Hillsboro sucks
The past month has been a dark one, a terrible start to the new year. Anton continues to heal, he is becoming quite fast on his bionic leg, faster than me anyway. My allergies have been killing me. I am terribly allergic to cats, and winter is bad, with the closed windows and dry air, but of course I have been making things worse by hugging and playing with my cats more often than I usually do. My skin breaks out in a rash whenever I come in contact with them. My allergist predicts that I will soon come down with athsma. Yay.
I am exhausted, working 50 hours a week, every week, can wear you down, even when the work is not physically strenous in any way. Perhaps that is why I do not feel optimistic. Perhaps it is the short days and cold weather that are wearing at my soul.
I like my job. It’s a great job. Lots of great people working there. Hillsboro sucks, though. While my street address says Portland, and a couple of blocks away there is a sign saying “Welcome to Beaverton”, this area that I live in is actually Hillsboro, in all of the worst meanings of that word. While I do like being able to bike to work every morning, and I hate the idea of driving all the way from downtown Portland every day, Hillsboro sucks. Hillsboro has become a curse word for those of us who have moved here.
Hillsboro is exactly like 90% percent of America. It’s urban sprawl, filled with chain stores and too much traffic. Everyone in this town is fat. I mean, FAT, like full of lard, like morbidly obese, like the kind of people who watch Jerry Springer and eat at McDonalds and shop at WalMart.
I got spoiled living in Boulder. Everyone there was beautiful and fit. Nobody was overweight, everyone was healthy. You could walk everywhere and anywhere, and everybody did.
We have sidewalks here in Hillsboro, and bicycle paths too, but nobody uses either, except the motorists, who can be found driving on both.
One of these days, I hope to be able to afford to live in Portland proper, which is actually pretty nice in spots. If I get really rich, I mean, stinking filthy rich, perhaps I will move back to Boulder, whose beauty haunts me still.
