QotD: I Left My Heart in...

What do you love about where you live?
Submitted by Emu with a Clue.

Well, for one thing, when we hang up our clothes to dry the old-fashioned way in the backyard, no one cares.  There is very little traffic here, and anyway I walk to do all my errands since it's only half a mile or so to the places I need to go.  We have this big backyard, and, again, what we do with it (in our case, turning it into a huge vegetable garden and getting some chickens later this year) is a matter of no one else's concern.  My son runs wild and free in our backyard and, while he's not allowed to run into the road or anything, we do not have to restrain him most of the time.  He has an amount of freedom here that I think would be impossible in most places, certainly in urban areas.  In fact, in preparation for our trip to Texas, we realized we need a stroller or some other means of containing him--in airports, at Sea World, along the Riverwalk in San Antonio, he's going to need to be kept under control, and he's too heavy to carry.  Our lab ate his last stroller, but we never use it here anyway, so we hadn't replaced it.  Considering he is also almost never in a car seat, he really doesn't understand the concept of being physically restrained by belts and so forth, and I'm glad.

Idaho potatoes are really quite good.

We have a great view of the Tetons from our front porch.  There is a fantastic and dirt cheap Mexican restaurant in town.  There is soon to be a community store downtown, an old-fashioned mercantile.  My parents live here, so my son gets to see them all the time, which is great.  There is good fishing--I don't fish, but my husband does, and I love to eat trout.  Real estate is freakin cheap.  Just all around, from a libertarian point of view, it's great here--people talk about you all the time, yeah, but nobody really cares that much what you do.  Also, our next-door neighbor Vic is a classic small-town old man type, knows everything, always helpful. 

Hate the fucking weather here, though.  This town has the worst weather of any place I've ever lived.  It has the wind of Great Falls, dry heat in summer, dry piercing cold in winter, and very little summer or spring.  The only way it could be worse is if one season also had high humidity.  Instead it's just bone dry all the time, and we're going to run out of water.  Then we'll have to kiss those delicious Idaho potatoes goodby!