Frumpy Mom: You can’t make me feel bad for living in Southern California

Have you noticed how people outside of California tend to be condescending when you tell them you live here?

As if they’d just heard that you live in the slums of Mumbai and want to express their pity.

I once went to a reporting conference up in Asilomar at Pacific Grove (which you should visit if you can), and wandered out onto the rustic wooden boardwalk, where I watched a fawn grazing on a grassy stretch of beach. It was a perfect moment, still and mesmerizing.

Then, a man walked up to me and said hello. We started chatting, and I learned that he was a professor from Chicago who was there to conduct one of the training sessions I’d be attending. He asked and I told him I was from Southern California.

He looked at me pityingly and said, “I’m sorry. How can you stand it there?”

I was