In Which She Clarifies.

I've had the weekend to think about it . . . and am still totally committed to moving to Maine. I'll admit I had some tiny misgivings. I'm sure those will turn into huge misgivings once we start making real progress. It is a scary thing, to uproot a family and move into the great, white north. I know there are people who think we're making a mistake, and others who will just be sad to see us go, and all of those feelings are valid. All I can say is that, most days, I'm pretty sure this is going to be at the very least a great adventure, and possibly the most awesome thing I've ever done.

Here's the deal. I know this is a dream. I know it is a crazy thing to most people. A lot of people cannot imagine making this kind of decision voluntarily. To the people who have lived with my crazy dreams for most of my life, trust me, I know how much of a flibbertigibbet I can be. There aren't any reassuring things I can tell you to convince you this is different because it probably isn't. There have been a few things in my life that I did against a lot of well-meaning and incredibly smart recommendations otherwise, that turned out great. I have to believe that this will be great also. I get horrible anxiety about a lot of things. But this, I have felt nothing but joy about.

Basically, all we've done is make a decision and start a planning process. At any point along the way, the plan may change and that is okay. We may decide to wait a while longer, we may decide to go sooner, we may do things differently. Instead of moving there to stay 100% of the year, we'd really prefer to spend half the year there and half in Texas. That will take a little bit more planning and money, but is the ULTIMATE dream. What matters is that we have a plan. We, Ralph and I, have a goal that we're working towards together and we're both really excited about it. We may spend one winter up there and come screaming back to Texas, and that's okay, too. Texas will always be home.

There will be a lot of bumps in the road, first and foremost is money. We cannot even consider doing this until we are financially stable and all debts repaid. That's a biggy. We'll have to sell our house and find something temporary, preferably in our current school district. I don't want to move the kids school, and I want somewhere safe and relatively nice. We need to decide exactly where in Maine we want to live. It's a huge state, with hardly any people in it, something like 1.3 million in the entire place. Their largest city, Portland has less than 67,000 people in it. Compared to the suburb of Houston I live in, which has almost 85,000 and is considered small. The city I work in has 150,000. Houston proper has 2.2 million and the Houston metro area has 6.5 million. The population density (or lack thereof) means fewer jobs and lower pay. I want some land, but want to be close to a grocery store and a hospital. There are a lot of things to consider, and we're going to consider the fuck out of them. NPR will be jealous of all the shit we consider.

WEEK ONE!

Tonight, we're starting on the clean-out process. I wanted to start in the overstuffed cave of our library closet, since most of the stuff in there has sat untouched since we moved into that house over a year ago. Ralph, who is at times much smarter than I am, wants to start in our actual closet. Where all of our clothes and shoes are kept. For some reason this feels a much more real and scary place to start. I haven't worn most of those clothes in ages, I tend to wear the same stuff over and over again, and I do have a bit of a shoe problem. But it hits me right in the feels to think about throwing away my clothes. I've always seen them as such a part of my identity. Will people still know I'm me without my witty t-shirts?? It is going to be a difficult but admittedly better place to start. So, if anybody wants any nerdy chubby girl clothes, I'm going to have a shit ton to get rid of. Hit me up!