how did the spark become a flame?

if you’re not up to speed yet, check out the first two posts:

the road to pensacola, pt. I
the road to pensacola, pt. II

here’s what’s been going on since that lunch lise and i had back in december where we decided to see what it would take to actually move to pensacola…

i began things by logging into www.pensacolaMLS.com (the pensacola Multiple Listing Service where all the for-sale homes are listed with prices, pics, realtor info, etc.) and looking at homes in the range we can afford. one of our biggest concerns is that we don’t want to move backwards and have to rent an apartment forever and ever again – we want to be able to buy a house (eventually) down there. good news! there are plenty of homes down there in our range all over the area. i registered with the site and hooked up with a realtor down there, brian.

brian and i have talked on the phone a couple times and have exchanged emails regarding information on homes, areas, mortgages, and other things realty. seems to be a nice guy. we’re taking him to lunch when we hit pensacola for spring break the first week in april.

Positives: 1 Negatives: 0

next, i needed to know that i could transfer from xavier to another grad school to complete my m.ed in special ed and get licensed to teach. this was a concern: i thought pensacola was home to only community colleges and some baptist-y christian college. a quick look through chamber of commerce materials showed otherwise! university of western florida is in pensacola AND they have my program there! a couple calls there and i come to find out that they not only have my program, it’ll take less than HALF the time it’d take me to do the program at xavier!

Positives: 2 Negatives: 0

obviously if we’re going to move, we’ve got to be able to sell our house. this is where things got a little… sticky? not negative but not as positive as we had hoped.

i had talked with our mortgage company here about them making us a loan in pensacola, etc. and about the sale of our house here in cincinnati. the woman who has helped us told me the formula for figuring out what the listing price would normally be: take the county auditor’s appraisal and add 20%. this sounded too good to be true (given that our county appraisal was $107,000, then add 20% would give us a listing price of almost $130,000). we bought this house 3.5 years ago for $97,000 – there’s no way we’re going to be able to list it for $130,000!!

and i was right. dangit!

mike, our most excellent realtor, walked through the house with me, made a list of things we need to get fixed and straightened up (a much longer list than i was expecting) – then he sat me down and told me the truth. he won’t list the house for more than $109,900 because the market wouldn’t support more than that, and he has to be able to sleep at night. and it’s this honesty that makes me glad he’s our realtor. so, if we can sell at $109,900, after the commission and county taxes, we’re back at around $99,000, leaving us with about $20,000 cash from the sale.

and i’m concerned that won’t be enough to get moved, settled, and get a down payment on a house down there. we’ll see.

Positives: 2 Negatives: 0 Marginals: 1

so now i’m at the point where we need to be talking to the school systems down in pensacola about transferring lise’s certification, finding out what kind of salary there is to be had, and what kind of job i can get while i finish my grad school down at UWF.

quick call and a couple departments later and i’ve gotten most of the information i need on lise. now i start asking about my own job-worthiness. as i’m explaining about being at xavier, what ohio requires (and why it’s going to take me four years to finish the program here, but at UWF only 1 or 2 years), how i’m working in special ed now, etc. etc. etc. the woman finally stops me and says,

“wait: you mean you have a bachelor’s degree?”

“well, yeah – i’m in grad school.”

“oh, hon – don’t transfer to UWF – if you have a bachelor’s degree, you can take the Florida Teacher’s Certification Exam – it’s pass/fail – if you pass, you get a three year temporary certification and we’ll put you in the classroom right away!”

“wait – i don’t have a bachelor’s in education – i’ve only been working in education for a long time.”

“that’s ok – we have a program here to help you through the three year temporary certification to a permanent certification! here’s the website – go register to take the test – when you pass it, let us know and we’ll start the process of getting you certified and hook you up with a teaching position here in the fall.”

and at that, i about wrecked the car.

absolutely amazing. i go from thinking i’m going to have to spend years to get certification and i’m finding out now that all i have to do in florida is pass a computer-based multiple choice test in Elementary Education K-6 and another multiple choice test in Education of Students with Exceptionalities and *poof* i’m a teacher.

amazing.

Positives: 3 Negatives: 0 Marginals: 1

we’ve spent the last 2 weeks starting work on the house. a lot of painting, a lot of chipping, drilling, patching, a lot of clutter-removal (daaayng!! we’ve got a serious case of CLUTTER!!), a lot of being overwhelmed at the task before us.

but a lot of excitement, too.

stay tuned – more excitement is around the corner!

two years ago next month, lise and i were planning our spring break. we didn’t have much money and didn’t have a lot of time. we decided to do what we enjoy best when taking trips: put gas in the car, pack some clothes, grab a couple maps and just drive until we hit someplace cool – no destination in mind. we did this frequently in maryland / delaware / virginia / pennsylvania while we lived on the east coast and can’t name a bad trip in the bunch. the adventure of driving back roads, discovering small towns, festivals, shops, restaurants, parks; seeing scenery, a different way of life, spending time together where it’s just the two of us, talking, looking, hanging together – best kind of vacation, in our opinion.

at any rate, spring break 2005 is coming around and we decide to take a longer jaunt than usual. we’ll drive down to the gulf coast with maps for panama beach, pensacola, biloxi, and new orleans, stop at whichever one comes first, see if we like it. if we don’t? get back in the car and travel to the next stop. and so on and so forth.

we take $250 or so, gas up the car, and off we go. first stop is for a MASSIVE accident somewhere in alabama. we’re stuck for 4 hours on I-65 in the middle of nowhere. we then stop in birmingham for a memorable night (motto: Scariest Super 8 Motel in the Continental United States Located Here!) and in the morning hit the road again.

that afternoon we hit pensacola, florida as our first stop. small-medium town, nothing incredibly flashy about the metro area. we cross over the three mile bridge to pensacola beach and we’re struck by what we see: the beach.

i mean, we’re used to hitting ocean city, maryland or rehoboth, delaware where you have to FIGHT to see the beach – fight the 130 blocks of adulterated oceanfront property, flashing signs, half-naked women, bars, clubs, pay outrageous fees for parking, then after walking block after block to finally hit the overcrowded boardwalk that is lined with candy shops, video arcades, and cheap jewelry and beach shops – bleah.
but here’s the gulf of mexico! no boardwalk! no entertainment district! free parking! miles and miles of public beach just waiting to be walked on and swam in. oh, man – i can’t tell you how neat it was to get to be down there.

we spent the afternoon just soaking up the sight, getting all sandy, finding gorgeous seashells just floating up onto the beach as we stood there and watched, breathing deep the salty warm air. that evening was fun as we found the pensacola Super 8 10 miles out of town, first-come first-serve @ $38/night. we ate at Crabs and sat watching the waves crash. we hit the beach again that night and stayed until we were too tired to stay any longer. the next day we spent the morning and afternoon in the water, collecting bags of seashells, breathing foamy waves of salt water and looking at each other as if to say, “how on earth did we stumble on such a cool place?”

we went back that christmas and spent 4 days in a condo on the gulf shore – dirt cheap and beautiful! temperature was 60 during the daytime (and 40 at night). the sunsets were spectacular – unlike any we’ve ever seen before. we had the whole beach to ourselves and agree that it was the best vacation we’ve ever had. discovered the downtown and surrounding areas a bit, found some parks to visit, shopped a bit, lounged on the beach (and even got in the water every day, much to the surprise of several locals who were bundled up in heavy coats, hats, scarves, mittens and said to us with thick southern accents, “y’all aren’t from ’round here, are yuh?”) and spent the evenings together in the condo having a great time (none of your business – sheesh!)

we returned again for 5 days, same condo this past august and once again had the beach to ourselves (school starts first week of august in florida – beach was dead!). we explored even further during this trip, discovering some places in outlying areas, found new sections of the 8 mile long beach to hang out on, new state and federal parks to visit. we also stopped in the pensacola chamber of commerce and picked up a stack of materials, magazines and information on the area… and began dreaming. not serious dreams, just “wouldn’t it be neat to live down here” kind of dreams.

we made our spring break reservation for the condo back in november – the week of april 1, we’ll be there for seven days.

and the more i thought about our need for things to change, for something to fight for, for a crisis that would bring us back together and cause us to really take charge of our lives again – well, the more i thought about the one place we’d been to in the last several years that we continually look forward to being in. the one place that is big enough to have everything we need, but small enough that we’re not overpowered by an over-crowded, people-crammed city. a place that isn’t a tourist trap. a place that respects the beachfront and the people who come and visit and live there. a place where we could start again with new jobs, a new home, new adventures awaiting us, new discoveries to make, new friends to meet, new day-long drives on unknown backroads, soaking each other up again and getting a new lease on life.

so about 2 months ago, lise and i spent the afternoon in a favorite restaurant of ours for many hours, talking about life, talking about change, talking about the complacency we’ve hit and how hopeless and out-of-control we feel.

and this is where i asked lise if she were interested in exploring a move to pensacola. and she said yes.

and the light started as a small spark.

i’ll tell you how the spark became a flame that has continually gotten brighter in the next post.

complacency: a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like.

it will be no shock to anyone who knows lise and i to reveal that the last 3+ years have been the worst years of our lives. those of you who know us well know most of what has been going on. no one knows everything but us and even we can’t imagine it sometimes. i’m not up to going step by step through the crap that has brought us here, but suffice it to say that physical, mental, educational, and professional health have not been good during this time.

and as it keeps on going, it starts to chip away at you. piece by piece. almost unnoticeable at times. other times it’s like a jack-hammer.

and as it keeps on going, you start to do things you have to do to make it through.

does this make sense?

when bad / awful / rough / unpleasant stuff keeps coming at you, picking away at you, hammering away at you, you start to make compromises.

compromises: to reduce the quality, value, or degree of something.

they start off small and generally stay small. the problem isn’t any one specific compromise you make – it’s the volume of compromises you end up with.

and i’m not talking about moral compromises here. i’m talking about compromises you make, lies you tell yourself, lies you tell others, things you keep to yourself, things you don’t bring up to friends and family, in order to make it through your day at school or at work or at home – the crap that has to be done to get your head up off the pillow in the morning, plod through another miserable, shitty day with your head down and gritting your teeth, so that you can get back to your pillow at night, exhausted, lonely, angry, frightened, and hope, pray, beg, plead that things will somehow get better the next day or that you’ll die in your sleep so you don’t have to face it again.

and when you hope, pray, beg and plead enough for the first thing and it doesn’t happen, you come to hope for the second thing more and more. and as you swirl into the vortex of crap, you obviously make even more compromises.

lise and i have gotten complacent. complacent with life. complacent with each other. complacent with the things around us. we’ve figured out what we have to do to make it through each day – and we make it through. barely. and after three plus years of complacently living life, complacently accepting that we have jobs we don’t care that much for (that lise hates) that pay for the house that we like, pays for the cars, the food, the bills, and leaves us enough to buy other stuff we want sometimes, complacently living side by side but with little growth and little more than physical companionship, complacently accepting that things suck but that we’re “OK” (in the sense that we’re financially taken care of with our salaries) we’ve realized that we’re not in a good place.

are lise and i in trouble? no. are we miserable together? no, just complacent. are we getting divorced? hahaha – NO WAY! do we still love each other to death? you bet, dude – i’d marry her again in a heartbeat and want to spend the rest of my life with her!

but the life we’re living is horrible. and we can’t imagine spending the rest of our lives together living like this. and we’ve been complacent for too long, letting environmental, physical, mental problems control how we feel, how we live.

we need a crisis. we need something worth fighting for. we need something to rally around and break us out of this complacency, this plodding acceptance that we’re physically comfortable and that hopefully we’ll be mentally and physical-health-wise “OK” (eventually) if we just keep moving – this is where the “potential danger, defect” part of the definition comes into play.

crisis: a crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point.

if something big doesn’t happen, if a major crisis doesn’t force us to come together, work together again, fight against the things we’ve been telling ourselves, fight against the demons that keep us up at night, fight against the notion that we’re just stuck in a cycle of crap and there’s nothing we can do to change any of it so just accept it and move along – well, we’re going to probably end up sticking our heads in the oven and turning on the gas.

what kind of crisis do we need to start fighting again? how about moving to pensacola?

look for the next post and i’ll explain more.