A New Adventure

So.

A new blog!  One that I will try to actually keep up-to-date, since once it gets going there will actually be interesting things to post and people (ie. family) might actually read it.

We've lived in quite a few places, and we've moved a fair bit.  Williamstown for four years (college counts), moving two to three times every year.  Then Boston for three years for me (two for N), with different apartments each time.  A year in Framingham, followed by three in Worcester.  A short stint in Rhode Island for me, and then we moved down to Northern Virginia.  As someone who spent her entire childhood in one place, that's a lot of moving.  It's a lot of apartments (with the exception of the house we lived in during our time in Worcester, but we did not own it, though we did live there rent-free).  Now we rent a condo.  It's a nice place at a reasonable price for its proximity to D.C.  My 20-minute commute can't be beat.  And yet...

We're tired.  Tired of renting.  Tired of not having more than a teensy balcony on which to grow things, though admittedly we're having a good patio gardening spring so far (I foresee tomatoes and beets in our future).  Tired of having to pay through the nose for a place to rent because we're relatively close to D.C., but not close enough to make going into the city a reasonable trip except on weekends (and sometimes not even then - curse you, beltway!).  Most of all, we're tired of feeling like we're working towards some abstract idea of a theoretical life we might one day have, of living only for the future instead of trying to build a place for ourselves in the here and now.

So.

We talked.  And sat and thought.  And talked some more.  There may have been a bottle or two of wine somewhere in there.  We realized that we like it here in the greater DC/NoVa/Maryland area.  Winters are laughably mild, as we're accustomed to the snows of Massachusetts.  The summer is, well, hot and sticky, but as N often points out, that's what AC is for.  Though I maintain that New England has the loveliest fall colors, it is pretty here in the fall.  If we truly need a fall color fix we can visit Vermont.  Plus, springtime in the Mid-Atlantic is amazing.  Everything is either a lush green or blooming in a palette of colors ranging from white to yellow to purple to every shade of pink you can imagine.  The only thing I really miss from the New England spring are the lilacs of Williamstown.  We drove up there for a wedding last spring and I could smell them the minute we stepped out of the car.  The whole campus smelled like lilacs - I was in heaven.

But I digress.  There will likely be lots of digressing in this blog.  The point is that we like it here.  I have a solid job here, and though I grumble about it a fair bit, I have settled in nicely and there are a lot of very good things about the job.  My in-laws live in D.C., which is really nice.  My parents are across the country, but we are [eternally] optimistic that we can persuade them to relocate someday.  Plus, the California job market and I don't really see eye-to-eye.   So staying in this region suits us, but apartment living doesn't really any longer.

So.

If we're going to stay put, and we want more space, we reasoned, perhaps we should look into buying a home before the market rebounds.  So we did.  Or really, Nick did, and I made helpful and not-so-helpful (my specialty) comments.  He did quite a bit of legwork looking into communities within an hour's drive of my workplace, since that's still considered a reasonable commute by Northern Virginia standards.  Last week we spent a few hours driving through cities and towns along the I-95 corridor, more or less south of where we live now.  It was nice, but crowded, and our price range would not be able to afford us much more than a townhouse with an itty-bitty backyard.  Doable, but not dazzling.  Some pretty lakes, but we could not afford to live near them.  Very suburban and cookie-cutter, which can be quite nice, but is not really what we want.

Then we started looking west.  Past where I work, further out into the countryside.  Nick has found some very interesting potential properties online at reasonable prices.  Places where we could afford to buy a real house with at least a half acre of land, and in some locations up to five acres.  We took a drive last week to some of these places.  Strictly driving by to get a feel for the neighborhoods and home exteriors.  I discovered that the Virginia countryside is gorgeous, and it's also not nearly so unpopulated as I had thought.

We live in a ridiculously materialistic society that tells us more money and more things bring more happiness.  I've been more or less buying into that, I suppose by default, but Nick never really has, and we'd both like to try harder to move away from it.  So how about owning our own land, fixing up a place, and growing some of our own food?  Give me something rewarding to put our hard-earned cash into, instead of paying off someone else's mortgage with our rent checks.  Take a space and really make it ours.

So.

We're looking at some towns.  Contemplating moving to not-quite-the middle of nowhere.  It's scary, but exciting, and overwhelming in a mostly good way.  My hope is that this blog can serve as a chronicle of our house-hunting, and then (if all goes well), of settling into the home itself, of discovering the joys and sorrows of home gardening (and maybe home renovating).  We'll see.

It'll be an adventure, no matter what!