I keep having these fragments of interesting posts wander through my brain. I don’t write them down. I forget. That’s kinda my brain right now.

Things of note for tracking reasons: everyone in the house is noticing a big change in Future Middle Child’s behavior. Things kinda hit a fever pitch of rough there and then things changed. They aren’t hitting so much. They are doing a much better job of verbally advocating for themself. They are sleeping better. They are globally acting like, “I know who I want to be and how I want to act” and they are following through. It’s wonderful to see.

Eldest Child is reaching out for friendships in a way that feels striking and new. She’s changing.

Eldest Child is starting to advocate strongly for moving. Her words: “I feel like by the time I’m 11 or 12 it won’t be ok that my only private space is my bed.” That’s completely legit. There are not enough rooms in this house for everyone to have a room of their own and still have common space. Noah and I talked about shooting for when Next Kid is about 18 months old. That’s pretty fucking terrifying.

Aptos/Salinas is currently the only place in California we’d really consider. And those are… not honestly strong contenders because we want to go somewhere cheaper. That means away from cities.

We are looking all over the country. Portland is not a consideration. Eugene is a maaaaaaaybe. But Oregon doesn’t want more Californians. We won’t move to the East Coast. We won’t move to Texas or the deep south. I’m terrified of serious snow.

I don’t know what that means. Colorado is interesting but I don’t know any close friends there. (I know a handful of friends of friends, but I don’t know them and they are from communities where I’m pretty closed mouthed about myself.) Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico are all so hot I’d melt.

Wyoming was so unfriendly I couldn’t fucking bear it. I would not be able to handle living in a place where folks are that monosyllabic.

I don’t think Nebraska or Kansas would be… as bad as other places but I’m not sure I’d be popular in either state.

Ohio? Indiana? Pennsylvania? Tennessee? Kentucky?

No to Missouri. Can’t.

Oklahoma seems…. too close to Noah’s family.

Over seas sounds great. But complicated. I don’t know. I am fairly certain that Noah would be able to get a job over seas. He’s well regarded in the international community in his field. He could go to most countries. But where?

I’m terrified of leaving for a million reasons. But my daughter is right when she says this house is not going to work forever. We don’t want to spend the $300,000+ to add a second story. That puts Noah in debt bondage for a lot of extra years. Even though he makes obscene money.

Noah is 41. In my personal opinion it would be lovely if he didn’t have to have a full time job by 50. He says that what he would like is if he could do seasonal contract work remotely for a few months a year for vacations and extra shit but otherwise we’d like to be living off investments.

We are at $750,000 (approximately, obv) in investments. At 2 million (if I do this right) it’s possible to take about 3% out in dividends and get $60,000. That’s a huge salary for most of the country or the world. In 10 years of marriage I have tripled our assets. If I’m as good as I hope I am, having a 9 year runway to get to 2 million isn’t impossible. If we sold this house we could be well over a million invested after we pay off debts. We might even get as high as 1.2 or 1.3 million.

That makes retiring look… way more attainable. We will probably buy another house somewhere, but I’d love to move somewhere that we are looking at under $300,000.

The goal is retiring so we can teach people stuff without needing a job. Because we are wacky like that.

I don’t know what we are going to do. I don’t know where we are going to go. But I’m sure glad I will get to figure this out with my family.

We keep talking about spending a year or two nomadic so that we can try out different areas for a while before committing. We’ll see.

AND AFTER I PUT IN THAT GOD DAMN BATHROOM.

But if someone else loves this bathroom as much as me… maybe I will effectively be paid for my labor. Maybe. There’s a lot I need to do to the house and yard to make it someplace that someone else will want to buy. There’s a lot to fix and change and stuff. I hate caring about other peoples opinions.

My belly hurts. I’m hungry and eating hurts. This is not fair.