Small town Michigan, six months in

Six months ago today we moved from Detroit to Midland (aka small town Michigan.) Living in the town that Dow built has been interesting, to say the least.

The pros
* We love where we live. We couldn't have built a better place ourselves. We love the apartment, the complex, the pool, the huge park across the street... everything.

* The library hasn't been as bad as I thought it would. It still ticks me off to have to pay 25 cents for a hold, but so far I have only had to do that a handful of times.

* Not having to put $10-15 a day into your gas tank can really improve your finances.

* The kids are involved with 4-H and love it. Ethan still gets excited on Tuesdays, because it is archery day. He volunteered to be the historian for his club. Christian goes and actually speaks to people there. (No! Really!) Alex has made a handful of friends and can't wait to go hang out. And I got to meet a real live family that eats squirrel. Ok... more than one. They were swapping recipes at one meeting.

* Marty loves his job. He loves the company, his co-managers and most (lol) of his staff.

The Cons
* Our friends still live in Detroit.

* Midland is a one horse town. I now live in a town full of retired chemists. One of the school mascots is the Chemics. Not a bad thing... just a thing.

* I can pick up pamphlets at my local library with names like "Your family and Dioxin poisoning: Get the facts." and "the Tittabawassee River: is it safe yet?"

* I now know more people who currently have Cancer, or have had it in the past than I ever did before. When I mentioned this at the Christmas party (not to the whole party... I do have a little common sense) and wondered why, they all looked at me like "Duh!" and said "Um... Dow."

* When the nature center had a "Clean up the Tittabawassee" event and I mentioned that I wanted to go, seven (yes, seven) separate people told me to stay out of the river at all costs.

* It is a six hour drive to visit family. Six. Long. Hours.

* It snows more up here. A lot more.

Neither pro nor con
* People here have no problem stopping you in the middle of Wal-Mart and trying to get you to come to their church. And then stopping in to where your husband works to find out why you haven't. (True story.)

* People have no problem saying to you "God bless you!" as you checkout at the grocery store... but then don't take offense when I reply "I doubt it!"

Things that will make it better
* The college kids upstairs are moving sometime this month. The great thing about college students is that there is a pretty good chance they won't make it past the first semester.



Updated to add: Ha! I caught my typo that turned into a gramatical error. lol