Suddenly Wacky Mommy has a wild hair about moving from Portland to — get this — Iowa. Here’s the deal: I grew up in Iowa and left in my early twenties. She grew up in Portland and is still here. So somehow dragging me back to the place I fled as a young adult is okay, but staying in the town she grew up in is not.

Now, when I say Iowa, you have to understand, I’m talking about Iowa City, a.k.a. the Johnson County Free State. It’s got an inordinate amount of culture for a town of 60,000. Anyway, I never really considered it until I had kids and discovered how crappy and underfunded the schools are in Portland. Anyhoo, WM is pretty sick of P-town, and blogged all about it today. To counter her bile, I’m going to list Thirteen Things I Love About Portland.

1. The weather. Nine months of rain just makes you feel, uh… wet.
2. Libertarians. Low taxes. Crappy schools. Could there be a connection? Nah!
3. The northern light. Ah, darkness at 4pm.
4. The amazing traffic engineering that makes it impossible to get around town unless you already know where you’re going and exactly how to get there, turn by turn.

   Okay, seriously, I’m not as down on P-town as Wacky Mommy. There are many things I’ll miss.

5. The professional theatre scene.
6. The mountains.
7. The ocean.
8. The Columbia River Gorge.
9. The greenness. (The flip side of nine months of rain.)
10. The weather. Yeah, it goes both ways. It may be raining, but you can survive just fine without winter gloves or hats or scarves or boots. Or long johns or sweaters.
11. The northern light. Ah, twilight at 10pm.
12. Summer. The most perfect three months you can imagine. You can almost forget the nine months of rain.
13. It’s the place I met my wife, and where my children were born.

So you may have discerned that I’m a little conflicted about leaving. Wacky Mommy’s champing at the bit, though, so we’ll just have to see what comes.