My boyfriend, our two dogs, and I recently moved into the foothills of the Sierra to El Dorado Hills. This is one of many communities in Rep. John Doolittle's district, and we knew when we moved up here that we were not typical of the community. But we loved the yard, and we're only planning on being in California for a few more months, and after looking at about 20 rental properties when we sold our condo, this is the one that we could all tolerate.
We're not wealthy, although El Dorado Hills has a reputation for being an upper-middle to upper class enclave. I'm an RN, and the boyfriend is a student and a very unsuccessful internet entrepreneur. In Sacramento, I always felt like we were representative of an average urban couple. Up here....not so much. I chalked it up to a lack of ethnic and cultural diversity to which I have become accustomed and which I cherish; the folks up here are 99.99% white, and live a McMansion lifestyle that I find lacking in real culture.
I have found much to be amused by up here, not the least of which is a large psuedo-mainstreet shopping area which is entirely manufactured to look as if it is one of those quaint old California towns that REALLY exist, as if "El Dorado Hills" had been a mining town in the 1840's and not just a suburb off of Highway 50 that sprang up in the last 20 or so years.
Then, today, my grown daughters and my grand-daughter were visiting from Sacramento, admiring the new place, and my daughter brought in the weekly "Village Life" newspaper that they throw into my driveway every so often. She opened it up and began browsing it while the rest of us chatted, and suddenly she screamed in laughter. Here's the feature that cracked her up, as it did the rest of us:
In the People Talk section, residents are asked the question,"What do you like about El Dorado Hills?" and then their responses and pictures are published. All of the responses focused on the prosperity of the area, but none of them were as unintentionally hilarious as the one by Lindsay Nagle (picture a thirty-ish white female, blonde, blinding smile): "I like the diversity in personalities here. There are people with wealth that are comfortable expressing it and there are others who are wealthy who are quiet and more reserved about it. I enjoy meeting both types of people because they are all interesting."
I guess the rest of us are so un-interesting that we just don't even exist as a "type" of person. Poor Lindsay.