My Life in Wisconsin

I have lived in Wisconsin all 28 years of my life.  I grew up in the small town of Iola (technically a village).  Iola is a tiny, boring town for the most part.  Aside from one weekend in the summer when the Iola Old Car Show, which used to be the Midwest’s Biggest old Car Show and Swap Meet, now it is deemed the Greatest instead of the Biggest apparently.  So, for about three days each summer, Iola is a booming town.  The rest of the time, not much goes on.

I never cared much for Iola while I was growing up.  Not to say it was a terrible place or that I had a terrible childhood.  It has a great school district that prepared me well for college.  However, I wish they had focused a little more on the arts and not so much on the sports.  Basically, if you did not play sports at Iola-Scandinavia, you were not going to be popular, it seemed.  Well, I was not and still am not interested in sports.  At least not team sports.  I have always liked tennis and badminton.  But, I only ever got to enjoy those for about a week each year.  I was never any good at most sports and I suffered through them enough in gym class, I didn’t want to have to suffer through more after school.  Honestly gym class was a personal hell for me on most days. Still, to this day, I cringe when I am invited to take part in a simple volleyball game at a family reunion.

The whole town is sports-oriented.  Perhaps because there isn’t a whole lot else to do besides go to sporting events.  Though I would prefer to watch sports than actually take part in them, still not my favorite thing to do.  The only place for teens to hang out nearby was at the bowling alley, Silver Lake Lanes in Scandinavia.  Needless to say, I was excited (and a bit scared of course) to move away for college.

I moved 3 hours away to Whitewater to attend UW-Whitewater.  Though this is a bigger town than Iola, there isn’t a whole lot more to do there than there was in Iola.  There were stoplights, which Iola had zero of.  There was also more than Subway and a couple of town diners to choose from for restaurants.  This was a good step for me to take.  I don’t know if I would have handled going from little Iola to a metropolis like Milwaukee.

I lived dorms and apartments (with my college boyfriend) in Whitewater for 4.5 years until I graduated and moved back home.  I unfortunately didn’t have a job lined up right away.  So shocking for an English Major/Library Media Minor! Back to Iola I went. Depressing. It would have been worse if one of my best friends wasn’t still living in Iola while finishing college 1/2 hour away.  I also took quite a few trips back down to Whitewater to visit my college friends who were still in that area (which is actually most of them).

About 8 months after college graduation, I was signed up to take online classes from UW-Milwaukee towards a Masters in Library Science.  I had possible plans of moving to Milwaukee in the near future so I could take onsite classes.  But, then I met my future husband on Facebook of all places.  We sort of already knew each other, as we had both gone to UW-Whitewater, lived in the same apartment complex and had been virtual Myspace/Facebook friends for years.  We hadn’t officially met in person though.  Turns out he lived just over and hour away from Iola, in De Pere.  De Pere is basically Green Bay.  We would meet in Appleton, which is about halfway between our homes.

This went on for about a month, then I got a Limited Term job in Janesville, so I moved in with my aunt who lives there for 9 months.  I would travel up to Green Bay most weekends to see my boyfriend (future husband), so we kept the relationship going just fine while I was “away”.  Once my job was over, I moved in with the boyfriend in Green Bay.  A couple years later, we moved to De Pere and that is where we currently reside. Yes, I somehow ended up in Packer-Land Wisconsin, home of the Cheeseheads.  In Green Bay, we lived about a mile from Lambeau Field.  Most people might be excited by this, but its actually more of an irritation for me.  Especially the extra .5% tax I have to pay for the dang football field.  Bah HUMBUG! :)

We are currently pondering if we want to stay in Wisconsin forever, or if we might want to move to another state and see what life is like outside of Wisconsin, or even the Midwest…