Move, Schmove...

Well, it’s finally happened.  My time in Minnesota is officially winding done, and it’s California, here I come!  I have always wanted to live in California, pretty much from my early days of living in Arizona, and have often scoped it out over the years, done some mild calculations, and always come to the same conclusion – I cannot afford to live in California – until now.  Due to this, it’s a little bit hard for me to believe that this is actually going to happen.  I think it’ll take a few months for it all to sink in, most likely, and I’ll be really curious to see how I feel once that happens.

With yet another cross country move looming on the near horizon, I can’t help but have moving on the brain almost constantly, not to mention the topics of painful aches (due to moving), bad knees (also due to moving), Minnesota, California, and so on.

Let me begin by explaining that I was born in the western suburbs of Chicago, IL, and lived there until I was 13.  My father’s workplace at Western Electric was being closed down which left him the choice of either moving to a new location or finding a new job altogether.  He chose the former.  He had fairly decent seniority and therefore was placed high on the list, allowing him to pick his preferred relocation point before many others.  My parents discussed a few options initially but decided to hold out for Phoenix, AZ, which is where we ended up moving to.  We had been to Arizona only once before, Lake Havasu City, to be exact, where I still fondly recall our peanut butter melting in our 20 ft. Jayco travel trailer due to the extreme heat (108-ish, I think?), not to mention the formerly solid Crisco oil, and so on.  Apart from that, we knew practically nothing about Arizona and had never even been to Phoenix.  Upon my father placing his official bid, we drove (yes, drove….) out to Phoenix, spent about a week looking at houses, and at the end of the week my parents purchased a new build.  It was official – we were moving.

The real downside at the time was that I was just starting my 8^th grade year at the private Catholic grammar school that I attended, the only real school I had ever known.  We moved in late September and therefore I was only in 8^th grade there for a few weeks.  Even worse, at my new public school, since the school year was already well underway, it put me at an incredible disadvantage, especially being a very shy child.  Needless to say, 8^th grade year was pretty rough.  It’s the sort of year that you truly look forward to for what seems like forever, triumphantly graduating with these classmates that you grew up, but for me, though, it was rather anticlimactic and more of a transitional year.

This was my first and only experience up until then in regards to moving.  It was so strange seeing my belongings get packed up, carried off by some strangers, driven out by yet another group of strangers, and then finally being able to crack back into my belongings many months later since we kept them in storage while our house was being built.  There were a lot of “oh, I forgot I had this!” kind of moments.  It also meant that we had to move twice; once from IL to AZ into a storage unit, and then from the storage unit into the house about four months later.  One of the items that needed to be moved was an upright piano and I still to this day can’t recall how the hell we got that moved between my father and myself.  It was a pretty horrendous move overall because my parents also didn’t believe in selling off any of their belongings prior to moving, and so basically everything we owned had to be physically moved in one fashion or another.

Like most people, I’m sure, I then moved multiple times starting around my late teen years, all local moves from one end of the Phoenix area to another.  With each move, it seemed I was accumulating more and more belongings.  These tended to be awful experiences since I somehow always ended up moving in the middle of summer, when the temperatures were upwards of 100 degrees.  This behavior continued until I bought a house in 2001 where I remained until 2004.  In that year, being tired of the extreme heat, I decided to do the impossible…move across country from AZ to Indianapolis, of all places, and, on top of that, to do it all myself with only one helper and 3 cats in the cab of a Penske truck.  I had helpers to load up the truck, thankfully, but we drove straight through from AZ to IN with only stops for gas and food/bathroom breaks.  33 hours total, to be exact.  It was a nightmare, total freakin’ nightmare, almost beyond words, with cats howling almost the entire way.  There’s more to this story but I’ll save that for another time.

After finally getting settled, moving locally once more in Indianapolis and buying a home, I then decided that I wasn’t really liking it there so I moved to Minneapolis, MN.  I know, smart, huh?!  This took 2 separate moves of my belongings, and also one extremely loud and smelly car ride with 3 cats in their carriers, whining/screaming pretty much the entire time (again).  The drive is only 8 hours from IN to MN but with 3 howling felines it kind of feels like days.

And so, I’ve been in MN ever since, partially out of fear of doing another cross country move and also due to things just not working out in trying to move again.  I wanted to leave MN as early as 3 years in but then the economy collapsed, and I was suddenly underwater on my mortgage, and so on.  I was basically stuck for quite some time.  I did almost leave in 2013 but pulled out of the idea at the last second, mainly due to the circumstances surrounding it.  It just wasn’t ideal at that time and things just didn’t seem to be fitting into place, if you know what I mean.  I’m a firm believer that if life keeps throwing horrendous obstacles at you repeatedly for no real reason, maybe it’s just trying to tell you something.  And so, I listened.  This time around, though, things have been fitting into place mostly, or at least with a little bit of elbow grease.  This still begs the question, though, of why leave?

Ah, Minnesota…  Land of 10,000 lakes, the central focus in the movie “Fargo”, one of the coldest bigger cities in the continental US.  A very common question I hear, at least in Minnesota, is why would I ever want to leave?  This is about the biggest typical Minnesota question in the world and ironically partly explains why I’m leaving.  For you non-Minnesotans out there, it’s hard to explain but the typical Minnesotan believes that they live in paradise, akin to somewhere like, say, Hawaii, for the rest of us.  Of course, almost 100% of the rest of the country thinks that Minnesotans are completely insane in this thinking.  I mean, the weather can be rather horrible with very harsh winters, it’s loaded with bugs during the few months that have pleasant weather, it’s land locked, it’s so-called fly over country, and so on.  My theory has always been that Midwesterners have to make themselves feel better about living in the Midwest and so they concoct these strange, bizarre misconceptions about where they live.  This sort of thinking isn’t only in the Twin Cities area but it’s certainly on steroids here.  Per a typical Minnesotan, everything here is “the best…”, even things that make no sense whatsoever or couldn’t possibly be.  For example, in talking about California and the coastline, a Minnesotan might butt in, “…but you know, we have more miles of coastline than CA and Florida put together!”  By coastline, they mean, of course, the so called “10,000 lakes”, or, well, ponds/cesspools, as I call them.    I’m not sure how that compares with beaches and the ocean but…  Minnesotans also pride themselves on having the so-called best State Fair in the country.  Maybe they do…I don’t know, but I’ve personally never seen State Fairs as a reason to choose to live somewhere.  I mean, who does that?  A Minnesotan, that’s who.  There is just such an overwhelming sense of false pride in this area that it’s hard not to choke on it, although you’d only notice and care about it if you’re not originally from here, which explains also quite a bit.  The adage goes:  “Minnesota…you can’t get anyone to move there, and you can’t get anyone from there to leave.”  I’ve found this to be pretty much spot on.

Most people automatically assume that I’m leaving MN due to the weather, and whereas I’ll admit that after 20 years in AZ of not having “the seasons” and then having them again for the past 11 years, I find them pretty darn overrated.  I used to dream of fall when I lived in AZ and complained about not having it; in MN, though, don’t blink because you’ll usually miss it.  Fall tends to be about 2-3 weeks maximum, not the long, drawn out season that I falsely recalled from childhood, and depending upon the weather, it far too often goes straight from summer to winter.  The only real evidence of fall is usually the huge pile of leaves on your lawn that you’re not sure what to do with.  Then, winter comes.  Minnesota is the polar opposite problem of Arizona weather-wise, in my opinion.  Over there, I complained that the extreme heat (aka “summer”) lasted way too long, like 9 months of the year.  In MN, winter usually lasts at least 6 months, and sometimes it can last 8.  Maybe I’ll feel different in a couple of years but, at the moment at least, I feel like the seasons might be better experienced by simply taking a road trip rather than having to live in them.

Having said that, though, the weather really isn’t my main complaint.  First, there’s the “work” aspect.  Minnesotans and Midwesterners love their grass and lawns.  Why?  I really have no clue.  I’ll admit that the greenery is nice but it’s just grass, after all, and a huge pain in the ass, in my opinion.  People treat their lawns here like it’s some sort of work of art, like a canvas with the latest Jackson Pollock.  I think people tend to be more anal retentive about their lawns than almost anything else, and they expect you to be as well.  And so, you’re out there practically every week mowing the lawn, and for what?  Again, no clue.  Apart from the exercise angle, I think it’s a complete waste of time, especially since the lawns here are literally the entire yard.  No hills, no dividers, no nice looking brick pavers or anything…just wall to wall flat grass from property line to property line.  It’s a matter of opinion, of course, but I think it’s just about the most boring look possible.  Give me some stones and a nice cactus any day of the week!

One of my biggest complaints in Minnesota is the overall pace of life.  I’ve tried, truly I have, but I just can’t adjust to it.  People drive painfully slow and are overly cautious, as if a small child might parachute out of the sky at any moment and land in front of their car.  They walk about the same.  Try walking through Ikea at the MOA on a busy day…you’ll know what I mean.  The Midwest is also historic for being extremely slow to change.  For example, the typical house décor here seems to be 10-20 years behind the west coast.  I’ve seen “recent” décor here that I thought went out in 1985.  A lot of the attitudes on life move at about the same pace.  Change isn’t really accepted with open arms here and it’s constantly in a battle with tradition, with tradition usually coming out the victor.  I’m personally pretty big on change and not very into tradition.  I always say tradition is great but it should work for you, not just be some silly ritual that you do every year regardless of really wanting to or knowing why you’re doing it.  All too often, in my experience, people just go through the motions with tradition without any idea of why they’re doing it.  To me, this is more of what I’d call a chore and I’m just not very interested in it.

There’s also the food issue.  I moved here to open up my options on food; what I got was the exact opposite.  I thought I was moving to a vegetarian friendly town, which I guess it was at one time maybe but since has changed.  In general, though, let’s just say that I’ve never consistently had such horrible food over and over at different locations in my life.  For example, I was served jarred Alfredo sauce at an Italian restaurant - no joke.  We’re not really talking about differences in palette…we’re talking differences in quality, like getting served a plate of greens (salad) but nothing on the plate is actually green.  Half the time, we get something literally rotten served to us and no one seems to think anything of it.  It’s like that’s just normal here.  Ick.

And lastly, there are the people and the lifestyle.  I’ve honestly struggled greatly with these things ever since I arrived.  I quickly learned that there really is no “Minnesota Nice”.  Yeah, sure, people will stop to help you out if you’re in need, and they may wave you forward at a 4 way stop (even though that technically throws off traffic and confuses people even more), but if you pass them in the hall, don’t expect them to greet you with a friendly smile.  Instead, they’ll look down at the floor, act like you’re not there, etc.  Also, everyone made their body of friends back in high school and so now, as a newcomer, they’ve no room for you and so don’t expect to be accepted with open arms.  Plus, I think people are just naturally skeptical of newcomers, although I’m not sure why.  Someone once told me, “Cold weather = cold people.”  I don’t know if this is totally true but I’ve certainly experienced it time and time again.  Also, there are only a couple handfuls of lifestyles here and not a lot of room for anything else so if you don’t fit in, well, good luck.

As you probably guessed, I don’t fit in.  I’ve never really felt very comfortable here, to be honest.  I don’t fish, hunt, watch football, ride motorcycles, etc., so I’m already completely on the outs with one major crowd.  I’m also not a hipster, urban dweller, raging liberal, etc., and so I’m out with that crowd as well.

Please understand that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Minnesota.  I know that everything I’m writing sounds the opposite but, in all honesty, it’s perfectly fine.  It’s just not for me, plain and simple.  I moved back to the Midwest looking for a more fulfilled life with seasons; what I got was much less fulfillment, tons more judgment, much shallower conversations, terrible food with practically nothing vegetarian at all, and seasons that just favor winter and chores like mowing the lawn and snow blowing (another joy, let me tell ya).  I didn’t realize what I had by living in the west, pure and simple, and it was a bad trade, for me at least.

Moving is pure hell, trust me, and at my age it’s really hell at this point due to a bad back, bad knees, and now a torn meniscus in my right knee specifically.  Still, I see no other choice.  It’s time to undo a wrong, something that’s haunted me at night for the past 11 years.  Quite frankly, when I left AZ, I went the wrong way.  California here I come!  Maybe it won’t be a total dream.  Maybe it won’t even work out and I’ll end up moving again.  Who knows!  All I know right now is that I’m greatly looking forward to the change.  I need it and dare say I’ve earned it.  People say to me all the time about how shallow people in CA can be.  My eyebrows usually raise since everyone I’ve come in contact with so far has been incredibly nice, even at grocery stores, coffee shops, etc.  Maybe I just fit in…who knows.  I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

Do You Ragu'?

This may come as a mild shock to some of you but I’m a bit of a, um, food snob.  I’m not sure that’s completely fair of me to say, though, considering where I live, which continues to supply me with an onslaught of absolutely horrible and disgusting food.  It’s gotten so bad at this point that I absolutely refuse to eat anywhere around here again that I haven’t already tried and “approved”.  Yes, you read that right; we actually keep a list of “approved” places to eat, and let me tell you that the positive list doesn’t seem to grow while the negative ran out of room a few years ago.

I live in Woodbury, Minnesota, where I’ve been for the past 10+ years, which is a suburb about 10 miles out of the Twin Cities.  I’ve tried twice before to leave/move from here and I’ll be trying once again very soon.  Due to this, I’m pretty much done trying any new food places around here, both because I’m hoping not to be around here too much longer AND they seem to be consistently disappointing.

For example, a new Ramen restaurant opened in our town not too long ago and we were very excited to give it a try.  Yelp! reviews claimed that it was ‘excellent’…we’ve since learned not to trust anything we read on Yelp! when it comes to the MN palette.  In any event, we went, we ordered, and I was served ‘wet horse’.  Yes, you read that right…’wet horse’.  That was pretty much the only way to describe my vegetable ramen, a dish that shouldn’t and probably didn’t have any meat in it.  To further explain, have you ever been around a horse?  Okay, great, now imagine dousing it with a hose for a while.  If you’ve ever done something like wash a dog with a hose, you probably know that the dog hair takes on a certain weird, musty odor that’s even worse than what the dog smelled like initially.  Apply that same logic to the horse and voila!  You’ve got ‘wet horse’, and that’s exactly what my vegetable ramen smelled like.  Appealing, huh?  Needless to say, I couldn’t eat much of it and it bears noting that I’m the kind of person that’ll usually eat almost anything unless it’s completely inedible (which it was, in my opinion).  Maybe all ramen dishes smell like ‘wet horse’…who knows.  If so, I think I’ll be avoiding all of them because I strangely just haven’t acquired that taste as of yet.

This wasn’t an isolated incident, though, and this sort of thing has happened to us more times than I can count now.  We ate at a Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis that was rated “the best of…”.  I ordered a chili relleno and I kid you not…it was made who knows how many days earlier, then frozen, and then put in the microwave right before being served to me.  No joke.  How do I know?  Well, they didn’t microwave it long enough so parts of it were ice cold, just like when you microwave something about 2-3 minutes shy of the necessary time.  Plus, there was a puddle of water around the food where the freezer burn ran off, not to mention that the food just looked bizarre, like as if it was someone’s doggy bag from the previous week.  Again, completely disgusting and inedible.  Oh, and did I mention that the salsa in the salsa bar was rancid?  The onions had definitely gone off.  This was vomit city.

The latest, though, is something totally new that I can’t recall experiencing previously anywhere.  We decided to try an Italian place in Woodbury for pasta.  We usually drive close to 15 miles to Pizza Luce whenever we want pasta and just bring it home but we thought we’d change it up a bit and try something in our neighborhood.  I knew from the start this was a bad idea, I mean seriously, I did.  Well, it didn’t fail to disappoint my disappointment.  I ordered the cheese ravioli and really wanted marinara sauce on it.  Being a vegetarian, I have to sort of drill wait staff about their food sometimes and this one sort of paid off.  I asked, “Is the red sauce marinara or meat sauce?”  The young girl replied, “Marinara,” and I was just about to order it when she paused and said, “We cook our meatballs in the sauce but then we pull them out.”  I hope you’re following the logic there.  It’s still marinara...not meat sauce…because they pulled the meatballs out.  Brilliant!  Um, no, not really.  Therefore, I had to order their only other option which was alfredo.

The food arrived and I kid you not…it was jarred alfredo sauce.  No, I’m not making that up.  We went to a restaurant and paid upwards of $10 for someone in the “kitchen” to open a jar of Ragu, Bertoli, whatever, and they poured that on the ravioli.  How do I know?  Simple – you can just taste the preservatives in it, see the funky texture, and as someone who refuses to make food at home with jarred sauce, I sure as hell don’t want it in a restaurant!  The irony is that we didn’t want to cook that night so instead we paid someone else to also NOT cook.  Crazy.

This is my life, folks...what can I tell you.  I’m just not sure how much more of this I can take, quite frankly.  Geesh.

And so, the next time you order food out, you may want to inquire a bit about what you’re eating.  If not, you just might end up with a wet horse drenched in Ragu, and if that doesn’t make you sick just thinking about it, well, you should eat around our neighborhood because it might be right up your alley!