Judecorp.

I suppose I should update this thing so I don't have to field 400 phone calls asking, "Did Jen take the job?" although, don't get me wrong, it's fun to be so popular for a few minutes.

She respectfully declined the job after a lot of thinking on her part, mostly about whether the goodness of having a well-paying job outweighed the badness of quality of life issues. I am both excited and sad at the same time, because I /do/ know this would have been an excellent opportunity for her career-wise and a boost for her self-esteem, although I hope she still has the self-esteem boost solely because they want her so badly.

Western Mass plans are back on, as are babymaking plans, which of course is exciting to me. It's so much fun to look at all of the affordable houses out there and daydream about when the money will come in from my father's house and we can set ourselves up. Hopefully dad's house will sell for enough that we can realistically buy a decent house without needing to rent there first and find lucrative jobs. I hope to have 40% or so to drop down on the house just from my dad's place. More would be even spiffier.

I hope with everything I have that Jen can find that mysterious "good job" out there sometime so she knows that this Florida opportunity wasn't the only opportunity she will ever see. I really want this "life" thing to work out for us, even a little bit. I know that life never runs totally smoothly, and that the best we can ever hope for is someone to ride out the bumps with, but I'd really like something decent for her (and us).

Here's hoping.

Today I am driving down to Rhode Island to see how much junk I can put into a dumpster by myself. It will be an exercise in exhaustion, I'm sure. I have to break by 5:30, though, so I can bust into a surprise 30th birthday party for a girl from high school. At least I have a deadline on the exhaustion, and free dinner. I just hope I make it through the weekend without getting sick, since it's supposed to be dreary and rainy, and since Jen is sick.

I got tired of the after-effects of my last bad haircut about 4 weeks ago and I went back to The Dark Overlord for a fixer-upper. He did a great job but had to cut a lot more hair off than usual to salvage the shape, because the other lady totally butchered it with "extreme texturizing" which was neither extreme (since she just chopped off a bunch of hair on top of my head) nor texturizing (since now I have a ton of 1" hairs at my part-line). Aah well. Adventures in girly hair, I suppose. It was so much easier when I would just whip off my shirt and Sean or Jennifer would shave my head in a bathroom or kitchen or front porch.

There's all of this NKOTB stuff in the attic from my junior high years and I can't decide if I should keep it or toss it. Heh. Dilemmas.

Last night we had a Chill Night and watched What's Love Got To Do With It? while eating extremely oily pizza. I just /can't/ watch DV scenes in movies. It just stops my heart, even though I know it's fake, even though I know they're not really hurting each other, even though I know they're acting. Yuck. But it was a pretty good movie, though. I didn't know that much about Tina Turner.

I need to stop looking at the housing listings in Easthampton. We found a house last night that was a 3BR/2BA raised ranch with a one-car garage, fireplace, hardwood floors, and a freaking inground pool for under $250K. Now I want to go buy it IMMEDIATELY. *house lust*

Cute Farmhouse
Big House With 70s Decor (Dying To Be Remodeled)

Want. House. Now!

So Jennifer and I had this HUGE talk last night into today about moving, and our plans. It is pretty freaking stressful to talk about these things and I admit that I'd probably rather just avoid the whole topic but it IS a lot better to talk about things when she's right next to me, which is nice. It's awesome to know that though we continue to have our bumps in the road, we've still got it.

So the bottom line of all of our talk is that we've agreed on two things: that moving to Woonsocket would be the best thing for us financially in terms of living basically rent-free. Heck, we could probably bank $1000/month and after five years, that would be 60 Grand, dude. Madness. Also, that it /is/ important to me to be close to my grandparents in case they needed anything or anything happened to them.

We also agreed on one other thing: that neither one of us really wants to move to Woonsocket AT ALL, that we pretty much think we would be miserable there, that we would have a hard time making friends, that it would be a strain on our relationship, that we don't want to be landlords, that we don't want to live somewhere that we're not legally married.

This, of course, begs the dilemma - do we do something because it's financially sound in the short term even if we don't want to? Does the financial ends outweigh the emotional means? Do my grandparents even WANT us to live next door?

The bottom line is that we STILL want to live in Western Mass, and own a quaint older house with a nice piece of land, and have babies and raise them with lots of Northampton lesbian moms, and be married and be home repair girls and organic, crunchy, AP country bumpkins. That's what we want. It hasn't changed.

Sure, we could live in Woonsocket for, say, five years, sell the house and take the profits and our saved $60K and try to relocate AGAIN, start over, meet new people, be the new kids on the block, find new jobs. And I would feel better about my grandparents and we would be in a good financial position.

Or we could sell Dad's place, stow the money, and relocate to Western Mass, find jobs, and use the house profits to put a big downpayment on a reasonably-priced house (you can still score a $200K house there). No, we wouldn't have renter income (no free living) but we wouldn't be living in Woonsocket, either. However, this would mean we were 2 hours from my grandparents, and would I feel guilty if something happened or I couldn't be there all the time? I don't know.

I'm starting to realize that I'm stuck with a huge-ass choice between my grandparents and my wife. Jen is willing to move to Woonsocket but has been clear about how she would do it for a year or so, no more, because she would not like it. And it seems silly to move somewhere (AGAIN) for a year (AGAIN) and start over (AGAIN). Ugh. And while I feel I owe a huge debt to my grandparents because of everything they have done and will continue to do for me, is that enough to cause my immediate family misery? And do they even WANT me to be there for them like that? I mean, I have other relatives (my brother, my uncle) and they're certainly not considering packing up their lives and moving to Woonsocket. What makes me different? Why do I feel that our life is more transitory and therefore less important?

I used to be a really selfish, self-aware person. What happened? I can't believe I'm /still/ considering moving to Woonsocket even though neither of us wants to. With MONEY as one of the reasons. How did this happen to me? When did this become my life?

Eff it. I want the fixer-upper cottage in Easthampton, stat!