Mr Poopers Day Out

Weighing your options. As an adult you are forced with decisions every single moment of every single day. Some of them are as simple as what to wear to work, some of them not.

Being back in California was not a choice that we made lightly. Chances are if the job market in Ohio had been better we would have stayed.  The reality was that we had transferred to quite a poor state in terms of employment.  So back we came to the beaches, Sana Anna winds, family (whom we dearly missed) and high real estate prices.

We moved back with the intention to buy again. To put down roots and try to stay settled in one place, once and for all, to be just like everyone expected us to be.  Then, some small voice began to made it self known. It started quietly enough, just barely a whisper of a thought.  Stretching itself bigger and bigger till it reached every part of my brain and was incapable of being further ignored.

You do not put down roots when you have the heart of a nomad.  You will never become the tall oak tree, staying forever in one spot, rather you are the incarnation of lichen.  Though you appreciate the oak and may periodically cling it’s bark thinking “This time I’ll stay put” it will never last.  For your cling is tenuous at best and you know, deep in your heart, that the minute you found this oak you were already wondering what it would be like to be a mighty fir.

I don’t know if you are born like this or made.  I grew up in the house that my mother & father brought me home from the hospital in.  I lived there for 21 years, nothing ever changed, not the color of the paint, not the cracks in the sidewalk, not even the neighbors.  Then after those 21 years had passed I married my husband and everything changed.  Unlike me his parents were expert movers and he had called several different states home.  “Where are you from” is not a question that is easily answered for him or his sister. 

I think that Matt is the nomad and I am merely along for the ride. Being with him makes me unafraid of almost anything (though lately I do seem to have a certain irrational fear of him being anywhere near the garbage disposal when I turn it on, who knows).  Knowing that he will always be there right by me as we take uncertain steps into uncertain lands makes everything easier, everything “do-able”.

Knowing our insatiable zest for experiencing everything that comes from life it makes sense that we would reconsider buying a home.  I loved my home in Ohio and had big plans on how I wanted to redo everything, that said, about 4 months into owning this house I was already wondering how soon was too soon to buy a new house and move.  I think for now we have decided that renting is in our best interest.  It will allow us the disposable income that we have grown quite fond of, allow us to easily pick up and go, vacations, toys, and freedom.

Maybe this is what being an adult is really about. Weighing your options and making the best, most rational decision you can, based on nothing or no one else, but you.  There is no wrong or right in these times (though sometimes you feel like others may judge you) it is simply different lives, and different ways of living them.