Snow Day in the South

I post here first this morning instead of on Glass Incarnate. I post here first because my spouse informed me that it has been so long since I have posted on this blog that his RSS reader has greyed it out. Whatever. I also post here because we had friends in for the weekend, a southern family, and when we were talking about blogging I said the name of this one and the 14 year-old son asked me in a surprised voice, "You don't like the south?". I feel obliged to answer. After six years of not planning to remain here, I am settled in. With Dave exploring the vast sea of employment opportunities post-CNN, we have the option of living almost anywhere. In fact our options have opened up so much that Dave felt comfortable throwing down the gauntlet and saying if I want to move to Montana, we can do it now...

You see, when we were married--in Montana--he promised me that we would move there within eight years (we lived in Chicago at the time). Well, it's been 13-1/2 years now and I occasionally smugly throw out in the conversation that he still hasn't lived up to that promise. I did so in conversation in front of our friends over the weekend and he replied, "Why not now?"

Why not now indeed. So I search my soul. What would I be giving up if we moved to Montana, or to Austin (where the jobs actually *are*). What would I be gaining (best case)? We never intended this house to be our forever home. Our forever home was the sprawling old mansion built in 1917 where we lived outside of Chicago. Then it was the large, airy Austintacious new house we built in the hill country next to a nature preserve and a green belt in Austin. But this house was the best choice in one day of house hunting after signing a contract at CNN and then finding out that the houses that we had looked at on the Internet from Austin were not at all the same in person and we couldn't afford *anything* like what we had there or imagined having here. But after six years here--considerably longer than we have spent in any one house--we have made this our home. It fits us, it is us, and we have no interest in moving to another house as this one is just right for our lifestyle now and into the future.

Then there's my studio. It's a perfect space for a studio, couldn't be better located, and we were able to afford it. What's the likelihood we would be able to find anything like what we have with the two properties combined in either Austin or Missoula? I have a better chance of being eaten by a shark the next time I go scuba diving.

Beyond property considerations there is all the quality of life I thought I was missing. Turns out, I was mistaken. We not only have friends and a community here, we also have a great school for Jessie. Though we are not geographically centrally located, Atlanta is one of the major airport hubs and we can get anywhere (except Hawaii or Australia--and how likely are we to need those routes now?) quickly and cheaply. And finally, the Indigo Girls had it right and there's no more beautiful place than the southland in the springtime.

So we stay. I'd change the name of the blog to something like "Settled In the South" or "Snoozy In the South" or even "Seraphic In the South", but I like the reminder that life is all about change. That's not to say that I wouldn't like to have a house in Missoula someday, I still would. But I no longer need to, pine to, must.