Welcome to the Middle of Nowhere, USA

I may have said when we were living in Wisconsin that we were living in the middle of nowhere. At the time, compared to my hometown of Houston, I was right. There were several sizable towns nearby, but my inlaws' house was in the middle of farm fields on a big slab of land. In Houston, going around the block was the shortest walk I would take with my dog, while in Wisconsin it meant my girlfriend taking the dogs out for hardcore exercise (a distance of over 3 miles, which would take nearly two hours for them to walk). It took quite a bit of driving to get to any form of civilization and there were days when you might see ten cars on the way. In Houston there's traffic getting out of the driveway, and I could walk to three separate shopping centers if I had the energy.

That was all before we moved to Iowa. No offense meant to the state or its people, but it seriously must be one of the least populated states. This place defines "the middle of nowhere". Some things about this are awesome. For example, there are way more small businesses here, run by families rather than huge faceless corporations (with Walmart as the main exception). The local pharmacy isn't a chain store, the grocery store is employee owned, and there are lots of cool little thrift, antique and gift shops around, including a little coop. There's also a cool little main street, like many small Midwestern towns have, with the old architecture and so forth. The downside is that there's a lot you can't get within two hours of here (the nearest city is about that far away). Our big dog is allergic to most grains, and there is literally no grain-free dog food being sold within a hundred miles; we have to order it online. Now that it's winter, there are fewer than ten vegetables at the grocery store, and most of them are usually sad-looking. We're lucky if we can find three that are fresh every time we go and we're starting to get tired of the same ones. Whole Foods? What's Whole Foods?? This also means no sushi for me; I doubt the people here have even tried sushi, and they're all blindingly white anyway, so not exactly about to start a sushi restaurant.

That's another thing; I thought Wisconsin had a lack of racial diversity. My girl had her kids (the high schoolers she's teaching English for) make video projects about themselves at the beginning of the year, and I watched them with her to help her grade them. Seriously, these kids all look the same. They all have exactly the same skin tone and their hair comes in two colors. o.O I was getting them all confused within five minutes. But having grown up in a city where whites are the minority number-wise, it doesn't surprise me that it's difficult to understand such a white town. There's exactly one Asian girl, and she's half. My girlfriend is also finding this a little bit trying at times. She's been teaching To Kill A Mockingbird, and the kids are mostly ignorant about racism and are sometimes actually racist. Most of them have never even met a black person. Luckily we're white ourselves so it isn't something that gets directly in our way.

Though I'm sure we're causing enough chatter among the townsfolk anyway, being lesbians. Like all small towns, everyone knows everyone else, and there seems to be a pretty conservative undercurrent. My girlfriend hears about it more working at the school. She hasn't come out to her kids (though her co-workers do know about us) so they don't hide their homophobic comments around her. Two of the other teachers are also a lesbian couple, though they're older than us, and the kids make all sorts of comments about them. Naturally, she tries to educate them about tolerance, but it's pretty clear that their parents are just as close-minded and are passing it all on to their kids. Fortunately, the principal and several of the other teachers are openly supportive of us and really nice about it, and our sexuality hasn't compromised her job in any way (her boss has said that he hopes she'll stay on next year, and be with them for a long time).

For the most part, we've met a lot of really nice people here. One thing I like about it is that there's a thriving art community. The landscape itself is beautiful no matter the time of year, so it's not surprising that so many painters and ceramicists live in the area. We've gone on several weekend outings to studios and seen some really terrific work, including teapots, stained glass and several varieties of landscape paintings. I've made a couple of friends, and even gotten a drawing lesson from a local painter. It's awesome talking to people who have the same passion as you do for something and can look at your work with fresh eyes.

Right now it's a classic winter landscape outside with the snow building itself up. I'm having a lot less trouble adjusting to the cold weather this year because my body was allowed to adjust gradually throughout the fall. This place is beautiful, and we enjoy having our own place, and getting some income that isn't from parents, though we are still relying on them, too. We have a neat little house that is (more or less) functioning now (that's another story), we have our cats with us and our dogs, we have each other.