Living in the wild, wild west

I moved to Leominster in October 2000 from Waltham to be with M. Up to that time, I thought Leominster was the ends of the earth, when in all actuality, it's only 40 miles from Boston, which means an hour or so drive. As I've mentioned in other posts, I've grown to love my adopted home. There's stuff, but drive a bit and you're in the woods. My neighborhood is dead quiet at night -- no cars waking me out of a sound sleep like when I lived in the city. We have land, dammit.

But members of my family still think it's a vast wasteland in Lemin-stah. Whenever we go to a family event in the Boston area (got one tomorrow), we get, "So how long a drive was it for you?" with the concerned face. Oy. I've even had people say things like, "Oh, Christine lives in western Massachusetts." It really boils my potato. I mean, look at a map. We are barely central Mass.

M and I actually looked at houses further east back when we were looking. We targeted the Westford/Dracut/Chelmsford/Lowell area, because I was working in Nashua at the time. But when we looked at a few houses, we realized that the top of our price range was MAYBE something we wanted to live in. Then we met our house, and I fell deeply in love. Now, after almost five years there, I can honestly say Leominster is my home. Even though it's faaaaa away.