I just got the mail. Letter about the upcoming closure of one of the two remaining small businesses in town that I shopped at (the one run by someone I know in AAUW). It's retirement rather than a mere "we couldn't make a go of it," but still - the business is closing.
This makes me sad. Especially now, when it takes much extra effort to get to Sherman. They were my go-to place for small gifts and fancy greeting cards. This is the store where I bought Ellie Dangerfloof.
I'm sure it's mainly the owner wanting to retire, but I suspect the cruddy local economy, the bypass, the fact that apparently most people have abundant time and energy to drive to fancy shops in and around Dallas are why no one has bought them out and will continue on.
Gah but this has been a year of bad news, large and small. I'm afraid of 2017 and what it's going to bring now.
I keep hoping something new will come but so far the only thing we've got is a Jimmy's Egg (a restaurant), and they're only open for breakfast and lunch - meals I rarely eat at restaurants for locally.
Downtown looks like a ghost town now. It's so sad - even 2 years ago it was thriving, now they are back to almost as many empty storefronts as when I moved here 17 years ago. There's NOTHING this side of the Red River, short of driving all the way to Ardmore.
I suppose part of this can be laid at the feet of Internet shopping, but seriously? When there's nothing in your town, what else do you do? I'd rather order something off of Amazon and have a choice of brands than take the potluck of the cheapest choices the wal-mart here has.
I keep hoping things will get better but that hope is fading slowly.
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I have a new insinkerator, set me back $180. I guess I go out and buy a power strip - I'm wondering if the power surge from plugging it in and pulling the plug killed the motor prematurely; a power strip I could switch on and off and would be easier.
I'm going to the Lowe's. Yes, it's a big-box but we don't have much else and the little local hardware closes at 2 pm, if they even carried power strips. (I may also have to take a swing by the Christmas stuff and see what they have. I saw battery-powered wreaths with lights on them and I admit I like that idea for my front door wreath.)
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I'm thinking what I need to do as I have time in the coming months (I won't be teaching this summer so I will have a little time, if no money) is travel around to some of the various areas like Eureka Springs and Claremore and some of the "bigger small towns" in the region, with the aim towards having some kind of plans someday for moving when I retire. If my town continues to shrink like this, I DO NOT WANT to retire here (and forget that my doctors and such are here - in fact, I still don't know what, if any, clinic, my doctor has joined up with now that she's left the one she was in. I don't have the energy to deal with it right now - that will be either for the week after exam week or when I get back in January.). It's just too depressing: I don't have any close-by friends who share my hobbies and I'm really feeling that lack. A lot of days it feels like I get up, I shower, I go to work, I work all day, I come home, I go to bed.....and the next day is lather, rinse, repeat. I need more fun in my life but fun is very hard to find here unless you have kids in sports, or fish or hunt or golf, or like to gamble.
What I'd really love would be to be somewhere with lots of small crafts shops with classes or with things like potter's wheels and kilns you could rent time to use, and knitting groups, and things like that. Quixotic Fibers has classes but it would be hard to drive an hour each way for a class unless it was a Saturday.
I don't know what it is. I don't know why some towns seem to have more stuff than we do. I don't know if it's that people really only do live here if they want to be near the lake and the casino and other places have to have their own attractions that are different.
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