I'm Not Sorry - The Response I Should Have Given

We were at church a couple of weeks ago having an exchange about what to do about Gigi....it was the week she freaked out and Dr. J was holding the sobbing mess that was our daughter.  While we were conversing about who would keep her a newer guy in our ward sort of barged into our conversation.  He said to us, "I heard you are moving."  "Yup," Dr. J said, "I got a job in ....." "Oh," the guy says, "I'm sorry.  I wouldn't want to go there.  All the gangs and stuff."  So guess what guys it turns out that about 15 years ago the small town I'm moving to had a gang problem, sort of like 15 years a lot of the small towns in the US had major meth problems.  Shoot I'm not even sure if that is or isn't true anymore.  Has anyone read anything recently about meth in small town American?  I do know that the small town I'm moving to actually cleaned up quite a bit since then, but it was such a weird conversation.  Dr. J was like, "Well I'm excited about it."  I just kind of stared at the guy like are you crazy, but what was I going to say.  I hate situations like this.  So often when I'm talking to people and they say stuff that I consider shockingly rude I just freeze up.  I have nothing.  Then the second I walk away 53 things enter my mind of what I should have said.  Granted 51 of them are just beyond rude or swear words so those ones it's probably a good thing I don't share but here is what I wish I'd said to him.

I'm not sorry.  You do realize we are going to be making a boat load of money.  I mean just so much that when I think about it makes my head spin.  For the last 13 years of our lives we have struggled.  There has never been a point where we didn't feel guilty about doing any little extra or even doing just the basics.  For the first time in our lives money will not be a worry.  Paying off our student debt, not a worry.  Putting my kids in horse back riding lessons, not a worry.  Out of the country trips, not a worry.  Saving a ton of money for college, not a worry.  I'm not sorry, you do realize that my husband is only going to be working 50% of the time.  After Q4 and Q5 work months, after only having four days off in 30, after years of having work after he came home, after years of working 24+4 shifts my husband will now work seven days on, seven days off.  That means every seven days he will have a complete week of vacation.  We will be using that to travel, to do home improvements, to go to the gym, to just laze around and oh yeah if he gets board he can moonlight and just add even more money to our pot.  I'm not sorry we are moving to a small town where we can live less than 3 miles from work and have enough property to have horses.  I'm not sorry that after 12 years of living 1500 miles from my family I will now live 350 miles from them.  I can literally drive home in half a day and if I want to fly, well I'll just have a 40 minute flight as opposed to the miserable 3 hour one I have from here, and just so you know there is actually only one nonstop flight a day from here so usually I'm looking at something closer to 6 hours.  I'm not sorry, I'm going to be living in the west again, mountains, skiing, boating, camping, hiking, some of the most beautiful national parks you've ever seen.  I'm not sorry this town is 50% Mexican.  Have you looked at me lately, I'm freaking half Mexican.  I have been counting brownies since I was a girl.  I don't understand why people think looking around and seeing all white people would be a good thing for me.  That literally makes no sense to me.  I've been reading the kids the Book of Mormon this year and there have been parts where I have just choked through the words.  I mean just choked on them.  I'm sorry but I don't want to tell my children that God causes white and delighsome people to become dark and loathsome if they sin.  I don't want to feel shamed by my skin.  I love it. I never burn.  I don't disappear when I don't have makeup on.  I'm pretty sure my sun damage and sun wrinkles are going to be less than most of my friends.  Honestly it seems to me rather then a curse I got a pretty nifty natural skin care system.  I want my kids to love me for who I am and my ones that are darker to be ok with that just like my ones who are lighter should be okay with themselves.  That doesn't happen sitting in a room of just all the same people who never question if delightsome and white should be used as similes.  That happens when you are surrounded by lots of different options, when you see that beauty comes in all different shapes and sizes, colors and personalities.  When I was a girl growing up I lived in a pretty typical LDS ward, it was me and two other brown families and everyone else was white.  My best friend growing up though had incredibly dark hair, her family was black Irish....which I think they just referred to themselves this way because rather than having a bunch of red heads and blonds, they had a lot of dark haired people, although her brother did have red hair.  I remember her mom saying to us one Sunday after church.  "I love looking out and seeing you girls and your dark hair.  You stand out and your are beautiful."  It was I kid you not one of the few times that anyone at church ever appreciated me for my dark looks and it is a memory I still cherish.  So you know I'm not sorry to add a little diversity to my kids lives.  I'm not sorry that I'm moving to the state with the cheapest food in the country.  I'm not sorry that the housing market there is still pretty amazing and I can get a lot of house and land for a reasonable amount of money.  I'm not sorry that I'm going to live so close to Oregon, that I can go and see my sister on the coast in less than a day.  I'm not sorry about moving to a state that is sunny!  I hate these gloomy winter days, I hate freezing rain, I hate those little tiny hail balls that fall in almost every snow storm we have.  I hate that it doesn't get warm enough to swim here until July and then school starts just 28 days after that and the pool closes during school hours again.  I'm not sorry, this job is perfect!  We spent months looking at jobs trying to find the one that we thought would be the best fit.  Dr. J applied to a few he thought would work and they were interested but when we saw this one come up we knew this was the job he wanted.  It allows him to do everything he loves to do and when you are someone who likes keeping your options open as medicine becomes more and more specialized that is much harder to find in the inpatient setting.  He applied immediately and they got back with us.  When we flew out there we were anxious about convincing us to want us.  Turns out they already did.  They were just trying to convince him to want them.  How can I feel bad about getting exactly, I mean exactly what we wanted.  I'm not sorry about moving to a state that still has some pretty flexible homeschooling laws, because guess what, we home school, but if we choose to send our kids to school the public school is supposedly pretty good and the private schools there which I've heard amazing things about are pretty cheap...plus remember that boat load of money thing, for once I could afford to send my kids to private school if I wanted to.  So sir don't apologize to me.  I mean honestly the only thing I really feel sad about is leaving my friends (Hey MOPS LADIES you have been the BEST and I will MISS YOU!) and moving to pretty much the most republican state in the country. It's going to be rough being a democrat there when the state goes for whoever the republican candidate is in 2016 and I'm voting for Hillary, because you know I'm going to be voting for Hillary but besides that dude I'm pretty darn happy so save your false sympathy for someone who cares.  Just in case you didn't notice, that's not me.