Headed Out West Where I Belong
We’re moving. Not terribly far, just over the hill about 25 minutes West.
But we’ll be back in the Bay Area. You can’t tell, but I’m smiling right now.
When we first moved this direction into the vast wilderness known as “The Central Valley,” I stipulated to Nik that this was going to be a six month trial. I was decidedly less than convinced that I was going to be okay with Hicksville, USA. Somewhere inside those six months, life occurred and we ended up staying for a year. It was a year that was less than kind to us and our move wasn’t the glorious homecoming I had envisioned, but rather more of a fleeing into the night, deeper into the sticks as we tried to escape rising rent costs and the agony of unemployment.
Our second “brief, temporary” move turned into a two year stint in The Worst Place To Live. I felt occasionally that the first place in the Central Valley we stayed wasn’t so bad, but I never felt that way the deeper in we went. It was a relief to move back to the place we’d necessarily left a couple of years earlier, but the relief was relative.
Amusingly, my original assumption that the Central Valley was podunky happens to be flawed. I mean, I’ve visited Missouri and I actually lived in Texas. By comparison the Central Valley (excepting TWPTL) is a bustling hub of big-city living. But I’m from the Bay Area. When the local Wal-Mart closes at 9:00 pm, something is wrong. I don’t even shop at Wal-Mart and I know that’s just not right. Our local “mall” has one floor. Our options for in-town dining are literally Chevy’s (which Nikki doesn’t like), Applebee’s (which I don’t care for) or—the new rage in town—Olive Garden. There are only so many breadsticks and stuffed mushrooms one can consume before one demands some variety.
The problem with the Central Valley is that everyone here is either originally from somewhere else that they’d rather still be or they’re local/native and wish it hadn’t changed so much. The Central Valley has changed as more people from Sacramento and the Bay Area flood in to escape their housing costs and try to mold the Valley into something it doesn’t want to be. The clash between bedroom-community-wishers and happy hicks drives me insane and results in this idiotic worst-of-both-worlds blend that I have grown more or less accustomed to but don’t particularly care for.
We’ve been back on this edge of the Valley for about a year and a half now. I work here. I work for the city. I don’t hate it here, I just don’t really like it.
I will miss some things; I think any time you change the definition of “home” you have to leave some things behind. HB and Gin live here, and we won’t be able to just cruise up the street to see them. Nik and I always kind of hibernate during the winter anyway so we haven’t seen them a ton lately, but the weather is warming up and I was about to re-initiate Saturday Morning Coffee with HB, which was usually followed by Saturday Afternoon Video Games with HB. I don’t know that such a tradition is terribly likely once we move. I’ll miss our apartment; we have a nice spacious place with low rent that we’re trading for a nice, smaller place with higher rent. I’ll miss working six minutes from home—a little.
But I’ll be happy when Nik is happy not having to sit through an hour’s worth of traffic every morning. My commute going the other way? Twenty minutes, no traffic. I’ll be happy when we have a washer and dryer… in our unit. No more scrambling at 9:30 to get our clothes done before they lock the laundry room. No more doing laundry in the rain. I’ll be happy when we don’t have to put up with the über-weak cable we have now and can get decent cable reception (yes, it is as stupid as it sounds).
And I’ll be happy when we simplify.
Simplify
Our current place is two bedrooms. Our new place is one. This sounds like a problem. Only really it isn’t a problem because we don’t use our second bedroom very much. Sure, we have a computer in there, but the new place has a computer cubby. Besides the computer we have a desk where I work on Warhammer stuff. It’s a small desk, it could go anywhere. The rest of the space in that room is taken up by junk. Not like trash, just like the crap we’ve collected over 55 collective years of nostalgia and the procrastination to not get rid of it properly. So soon there will be an influx at used book stores, craigslist and eBay. But! You can help because you, loyal ironSoap reader, have First Dibs on some of the stuff we don’t have room for anymore. Below is a list of the stuff we’re going to sell/give away/trash before we go. If you want any of it, speak up soon or you may miss it. I’m willing to ship most stuff if you’ll cover the shipping fees; lots of this I’ll give away if you come pick it up. I can’t hang on to any of it for the next time I see you if you’re remotely located since this is all about reducing the amount of stuff we have that we don’t use, but if you can arrange for someone or someplace else to hang on to it, I’m not opposed to dropping stuff off at storage facilities, friends’ houses, etc. Also, if you see something listed here that you think is yours or that you gave as a kind gift, assume that I’m not trying to be a jerk or unappreciative, some of this is hard to part with (which is why we still have it, after all) it’s just that we have to make some decisions about what’s practical. If you want to claim something that is yours, please do so and we’ll gladly give it back with deepest apologies: We’re not trying to make a profit off of your generosity, chances are I’m just dense. Contact me with all inquiries at ironsoap@gmail.com.
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