rustypants speaks

it’s been a flurry of activity here at the house as we pack twice: once for our move to pensacola (in which we are loading our two cars and my dad’s pickup), twice for the house itself (so when it sells, we can just come back up and load the truck without having to do a lot of packing, too).

we’ve come across a lot of memories of the four short years here and even more memories of the seventeen years we’ve been married. when we bought this house we were certain that we’d never move again – it was perfect and things were all sunny and bright! it’s funny how things change – i’m more sad that we’re leaving our families and friends. i’ll definitely miss the house (especially temporarily moving into a 1 bedroom apartment) but it’s not as crushing as i thought it’d be. the realization of how awesome it is to do what we’re about to do – that’s overpowered the great sadness i thought i’d feel over selling it.

we’ve been having great fun getting things together, seeing family and friends, packing, dreaming, hoping, planning. we’ve got a couple more days and we’re on the road. please do stop by sunday afternoon and hang out with us a bit – we’d love to see you.

we’re not quite sure what dolby’s going to think of this whole move thing but hopefully his dog-brain will adjust as he stops to smell the fragrant fire hydrants of pensacola, leaves his own frangrance, meets some new butts to smell and pups to wrestle with. who knows? maybe his obsession with eating crap will end as he basks in the florida sun.

for now, it’s back to the list of things to pack, things i’m forgetting to pack, things that need to be disconnected and services turned off.

will we accidentally leave a burner on? will i need to turn around and check?

hey folks -

Sunday, July 29th from 3-6pm, we (Lise and Scott) are having a little get together at our house!

come over, eat a hotdog, have a drink, help us pack our two cars with a couple boxes, hug us, tell us about what’s going on, then…

say goodbye. :-(

we move to pensacola, florida the next day.

scott’s teaching 5th grade language arts and social studies. lise’s going to be teaching art. we’ll be living 10 minutes from the beach. new adventures! great excitement! a place for you to come and visit!

to get the skinny on how all this came about, click here or just scroll down & find the posts on pensacola.

email me, message me, call me for information or to cry one solitary tear as the painful realization hits.

scott

if you’re a regular reader of this blog you know we’ve been working on moving to pensacola, florida for the past 6 months or so and things are getting down to the wire!

things that are going on. in no particular order:

• the house is still on the market and we’ve dropped the price a second time. this is distressing only in that we’re almost down to what we paid for it 4 years ago. our rationale, however, is that we’re either going to lose money by holding out for a higher price and continuing to pay the mortgage, or we’re going to lose money by dropping the price another $5000. not happy about it, but the move is here and it’s more important than making a mint on this place.
• we leave for a 1500 miles in 36 hours trip to pensacola friday july 20th for lise to take a 45 minute $25 subject area (art) content test. it’s quite possibly the most asinine thing we’ve had to do in regards to this move. if not most asinine, then certainly the most expensive and time consuming thing.
• i’m very excited about teaching 5th grade language arts and social studies. when we went down 2 weeks ago and met with the principal, toured the school, met a few other teachers – this was VERY cool. i’m looking forward to getting started and being a part of the team at semmes elementary!
• things have gotten more exciting and more stressful as we move towards the moving date. lise’s not been hired by the school district in part because of this test she has to take. the house not selling yet and the dropped price ads to our financial concerns. getting the house ready for us to move out – holy cow, so much to do!
• the excitement, though, is overpowering. this is the biggest move we’ve ever made and the anticipation of the things we’ll get to do (like, TEACH 5th GRADE! among other things) is bubbling just below the surface.
• sadness, too – moving away from my mom and dad, moving further away from lise’s mom and family, moving away from friends – this has started to become a daily realization, an almost perverted song and dance of, “zow – we may never see this person again!”

it’s 3:10am and we’re leaving in less than 5 hours. i guess i ought to sleep.

we’re in town for one more week.

Move Date: Monday, July 30.

want to stop over and see us before we roll out? please give us a call!

but that didn’t stop us.

wednesday was lise’s birthday and we were down in pensacola. now, normally, sitting on the beach as the sun goes down gives you a spectacular sunset, a salty taste of the gulf on your tongue and some sand in your sandals.

not so this time.

the initial sight was clear sun and balmy heat. we looked around for some seashells and hung out together.

and then the sun was blotted out by some cool cloud formation. we still had no idea what was coming so we settled in to see the sunset.

before long, the sky to the northwest has gotten pretty dark and scary looking. the clouds envelop us overhead and lise and i start making some mental contingencies for a quick run to the car, should the heavens open and dump their load on us.

we weren’t worried when the beach east and west cleared out. we weren’t worried when the lightening started from the north. we weren’t worried when it was obvious that it was raining just across the bay on the mainland.

we got worried when the sight became what you see here on the left. THAT, my friend, and the sudden 10 degree drop in temperature, made me look at lise and go, “i think we need to get the hell out of here, pronto.”

so we snapped this last shot on the right of the two of us on the beach just before 50,000 volts of electricity were scheduled to be unleashed on our fool heads. and we ran like crazy to the car, careful not to have our metal chairs up too high. why encourage it with lightening rods?

this last picture is the sight of the beach taken from the relative safety of our car just before the rain came down hardcore. couldn’t see 10 feet ahead of us. wind went nuts and we looked at each other and went:

“um. ha. ha. we’re fricking nuts!“

it was a beautiful storm and worth every minute.

i’m afraid that if i continue to paint, clean, move, scrape, chisel, sand, seal, sweep, paint, tape, paint, move, box, pack, paint, etc. this house…

i’m going to go fricking nuts…

the silence on the boards hasn’t been due to lack of events, more due to lack of time.

what’s going on, you wonder?

• we’ve gotten official notice from the Florida Board of Education certifying us to teach down there – Lise is now certified in Art (K-12) – Scott is now certified in Elementary Education (K-6) and ESE (Special Education K-12). what’s the next step with this certification? read on…
• Escambia County Schools still have not listed the available jobs for the 2007-2008 school year. a handful of them are up (including a Deaf/Hard of Hearing position – shame i don’t like deaf education…) but we’re still waiting for the jobs to be listed so we can begin interviewing for them.
• the house in cincinnati is almost ready to list. we’ve spent the last couple months slowly working on stuff, then with my finishing at Xavier a couple weeks ago, we’ve moved into high-gear. hopefully everything will be done by the end of may so we can get this house on the market and sold. the picture at right is the beginning of the end for our canary-yellow kitchen. big bird, we hardly knew ye…
• tentative pre-approval from the mortgage company in florida indicates that we can look at getting a home loan for up to $150,000. we’re DEFINITELY not looking for a home in that range, but it does open our options up quite a bit. when we were in pensacola last month, our house search was very disappointing. now that we’re looking up to about $125,000, the search has given me some hope – there are some nice places down there in the 115,000-125,000 range.
• school’s almost out here (nine more actual days of school) so this is cause for celebration (and has given us a mental energy boost in working on the house) and will help us focus more energy on florida.
• tentative move date is july 25, or thereabouts. we actually have to report to the school system on august 9, so we’re going to need time to get settled, etc. – again, this is tentative – we’ve still got plenty of things that have to be worked out. the wild thing is: this is only eight weeks from today – shouldn’t i be all freaked and spazzed out? hmmmm…

the bottom line? we’re psyched about this move! things have been going well in regards to having everything come together, getting support from friends and family, having the money available to do the work we need, the housing market slowly picking up, our mental health as we prepare, etc. – it’s been a very rewarding process so far. lise and i have come together in an awesome way while we work on the house and prepare to move – all the things we’ve been hoping to accomplish with this (more time together, getting closer, having a common and exciting goal together and working hard towards it) have been seen and we’re excited about what the future brings!

time’s a-wastin! come over and see us soon!

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.