22nd Jun 2006
Question #4 from Katie
4) What made you choose where you live right now and if you could live anywhere else in the world, where would you be?
We live in rural Los Angeles County as do a lot of other people. Many people think Los Angeles is just the Westside, but that’s just gross. We are on the edge of the Mojave, at around 3000 feet above sea level, the high desert. We have the benefits of less smog and less traffic as well as access to the cultural resources of LA.
We bought a house here because it was the best house we could afford. It’s that simple. I remember when we brought a contractor to look at the house, he said it had a lot of “delayed maintenance issues” and then I looked up and a red-tailed hawk was soaring over head. Sold.
Recently, we’ve been restless. I’m not sure if it’s the seven year itch you hear so much about or if we’ve simply outgrown our neighborhood. Some of the habits that seemed peculiar, if not quaint and rural (ATVs everywhere in the backcountry behind our house, guns everywhere, attitudes towards anything liberal or minority that make me cringe) are bringing us down.
Together, Jim and I have lived in Santa Fe as well as Pojoaque in New Mexico, Boston, Massachusetts, as well as Santa Barbara while we were buying our house here. These are all nice places, so I fear that whatever makes us restless needs to be resolved within and not without.
