Goddammit! When Did This Happen!

Some how in the last thirteen years of being away from the homeland, I became a Valley Person.

I don't think you quite grasp the consquenses of this. See, around here where you're from is your identity (hence the reason I couldn't move right over the border without having to live with California plates on my car. It's bad enough the missus put a damn "Tree Cheers for the Aboretum!" bumper sticker on it. It's so Valley it ain't even funny. Well, maybe it is, when you think about some log truck driver reading my bumper and riding my ass. I swear, if some asshole decides he's gonna' pick a fight with me over that goddamm bumper sticker, I'm gonna' shove a dictionary up his ass and tell him to look the fucking word up) and there are certain types of people who are appreciated than others. Living right on the border means you can't necessarily judge a car by its license plate. And the same with some bumper stickers. But outside of Californians, the most loathed people are Valley people.

Yes, the beloved green land of rolling hills and gray skies that I used to affectionately write about loving and missing once I moved back here. And I do love the land over there. But a large majority of the people I could do without. Which makes it all that more painful to realize I somehow became one of them.

It's not in the most obvious ways. I don't have a "Nader" sticker on my car (which most people with Arborteum stickers do) and I don't wear Patagonia fleeces. But little shit, like being amazed that stores close at seven in the small towns or at nine in the large ones, or not carrying cash because I have a debit card, or waiting to the last possible moment to put studs on my car, shit like that is stuff I've grown used to not dealing with and is making me more like my Valley bretheren.

Please make no mistake - there's no shortage of rednecks or hicks or hillbillies in the Valley. As a matter of fact, I've never seen such an assortment. But they still have this sensibility that has them adapted to the rainy season and warmer weather and open 'til midnightedness that you only have on that side of the hill. Over here, not so much.

I have to buy snowboots. Hell, I don't know the last time I had real for real snowboots. I hated the snow (and after the last two days I'm remembering why) and there was no way I was going skiing or anywhere in the mountains that had to do with snow. I have to buy a new ice scraper. I only used my old one in September when it was too cold and clear to snow but just right for frost. And I have to run to the bank (yeah, it's not open after five or on the weekends at all) and get some more cash.

*sigh* Well, I suppose there are worse things in life than becoming a Valley person. It's just sad to think all these years the one thing I felt made me different than all those assholes up there was where I came from. Now I suppse that's what's making me different than all these assholes down here.