I Need a Drink.

Just when it seems that I get my sh*% together for even half a minute, something kicks out a leg from under me and I drop it all again. Dammit!

The Mr. comes home from work on Friday and tells me that his boss asked him if he is willing to relocate to the crime-ridden, Mid-western city where the company headquarters is located. I mean, seriously crime-ridden... it comfortably makes the FBI top 20 list of most dangerous cities in the US.

This is the point where I throw up.

We live in a safe, pretty place with major cities within driving distance, lots of amazing cultural opportunities, stellar museums, world renowned universities and hospitals, mountains, the ocean, and we're being asked if we'll give it up to move to a land-locked, economically declining, crime-ridden city??? It is, shall we say, an undesirable request.

To give you an idea of how undesirable it is, when the company offered relocation packages a few years back to get the people from one of the departments to relocate from our city to the headquarters, only 2 people out of 35 took the package. The rest quit outright. This says something. It says that, despite the fact that a comparably priced home out there would be a McMansion (bleh!) compared to a small, overpriced, three-bedroom house on a fairly teeny lot, there is nothing, NOTHING there that would make the move worthwhile. Personally, I've lived in that state before and I vowed that I would never go back.

I'm also rather disturbed by what I've seen in that state as far as race relations go. As a mixed-race couple with Eurasian children, the last place that we'd want to be is in an area that has a large, active, KKK membership and an active KKK recruiting headquarters. The kids are unfortunately going to have to learn about this kind of awfulness eventually, but this is not something that I want my kids to have to live with when they're so young.

So, time for The Mr. to get a new job, right? Hahahahaha!! In this job climate?? He doesn't want to move either, but it may be a choice between that and no job at all if it comes down to it. I have every reason for not wanting to move my children there. As for my own selfishness, I've realized in the last decade that I need to be near the ocean. I mean that I REALLY NEED TO be near the ocean. It's the one thing guaranteed to keep me on an even keel. Well, the last time that state was ocean front property was when the plesiosaurs still prowled the sea that ran right through the middle of the continent.

But in the end, this whole decision isn't really up to me, is it? Economic necessity may decide for us. As of this writing, we don't know how cut and dried this thing is and won't know for several weeks until his boss comes back from house hunting (he's relocating to that city from Germany and I strongly suspect that he has no clue what he and his family are in for). Maybe he was only feeling things out. Maybe he'll realize that he's going to lose most of his department and will rethink the whole thing. We won't know his decision until the end of the month.

In the meantime, if anybody needs me I'll be in the bedroom with the covers over my head. After I go throw up, that is.