We have come to the worst part of moving for our family - the search for a house to live in.
I hate this part, some of the worst arguments my husband and I have ever had have been over where we will live. Inevitably, it is because what hubby wants to live in and what I want to live in are 180 degrees apart.
Let me explain.
My hubby is wonderful. I love him more than anything in the world, and I think I do a pretty good job of proving my devotion. I follow him around the country and world (well, we haven't done the "world" part yet, but not for lack of trying!), I drop everything when necessary for some aspect of his military job - either to do something for him or to arrange something or attend something, I spend countless hours on letters and CARE packages when he is deployed in an effort to keep his spirits up.
But when we go looking for houses, this wonderful Dr. Jekyll turns into an angry Mr. Hyde.
Hubby's criteria for the house we live in changes at different duty stations. In San Antonio, he wanted to live out in the country while we waited for base housing to come available. The house he selected was to the south, and on about two acres of sand. There was a chicken coop in the backyard that had some lumps in it I believe were dessicated chickens. Across the street was a closed down school that had been completely graffittied over. No lawn care had been performed for what looked like about a year. But hubby liked this house because (a) it had two stories, and (b) it had three bedrooms.
We did not rent that house.
In our first California house, hubby hated the landlord. Now, normally I would not have minded finding someone else - this landlord was truly a nasty piece of work who would enter our house when we weren't home without giving us any notice. He also cheated us out of a significant portion of the security deposit. In any case, I'd rather not have rented from him either, but there were simply no other places to be had in that particular area of the East Bay that would rent to a family with four children and two cats. I know, because we looked for over thirty days.
And our latest house, here in New Jersey, made him angry because I put my foot down and demanded to live on base. I knew that hubby would be deploying, and I had just spent three years living geographically separated from a base. I needed to "purify" my soul by living around people who understood me and knew what I was going through. I needed to hear the planes overhead and the artillery at the FOB. I needed to be able to send my kids off to the park without having to worry about who was driving by and talking to them, and I needed to have people come and introduce themselves to me as the movers brought our stuff in the house. Sometimes a person just needs to be surrounded by something familiar, and this was one of those times for me.
Hubby's current moving obsession is distance. He doesn't want a commute. I've tried to explain to him that is just NOT an option, but he's not hearing. He Does. Not. Want. To. Commute. We have a stack of papers listing different houses in the area, some of which are not too far from where hubby needs to be. Unfortunately, "not too far" means "very bad". The man would be perfectly happy living in a Teepee in a 7-11 parking lot and piggy-backing his wireless internet if he could get in a 5 mile radius from work.
I, on the other hand, am well aware that 6 months into our move hubby will be gone for 6 months. I'm looking for comfort and safety. Unfortunately, comfort and safety don't come cheap and require commuting.
We are at an empasse.
I hope, though, that our "empasse" doesn't end with us living under an "overpass". Even if it is 4.39 miles from work.
