Thursday, March 25, 2010

Anticipation is Nothing Like Catsup, People


I am so ready for Spring weather. I know that technically it already IS Spring ... but I want the weather. The weather that is so nice I can leave my windows open 24x7 … lovely!

I miss that. There’s only a few weeks of the year when I can do it … the rest of the time is too hot, cold, or wet. Meh. I AM JONESING FOR OPEN WINDOWS.

I’ve been thinking lately that I’m kind of done with the Midwest. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Midwest … it’s quite lovely in many ways … but being able to have the house wide open to the elements for three weeks of the year is not one of them. Nor is the fact that its about a million bajillion gazillion miles away from Home … and for the past couple years I have REALLY wanted to go back home.

I also know that if I hadn’t come out here when I did, pretty much on an impulse, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I wouldn’t have a college degree. I wouldn’t have met some of the finest folk I’ve ever known. I would never have joined a dart league or played in the Nationals in Las Vegas. I probably wouldn’t be a homeowner. I definitely wouldn’t have the girls. I wouldn’t have Dr’s Wendland or Box, who are just plain incredible and God-sends in their own rights. I doubt I’d have visited family in San Francisco for the weekend during a lengthy business trip to Sacramento (aka “Sacra-demented”)… and San Franscisco is totally worth a visit … the (former?) Presidio alone is freaking GORGEOUS.

But I also wouldn’t have missed out on a large portion of my niece’s and nephew’s lives. And now I have cousins who are having babies that I don't even know. Gulp! I’d be able to visit family more than twice a year (even those six years that I lived 250 miles away I drove back home every weekend). I could hop in the car and be at almost any family member’s house within the hour. I wouldn’t be landlocked, and miss the Bay.

Don’t get me wrong … I know you can’t go home. I did that once; moved back to my hometown for a year between NJ and MO. Too much had changed in the almost decade I’d been gone. I spent the year lamenting all the differences. And there were many, but the worst, the absolute WORST, was that the little island I’d grown up on had filled to the brim with people. It. Was. Horrible!

Couldn’t hop in the car and zip from anywhere to anywhere on the island AT ALL. It was all traffic, all the time. The two main roads that traverse the length of the island were almost always jam-packed, bumper-to-bumper. At least it felt that way. Mer. Blecht.

So. I want to go back home to RI, but not to ‘the’ island. I’d settle for MA, or CT, or southern NH or VT. But the economy … erg, the economy. There just isn’t one. We’re in the recession no one wants to actually call a recession. I don’t know why we’ve become a society that hides from the truth, but we have. There are almost no jobs in New England. I’m actively searching for a job within my company in NJ, because I know the area and could always drive back home on weekend like I did in the 90’s. I’d do it in a heartbeat, but the logistics are cuh-razy.

This, of course, is a pitfall of being a homeowner during a recession: who’s going to buy my house for enough money that I can roll the profit into what may well be a more expensive house in a more expensive area to live? What if I get back there and I can’t sell my house out here? The house across the street from me, which went on the market in October of 2008, just sold last week. Yep, that house was on the market for 17 months. Seventeen months, people.

So anyway. All this because I want to open a damn window. Hurry up Spring Weather … you’re behaving like a 5th season over here, and I’m getting all kinds of antsy.

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