An a. borealis stream-of-consciousness list (straight from my brain to yours)

• I don't own a microwave.
• I don't own a dishwasher.
• I do own a television.
• I read a lot more before Starbeans was born.
• I'm getting sick of the pseudo-name, 'Starbeans'. That was a nickname for him for a few weeks when he was 6 months old. I really want to just call him by his real name, which means, supplanter, and is the Spanish version of James, but I don't know if I ever will because it seems like it would be so revealing. I certainly can't change his pseudo-name at this point. That would be too hard.
• I love trees and fungi.
• I have been known to cry over the sheer beauty of violins and cellos playing.
• Once, Squeeze bought a huge set of ear phones to go with his discman. I ripped on him and ripped on him over their size and seeming extravagance until, one night, he had me listen: playing was Sacred Treasures: Choral Masterworks from Russia. It made me cry like a newborn babe.
• I always wanted to live either in the city, or in the country. Never in the suburbs.
• I lived in the suburbs from birth to age 14, then lived in a semi-rural town until I graduated from high school.
• I spent college in the suburbs again.
• I have lived in the city as an adult, thus far.
• The town my family moved to when I was 14 was an old logging-turned-farming community - my mother's family has been there for 4 generations.
• That town is now one huge development.
• It makes me sad, but I know that the wheels of change have been in motion for not just 10, 15, or 20 years, but over 100 years. It struck me when I was in the new grocery store in town last fall: I saw a picture of 3 women, sitting abreast an enormous stump -- there was room for at least two more people on each side of them. The picture was taken in the very district my family lived in for 10 years and not a tree of that size exists, anywhere. They were all decimated. You see? Change began long ago.
• Where I live in Minneapolis was farmland 100 or so years ago.
• No one can stop "progress".
• One of our main requirements for going rural was to move to a community that would NOT become a suburb in a matter of 10-20 years. As a town of 700, not on any major freeway, and over an hour from any smallish-city, I hope our chosen place will not fall prey.
• More than likely, we will be living rurally by this July.
• Sometimes I get scared about being stranded: my MIL & FIL and Squeeze's grandma live in the town 1/2 hour north, but we don't know anyone else. I am used to being very social, seeing people as I please and going to any store as I please (not to mention any library I please). I know this is going to change and it frightens me a little.
• But it isn't going to stop me.

THE END.