Sunday, September 4, 2011

KCMO or Bust!

We'd talked about it, thought about it, (fought about it?), tried to imagine it a bazillion times during the past couple of years. Could we really make the move? Leave everything we'd known together as a couple and move to A's hometown, 1,500 miles away, live in the house he spent his teenage years in, and be near his family instead of mine? Yikes.

Well, the decision has been made. In fact, it's done. We're here. It's been two weeks. We're a couple blocks away from a real Main Street, and an Oak Street, and a Walnut Street - very quaint and small-town sounding to me. They kinda look like what I imagined when I read To Kill a Mockingbird. Or Peyton Place, actually.

I never actually thought I could pick up and leave. Leave my sisters and my beautiful nephews, or my family and my dearest friends, or my job. (Well, yes, I did imagine leaving my job.) And if you'd asked if I'd EVER thought I'd live in the Midwest one day, I'd have scoffed, pointed my finger toward a map of the U.S., waved it in big circle to cover the area I guessed to be the Midwest, and said "Here? Yeah, right." Oh, how times have changed. And I'm pretty confident that I can find Missouri on a map now.

After shoving our entire townhouse into two Pods, and then discovering we still had enough stuff to fill a third, we made the very lonnnnnnnnnng drive through a lot of states that began with the letter "I". The boys did as well as they could:











...and here we are, in a really neat, old house with lots of space for them to toddle around in, with lots of home projects to do. Here I am, out of my comfort zone, not earning a second income, but without my usual anxiety over losing time with my children while I work. Here we are, living on what seems to be a quiet and safe street for T and G to learn to ride a bike on one day soon, shaded by pretty trees, sitting on an awesome front porch that I plan to spend a lot of time on with my husband, sometimes with a cocktail in hand.

We finally made the move, committed to a year. 351 more days (or more) of Midwestern adventure...

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