Some BIG News!

I should start this post by first explaining that I am NOT, under any circumstances whatsoever, a country girl.  No sir!  I am definitely a city girl, and the last three years of country living have been more than enough for me.  When Hubby Blue and I got married, we moved into this little rental house in this country town no one had ever heard of...because it was semi-halfway between Hubby Blue's university and my new job.  (I applied for and accepted said job because it was within a 90-mile radius of Hubby Blue's school, and I was pretty desperate for a job.  That's another story for another day.)

Anyway, moving out to the country was a novelty for a while, and I felt like I could legitimately appreciate country music, pancake breakfasts and steak fry dinners, and tractor pulls.  After awhile, though, I realized it took at least 30 minutes to get ANYWHERE.  Grocery shopping was at least a half-day event.  Want to go out for dinner or grab a drink?  You can go to the town bar...or the town bar.  Want to go to church on Sunday?  I hope you're either Methodist or Lutheran.  Need to talk to the police because people are driving through your front yard every other Friday?  Better wait until 9:00...the police are only on duty at night.  It got old...and fast.  But we stuck it out two years, and finally Hubby Blue graduated and got his police job, so we moved 30 minutes closer to my job, into a fairly sizable town, thinking we were moving to the promised land!

Long story short...this is not the promised land.  It's still pretty "country," and we're actually farther from most of our friends and my side of the family.  Hubby Blue is farther from work, and we live in a tinier house than when we first got married, so most of the time it feels like our stuff is caving in on us!  And, oh, did I mention the snakes?  We live two blocks from a river, so people acted like I was the crazy one for being, um, SHOCKED when I found a dead snake in our house.

So, I was driving home from work today on the same old country roads as usual* when a little (I assume it was little) rock hit my windshield with a SMACK.  It startled me, for sure, but it didn't appear to have done any damage, so I continued on my merry way.  I went to the gym directly from work, took a class, and came out an hour later TO A HUGE CRACK IN MY WINDSHIELD.  "Huge" might be an exaggeration, but it's definitely about as long as my hand.  Talk about something I DON'T need right now.  The aggravating part about this is that the saaaaame exact thing happened to Hubby Blue's windshield last summer.  He was picking up our moving truck (so we could move from the country to the pseudo-country...meaning "bigger town but still surrounded by lots and lots of country") when something came flying at his windshield and shattered it.  UGH.  Does this happen in the country all the time?  BECAUSE I'M SICK OF IT!

Soooooooo...here comes the big news............

WE'RE MOVING!!!

This has been the hardest thing to not blog about, but I didn't want to say anything until it was more of a sure thing.  It's something Hubby Blue and I have been talking about for months because of how hard his schedule is, how far we live from his department, how we have so few friends here, how we spend so much on gas, how we are really not digging the small-town lifestyle anymore, and how I haven't been super happy in my job for a while now.  It also was not in our plan to be buying a house at this point, but after a lotttttttt of thought and talking and praying, we decided to take the plunge.  We've been renters for almost three years now, and we're both eager to put down some roots.  I know it's risky to buy a house before Hubby Blue's probation is over, but it's also risky to buy a house before you're a tenured teacher, and I know people who do that all the time.  Whether you're a teacher or a banker or a businessperson or a lawyer...I guess it's always a risk, but I hope this one pays off.  So, come this summer, we'll be moving to a town that is about 15 minutes from Hubby Blue's department.  And there are plenty of stores and restaurants and interstates nearby.  It's still a teensy bit country (because Hubby Blue is definitely NOT a city person) but hopefully it will feel like a much better fit than where we are now.

Anyway, we are closing next week - yikes!!!  It's been one of the most stressful processes we've gone through, and I'll blog more about it in time.  And I'll blog more about the house itself because there is lots to tell about that too!  But for now, I'm just hoping we can make it through two more months with our windshields intact. :)



*I guess technically it's not a country road.  It's a state highway, but any two-lane highway is a country road in my book.  Country livin' was fun for a while, but this city girl misses her interstates something fierce.