California's Got Nuthin' on My Cornfield. Well, Maybe a Little

We have some good friends who moved away to California and we've been beseeching them to come back ever since.

In other news, look who has her Thesaurus handy.

"Gray skies!" we exclaim.... "Sub-zero temperatures!"... "Cornfields, as far as the eye can see!" we advertise. They don't respond except to send text photos of their lunchtime sushi plates and flowering backyards and tan faces. Which is sooo, like, whatEVER.

They might have lemon trees in their backyard, avocados year-round, and easy access to wine country and sandy beaches and rocky mountains but we've got one thing they haven't got.

And we use it as leverage every chance we get.

I attended a local staging of The Vagina Monologues recently. Two grrrls from my women's circle were in it, as well as a few other women I know. It was a raucous (and, at times, sobering) good time and we even dragged a few of our menfolk along. (I'm not sure they knew what they were getting into.)

The audience was full of people I know. I didn't expect that. It shouldn't surprise me, though... naturally, I run around with women who'd attend The Vagina Monologues! And being a smallish town, we're a somewhat small contingency. After the show I nabbed some old friends I hadn't seen in a while - mutual friends of those California turncoats - and said, "Let's take 'Nah Nah!' pictures to send to them!"

That's a hobby of mine: taking pictures to send to faraway friends with a big "Nah Nah" attached.

Mature, yes.

So you can have your bright, blue skies 300 days of the year and your stately sequoia trees and your adorable quaint weekend get-away beach houses..... because we've got her:

Take that, California dreamers! We also have her:
That's right. You know it. And if that ain't enough to get you booking the next red-eye into O'Hare, we also have her Momma:

And those folks... well, they make the gray skies, mind-numbingly cold winters, and panoramic cornfields more than tolerable.