Life Decisions - Should I Stay or Should I Go?

After falling in love with the Upper Peninsula, I started trying to figure out how we could include some U.P. goodness in our future.  Rob thought I was crazy because I say about every 10 minutes, "We could move to Florida / New York City / South Dakota / China / Maine / (fill in the blank - anywhere except the Southwest, which doesn't interest me in the slightest)."  This time, though, I super, duper mean it.  The U.P. was magic and I want a piece of it.  My wandering heart found a home.

Rob said that he was uninterested in the idea of a summer/vacation home.  He said, and I quote, "It's all or nothing."  "Fine," I replied, "Let's go for all.  Let's move up there."  Rob was pretty shocked to hear me say that, since the U.P. gets something like 120 inches of snow, and I don't love winter as a general rule.  It's cold, and I don't do cold very well.

But the obstacles to living in the U.P. aren't small.  I spent weeks trying to figure out a workaround, but in reality, there isn't one.  I came to that conclusion on my own, without Rob needing to talk me down.  I broadened my search to include other parts of Michigan, but the more we talked and dreamed and thought, the more it just still didn't make a lot of sense.  As the reality of this started to sink in, Rob said, "I know you really wanted to move up there, but, ..."  I cut him off.  "I'm sorry.  You forget how this came about!  I said I was interested in having the U.P. in my future in some way.  YOU'RE the one that said a vacation home or spending SOME of our time up there was unacceptable.  YOU said all or nothing.  You forced my hand."  Rob smiled and knew he'd been beat.

We then went through the list of other options:  Move somewhere else.  Move to another part of Cincinnati.  Move to the same area of Cincinnati, just a bigger house.  Build our own home.  Etc., etc.  Since Rob is not tied to any particular place with his job, and since our income is in a nice range now, the options are almost endless.  But the closer we got to saying, "Alright, let's make a change," the more we just weren't sure why we should.  Our kids don't care - they like what they already have.  And honestly, so do Rob and I.

So, the emotional uprooting is over, and that feels nice.  We're staying put.

Last week we cemented the deal with a pinkie swear and a hefty home project purchase.  Part of the obstacle to moving is that the house needs some work.  Currently our neighbor is fixing the roof.  We've purchased new carpet (though it won't be installed until Thanksgiving week).  We tore the wood paneling off the boys' room's walls, and we're putting it back together.  (Apparently the Secret Passageway was our gateway drug into home improvement projects.)  And the kicker, decided on last week:  Water-proofing our basement.  We have mold problems, occasional water through the foundation when it rains, humidity issues, and a wall that is cracked and bowing in the middle so badly that it looks like it could cave in at any moment.  We didn't know any of those things about the basement when we bought the house - the cracked wall was hid by wood paneling.  In fact, we were unaware that the house was a fixer-upper at all.  We were first time home buyers, and the market was different back then.

Anyways.  That's that.  After the basement is dry, we'll go ahead and remodel it, finish it up (rather, we'll most like pay someone else to do it).  It'll increase our living space, give Miciah a real bedroom, and Rob an office.  So a year from now it'll all be finished and we'll be enjoying the fruits of all those tens of thousands of dollars.

...  And then I'll start planning my summers in the U.P.  ...