days off, we would climb in the car and spend the day in the valley. It was a 45 minute drive down the canyon in good weather, on a winding mountain road. Back UP the canyon could take much longer, depending on the season. (Summer tourists + windy roads = slooooooow moving.
When we first moved to Colorado, the only discount store in the closest city was Kmart. If we wanted anything else we drove another 15- 20 minutes to the nearby college town that has everything.
For 4 years I commuted to that college, many semesters 5 days a week.
Even now that I live in the valley, I still drive to the next town over at least once a week, even though we now have much more than just a Kmart. For me, to drive 20 minutes to go to the library or grab dinner is nothing.
So when my mother (who sparked this whole post this afternoon on the phone, haha) says, "I took the printer back to the store. I had to go all the way to Davenport," I have to roll my eyes and laugh, because all the way to Davenport takes 10 minutes even if it's way the hell on the other end of town. And then I strolled over to Roggey's a few minutes ago (sorry Roggey, but really?? Hahaha.) and saw that she likened driving to JoAnn's in Davenport with driving to Montana I again rolled my eyes.
Because though my hometown may feel like a small town, it's a nice-sized city that shares two main streets with the next really good-sized city. And the area isn't called the Quad-Cities for nothing! My mom has never had to drive more than 10 minutes to get anywhere, to get anything, even in what she calls traffic (my cousin from Seattle is the one who rolls her eyes over that one, lol). Hell, I road my bike everywhere when I was a kid, to the library for books, the 5 and 10 for books (yes, there's a theme there...) and even out to the farm where my horse was pastured, because ain't anything far away there! ;)
So I guess I take where I live for granted. I know I have to drive 20 minutes to get my books at the library (to be fair, we do have a great library in town, but the nearby library has a free book delivery program that will get me just about any book I want from libraries all over the state, my local library does not) and yarn from my LYS (my really LYS closed, waaaa). I am still willing to drive 45 minutes to see my GYN in my old town, because he's awesome. Driving, even with these ridiculously high gas prices, just isn't a BFD (gas is still cheaper than supporting my book habit any other way and if I'm there for books, why not go a little farther and pet yarn?!).
On the other hand, I live 2 minutes from work, Target and JoAnn's and at least 10 restaurants, and only 5 minutes from Super Walmart and a mall with even more restaurants, so the rest of the time, I really don't drive far at all!
PS. On the foot of girly sock #2, woo hoo!
