Last month, I requested some vacation time in September because Seattle was the realest possible scenario, and just in case, I wanted to give myself time to fly in and search for a job and/or apartment. It seems we’ve found the apartment house and I’m still working on a job (six callbacks and one interview in one month, which is vastly preferable to the last time I was unemployed in St. Louis, where it took me seven months to find a part time job at my old company) so I don’t have to fly there, but there’s still some shit to do, and some of that involves checking out parts of St. Louis for the last time.

Yesterday, Graham and I went to the Zoo. We wanted to see the new sea lion exhibit, which is terrific and I recommend it to everyone. Then we finally sold my old wedding and engagement rings (for not a lot, but it’s a few tanks of gas for free and that’s more valuable than was my entire marriage), picked up some cupcakes from Sweet Divine (salted caramel ohmygooooood), and hit up Food Truck Friday at Tower Grove Park (Seoul Taco, y u no have shorter lines?).

At some point while we walked around the Zoo, Graham mentioned something he’d seen on that show where rednecks capture wild pigs in Texas. I don’t interrupt him often, but this time, I said “WAIT. How is it okay for you to watch some show about hillbillies rolling around after pigs, but I can’t watch an episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo without you pretending to pass out from disgust?”

Okay, fine. I watched an episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I watched two episodes of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, actually, and while it’s nothing I’d recommend, it was an exceedingly effective way of narcoticizing my brain and shutting off that stress reflex that causes me to grind my teeth for hours, thus causing head and neck pain for something like three days at a time. Like I told Graham and everyone at work who made fun of me, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo shuts off my brain, and sometimes, I need that.

I’m not sure what it would be like to watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo as someone who actually gives a fuck about learning something from the experience. I don’t know if that’s possible. I guess that if you were from a certain part of the world where you’d had zero exposure to people like the Boo Boos (read: not Amur-kuh, unless you are Mitt Romney), you could approach the show as a sociology lesson. I’m not sure what you’d learn from it other than “some people are gross,” but I believe that everyone should want to learn as much and be as intelligent as possible, regardless of their upbringing (read: Mitt Romney vs. anyone who lives next to the train tracks on the outskirts of Macon, GA).

I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday, because apparently there was something on Facebook about how I called someone’s kid an asshole (nope), and how I think I’m so much smarter and better than everyone else even though I grew up in the same shit neighborhood with the same shit people, and clearly this would never have happened if I’d had kids, which is apparently the only thing worth doing with your life if you stay in the Midwest.

Which is one of the reasons why I’m not staying in the Midwest, as well as the reason why I’m not really bummed about one person’s mental breakdown over something that didn’t happen, nor am I bummed about being “deleted” from their life (as if I was really a part of it to begin with) or the lives of people like them (ahem, the commenters on this rant, most of whom have never used an apostrophe). I’m a little annoyed that dishonest passive-aggressiveness on Facebook is now referred to as a high road, but mostly because I find it absurd, but I’m not bummed.

I also find it absurd that background is supposed to dictate intelligence, or, as my friend Jen said, that growing up with a lot of poor, dumb people means you’re expected to toe that party line for the rest of your life, because not aligning yourself with that kind of mentality means you’ve betrayed the side, and thinking you could be smarter than that is somehow putting on airs. If this were the case, you wouldn’t be reading this, because I’d be an alcoholic mother of four living on a couch with a guy who cheats on me, 30-years-old and crying to others about my life but still threatening beatdowns over the Internet because science is hard.

Years ago, I wondered what it would be like to live in a place where I wasn’t expected to be a married baby factory by the age of 25, or where I could use big words without people I’ve known since childhood making a face, or even just surround myself with people who aren’t still emotionally violent lunatics with antiquated views of friendship and normalcy. Always agree. Stay simple. Stay fertile. Don’t piss us off.

Eventually, I got tired of wondering what it would be like to live in a place like that and decided to live in a place like that. While there are some amazing people here and I am sad to leave them (I thought about naming them here but the list would be too long and would probably turn into an ordered count of who could fit into some smuggling luggage and who wouldn’t, which is weird but you should know that Angelica brought it up first), overall, I’ve been needing to get the hell out of Dodge for some time now, and I could not be happier that I’m finally doing it.

(Unrelated: people keep finding this blog by Googling “tattoos of Nicolas Cage.” In case this entry turns up another hit, WHAT IN THE BALLS IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.)