The End of an Era

We stand, my friends, at the very brink.  On a precipice, as it were.  Staring down into a void of infinite possibilities and unsure what stirs in its Stygian depths.  Is it some variety of salvation, a desperate yearning to be free, to escape the void?  Is it Bats?  Cupcakes?  Bat-shaped cupcakes that I can keep in a belt pouch like I was some sort of baking/rodent hybrid super hero?

I'll stop the Riddler...with diabetes!

Or, more likely, is it just a bit of uncertainty and the constantly shifting winds of change?  It's probably that last one.  Although I do love me some cupcakes.  And vigilantism.  In fact, since it's almost the Christmas season if you'd like to pay for me to master the martial arts and maybe be trained as an expert cake artist in my spare time, feel free to leave a comment and we can sort out details.  I'll thank you for one, Ladytoa is sure to appreciate the other (she effing loves Karate, after all)

Internet, oh my dear, sweet Internet...very soon now, I will no longer be living with my hilarious cast of housemates (tm).  Being myself a married man, I'm sure you are thinking its strange of me to have a bunch of housemates in the first place, and you might be correct in some empirical, factual way.  But I assure you it happened pretty darned organically.  And just as organically the time is right for us to go our separate ways.  Not in life, mind you.  There was no falling out or explosive fight or anything as dramatic as all that and these people will always have a special place in my heart, and in my life.  No, the house is just full of people who are all ready to be living in their own space.  Or at least space that they cohabitate only with their nuclear families.  

That's a good thing, by the way.  I applaud the heck out of my friends for moving from our rental and transitioning into homeownership.  It happened a little more quickly than was originally scheduled, but that's ok.  They found a great place to call their own and are in the process of firming everything up.  

But where, you ask, does that leave me?  I know you're wondering because the ins and outs of my daily routine are surely the most riveting facet of your work day.  (A fact for which I really pity you, by the way.  I can barely be interested in my ramblings and I'm living through them.  I can recommend a few quite good therapists if you need someone to talk to, though.)  That leaves me, oddly enough, in a state of transition.  I don't feel the drive to go out and rent another apartment.  This is a time for me to put down roots.  To buy a home of my own, although I'm not quite there yet.  This is also a time in which I may find myself pushed outside of my liberal-elite Northeastern United States comfort zone.

Ladytoa and I had been thinking of moving, for some time now, down to the "South" which is where my mother in law lives.  The schools are good for our as-yet-nonexistant children, the costs of living are significantly lower than what I pay now and the job market and wages are right about spot on with what we're living right now.

I worry, a little bit, about the implications.  I have people up here that I know.  Places that I go and that know me.  The idea of starting completely from scratch is both slightly terrifying and dizzyingly exciting.  I can't wait to go off into the world and start a home for my wife and I.  I look forward to starting a family.  And I find myself looking with anxiety and joy and hope and fear all at the same time.

It's a great time to be me...even with a little tinge of sadness seeing a chapter close, I can't wait to start readliving the next one.  Stay tuned, people for my further adventures.  (Read-living is what you do when you make book metaphors about life.  It was, as you can see, originally a hyphenate but it grew into its own over time.  The more you know)

Knowing *is* half the battle.  The other half? Rocking out.