What more could you want?

The townie military wives drive me nuts. They act like this is the greatest place on earth (which is actually normal considering it's their hometown) and then act like the 99% of us who see it for the shithole it is are crazy. They're always saying, "What more could you want? El Paso has everything!"

OK, so here's the thing, we TOLERATE this place. It is NOT what you make of it. It is what it is. We tried hard to love it, but honestly, the first day we woke up here, I looked out the window, and said to Thak, "What did we do? We turned down New York, Louisiana, and Korea for this, and it's the ugliest place I have ever seen." He said, "I know. It's not what we expected. We have to give it a try, though." and so we have. It has not been an easy place to live. We are staying for a while because it makes more sense to do that than to move somewhere we'd actually like to live right this minute. We've finally found Erin an academic arrangement that works for her, and she's finally getting the help she needs. Thak has a job here, and a slot that he can keep until he retires, in a local Reserve unit. It makes sense for us to stay here right now, but wow, it took so much adjustment to get to this point. It's not one of those places where you can just move there and live your life. It requires considerable adjustment for the majority of people.

They always want to know, what more could we want than what El Paso offers, because according to them, El Paso has everything. Well, here's what more we could want:

-Grass
-Trees
-Glass recycling
-Clean air
-Some body of water
-A REAL farmers' market (what you people call farmers' markets are called shitty fruit stands anywhere else)
-A seafood restaurant that doesn't completely suck (Yes, townies. That place you rave about? I sent my food back and refused to pay money for it. That's how nasty it was.)
-Baby and kid stores that sell actual good stuff
-Real kid activities (kindermusik, mommy and me classes, etc)
-People who can drive
-Pools that are clean
-A halfway decent school system
-Trader Joe's
-Whole Foods
-Parks without graffiti
-An aquarium
-Real museums (yes, you call certain things here museums. They're pathetic.)
-Festivals that aren't complete crap

I'm sure there's more, but that's just what comes to mind. I'm just tired of having this city rammed down my throat. We tolerate living here. Most days, we manage to find it acceptable. It makes it so much harder when the townies can't just be honest about the fact that this place just kind of sucks and we're all just doing our best with it. If we can laugh about it, then it's kind of ok most of the time, but when they demand that we love it, that's when it gets very hard.