Small Town Struggles

Hi, friends!

It's no secret that I'm not the biggest fan of where we currently live. Even if we ignore the fact that it's inhumanly hot for a huge chunk of the year, this is far from my ideal home because of how small and isolated it is. I've had multiple incidents recently that made me wish I'd been more appreciative of where I grew up. Don't get me wrong, I loved growing up near Seattle, but there are a lot of things I never thought to be thankful for until I moved here.

Some of these issues might be because of the small population of this town, some might be caused by this town daring to exist in the actual middle of nowhere, and some might be made worse by having both of those conditions at once. Whatever the causes, here are some odd problems I've encountered in our two and a half years of living on what is essentially the closest thing to the surface of Mercury we can experience while on the earth.

• Sometimes, it's really hard to find milk. There have been four or five times when we've gone to Walmart to get groceries and found a distinct lack of milk in the refrigerated dairy area. When that happens, we'll try Stater Brothers and usually run into that same problem. (We ended up buying four half-gallons of milk recently since the regular gallons were all gone.) I'd only ever seen this happen before during natural disasters. Here, it's just a thing that happens sometimes.
• On a related note, our local Walmart is really unreliable when it comes to having certain things in stock. I love the Great Value mini pizzas, but they never seem to have them when I want to buy more. Walmart has also let us down when it comes to batteries; after two months of checking to see if certain sizes of disc-shaped batteries are finally available in the store, we've given up and decided to order them online.
• When stores have some kind of sale that's only available in the store itself, we're almost always just out of luck unless we feel like driving 90 miles. Target had a great deal on Pokemon: Let's Go, Eevee! recently but there was no way for us to get it without driving for at least an hour and a half.
• This one probably isn't an annoyance to most people, but it seems to take quite a while for new makeup releases to show up here. Oh, and the only places to buy makeup in town are Walmart, Rite Aid/Walgreens, Marshalls (if you can find things that aren't messed up), or pyramid scheme salespeople. I've gotten pretty familiar with Ulta's website since moving here. (Also, it's unwise to order lipstick online between April and September because there is a very good chance it will melt during its journey.)
• The library here is small and sad. It also charges money for borrowing its DVDs, which I find bizarre.
• If you need new clothes, you can either take a small road trip to get to the nearest mall or try your luck at Walmart. I guess Marshalls probably has clothes, too, but good luck with that.
• There's one theater in our town. It's pretty small, has a website that looks at least a decade old, and doesn't have enough screens to let each movie have a long run. It also doesn't use Fandango, which is mostly an issue for us because of the $300 Fandango gift card we need to use by next October.
• For those of us who aren't outdoorsy (and/or don't want to die of heatstroke), there are about four things to do in town: see a movie, go bowling, go to Walmart, or go eat somewhere. It's a common joke that the best entertainment around here is found by leaving town and going somewhere else.
• There's no UberEats, Postmates, or anything of that sort. I think there are two or three Uber drivers in town occasionally and there are a couple of taxis around. There are supposedly some buses that drive around town sometimes, but I don't think I've ever seen them.
• We run into people we know pretty frequently while grocery shopping. I'm also able to recognize a decent number of the employees at Walmart and Stater Brothers. (There's an older woman who checks receipts at Walmart that I always love seeing. She's super cute.) This isn't necessarily a problem, per se, but it feels really weird. And if I bump into friends even though the only people I know in this town are people from church and our former landlord, how much more frequently do social people have that happen? People who want to make a quick grocery run with unwashed hair and pajama pants probably need to ninja their way around the store if they want to avoid being seen by acquaintances.

Have you ever had a friend who was noticeably shorter or paler than average and would help other people feel better by standing next to someone who felt small or sticking their pasty arm next to someone who was wishing they were more tan? (Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything...) Think of this post as that sickly white arm trying to help you appreciate how great it is to live wherever you may be, even if that place is Utah.
If any of my local friends are reading this, at least the pool might get reopened if those fundraisers are successful, right? And we aren't covered in piles of snow, so that's good.

Someday, I'll probably look back on my time in this town and laugh. ("Remember that time our water heater wasn't turned on and we didn't even notice until November?") Until then, I hope to provide you with reasons to laugh at me and my fish-out-of-water-ness.

Love,
Lizzie