I've decided to make this more of a mom in the city blog and to start posting regularly again.

It's interesting, because we've basically just had a watershed moment, when we decided to buy a house 3 blocks from where we currently live. It's a great house and everything seems to be going smoothly. I feel like a real grown up in some ways (I usually feel like I'm about 12 years old in terms of maturity level and accomplishments) because it's a major house with a major mortgage, one I'm not entirely confident we can afford the monthly payments on, but it also seems like my job is going to work out and larry's biz is picking up (I am so proud of him - and he'll probably kill me for saying that - but I constantly get such positive feedback about his work, and it seems like he's really found his niche), so I'm hopeful that we can do this house thing (and if not, I guess we're screwed). Hopefully here, necessity will be the mother of invention.

Anyway, we did look in New Jersey and the areas are nice and it would be nice to have trees and good school options and be close to my folks without needing to take the bridge and all of that. But it just all seemed so neat and clean and perfect in this way that didn't allow for any of the good grit we are used to. It was all so white, too. I guess our neighborhood is pretty white, and I feel like something of a racist that we did not buy on the other side of broad, but come on, there were crack pipes in the house we looked at! I'm always on the defensive - I know. But the thing with the taxes in NJ meant that we had to look at smaller houses and in the end they weren't much bigger than the house we already have or they were just gross or in industrial areas. Because what we want, or at least I want, more than anything is to be not just in a neighborhood, but in a community. Maybe I need to be in a community that has some adversity to weather, because I really love the way my community is coming together to solve its problems and I want to be a part of that. It makes me feel like I have a meaningful life and that I'm surrounded by dynamic people.

It all goes back to that Woody Allen line: It's important to make a little effort in life once in a while. Otherwise, we're all just sitting around in our pajamas watching tv and being carted from place to place in our hovercraft eating junk food. i don't want a junk food life. I want to make effort. Maybe that's why I'm always making my life more complicated than it needs to be: alternative work schedules/childcare arrangements, volunteering, cooking when i could order pizza, creating programs at work when i could just clock in and out. Writing. Having kids. Having kids definitely complicates life, they create hills and valleys out of the flat line of life, and god those valleys are fucking hard, but oh those hills can make you cry with sweetness. I want my kids to see a life of effort. I want them to know its not about tv and junk food and hovercraft. So we don't have a driveway, we have to improve our school, we have to walk to our "backyard" otherwise known as the playground. But when we get there, all our friends are there and we don't have to play alone.

I don't want to play alone, no matter how much house I could get for my money.

If you think I'm nuts (and why not, my husband and family are certainly convinced I am) then check back for more insane rantings about the people who jog vs. the people who buy their groceries using a double stroller.