I've had an awful lot on my mind lately but what always pops to the top of my mind these days is whether we should move from Louisiana to Texas. Many of you know that I take the train on a pretty regular basis to help my youngest daughter and her husband out with our granddaughter. They have no other Family over there and of course I do not want my grandchild being with strangers anymore than they do. Now in September our grandson will join their Family and they will need help more than ever. I;m pretty much the only one with the freedom and time to give them that help. And I do have a personal stake in all this too, as these are my grandchildren and I want to be in their lives so they can really know their Gran Gran. Taking the train back and forth over there to help is not a problem for me. But what is a problem is how much time I have to spend over there. A lot of times it seems I spend half my time here, and the other half in Texas...which makes me feel like I am living two lives in two states and I'm not really able to participate fully in either life. And my husband spends the times I'm in Texas on his own...which is not very enjoyable for either one of us. Tuesday morning I will be leaving with my daughter and granddaughter and this time I will be in Texas for three weeks which is almost the whole month of June. The closer it gets to our grandson's birth, the more I will gone from our home here in Louisiana. It's hard on me...and even though my husband is really wonderful about my helping our children out, I can tell it's rough on him too. I pray about this issue but get no clear answers. I think some issues there are no right or wrong answers, there are just choices to make and sometimes those choices are not that easy to choose between. When I was younger this choice would have been very easy to make. I would have just packed up and moved to where my daughter and grandchildren were. Now that I'm older and more settled...the decision is not as easy to make. Have you ever been caught in the middle and just didn't know which way to go? If so, how did you finally decide which way to go?
We are TRYING to decide on where to move to when we leave northeastern Florida. We lived south of Denver, Colorado for 5 1/2 years and had to endure the winter months there. It wasn't too bad, but when I slipped and fell on my right shoulder in snow/ice in our driveway, which resulted in rotator cuff surgery and 13 weeks off of work, we decided it was time to sell our house and move non-snow/ice area. Wound up in Huntersville, NC (just above Charlotte). Wife got a job, but 8 months later was laid-off. We really didn't like living there, so decided to check out Jacksonville, FL. Thought we like the boating here and other things, but that sure has changed. We have to wait a year or so before we make the move, but my wife has already packed up some things from our apartment. Now, thing is.........even though my wife really doesn't want to go back and live in "Old Man Winter", we really can't find anyplace we'd really like to move to. We done a number of things during the summer months, when living in Colorado. The boating/trout fishing is great, rodeo action (that we love), RMNP and the "rut" (Elk breeding season) among other things. Thought about Las Vegas, but gambling/casino's are just to handy and we have very little discipline when it comes to gambling/casino's that are "close at hand" and besides that, the summers there are darn hot. The good thing about going back to Colorado and dealing with "Old Man Winter" is that we'd be pretty much fully retired. Might take on a part-time job, but that would be it. A "down side" of living there is there are so many young adults living in Denver metro now due to the legalization of pot/marijuana. Don't think we could handle going outside of an apartment and smelling marijuana in the air! On the other hand, we REALLY want to end up leaving here! Where to is the big question. That is our dilemma!
@Cody Fousnaugh My husband and I lived in Jacksonville for almost 5 years and I did love all the water surrounding us. There was such a diverse variety of people there too which I found interesting and which helped me to see how we are alike in ways, and different in other ways. But I grew to hate the violence in Jacksonville and in the end I did not feel safe or at peace in that City. So when my husband felt the Holy Spirit telling him to bring me home to Louisiana it was a mutual agreement on our part to do just that. And we have been happy here with family and grandchildren. In fact we have had 4 grandchildren born to us since we moved back here. And the cost of living has been great for us here. My husband is from Colorado, he was born in Englewood and his brother lives in Centennial and when we went to visit I thought Colorado was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. But at our age we would get to cold to live up there full time. So it will stay just a place to visit for us. When I did research on living in Colorado I found the cost of living to high also. Still there are beautiful places there. When our youngest daughter and her husband moved to Texas a couple of years ago I was happy for them if that is what they wanted, but not happy that they were just starting their family and the only way we would have time with the grandchildren is when they came to visit or we went over there. Well, it ended up I was over there basically half of each month as my daughter was carrying her first child and she kept having problems with the pregnancy. Twice the baby tried to come to early and my daughter ended up in the hospital with her Doctor trying to stop her labor, etc. Both of those times I was the one who stayed in the hospital with her and then stayed in her home when she had to stay in bed for most of the remainder of her pregnancy. Then I kept going to take care of our new granddaughter when my daughter went back to work. For the past couple of years I have spent half my time living in Texas, and the other half living here in Louisiana. Now my daughter is expected our grandson in September and I am already back to living half my time in Texas and half my time in Louisiana again. There is no other family there for them and I helped my other two daughters with their children and as long as I am healthy enough I want to do the same for my youngest daughter and her children too. But it is no fun spending half my time here and the other half there. I miss my husband, I miss my own home, and even though I love riding the train back and forth when they aren't here to take me back with them, I do not want to continue living my life in two places anymore. So a decision has to be made here but I cannot make this decision on my own. I have to consider what others want to do too. And that is the problem for me. It sounds like you two are in agreement about moving and that is a good thing. As for where to move...I suppose just like for us the answer will come in time.
A lot of people here refuse to admit how bad the crime problem is here, but it is. We've been told by numerous people that the crime is a lot of "Black on Black" crime. The population here is now over 850,000. That's way too high for this former country boy/rodeo cowboy! We just don't like as much diversity that is here. There are cities and towns in Colorado that have a lot less. In fact, I've read that some folks call Colorado a "racist" State. Guess it's just the demographics a person likes, or was raised around. I also read that higher altitude is great for arthritis suffers. That would be GREAT for us! As far as snow/cold goes, when retired, a person doesn't go out in it as much as working people do.
Jacksonville opened up a whole new world for this small town girl, but it wasn't a world I wanted to live the rest of my life in for sure. I found the violence so wide spread, it didn't matter whether you lived in a wealthy gated community or on the wrong side of the tracks, or anywhere in between...violence was always in all of those places in Jacksonville. The diversity also brought in drugs and illegals who did not always have good motives for being there. Jacksonville ended up being a place I would not recommend as a place to call home, that's for sure. Even though retired people do not have to get out in the cold as much, I also find that our old bones feel the cold more even when inside and even here in Louisiana where winters are mild...the cold still gets in my bones and seems to stay there now days. It limits the places I would consider living because of this. It's good if y'all don't have that problem.
Shoot, after we got here in early 2009, my wife wanted a saltwater rod/reel outfit for her birthday and we got me one also. We bought a tackle box, some tackle and got into a Pier Fishing Club. Won a Raffle at one meeting and got another saltwater rod/reel outfit and some more tackle. Had a Bowrider boat in Colorado and done quite a bit of fishing in a lake there, but left boat there (consignment) when we moved to NC. Did keep our freshwater fishing stuff though. Only thing is, we NEVER used the saltwater fishing stuff! That stuff is currently for sale on Craigslist. Another thing, we still have our Winter Parkas from Colorado! Guess, perhaps, we were destined to return to Colorado!
It is hard to make decisions about where to live. I go through some of the same things. I just think that all you can do is make pros and cons lists and hope for the best really. There are always going to be good and bad points about everyone you live or want to live. I think home is where the heart is. Sometimes your heart pulls you in a certain direction.
My heart is definitely pulling me towards Texas and my youngest daughter and our youngest grandkids too. As much as I enjoy riding the train... not being able to go back home every night is rough on my husband and me. I spent half my time in Texas the past couple of years and now with our new grandson coming in September...I'm not looking forward to going through this again for another couple of years. I'd rather just move over there and help with the grandkids when needed and go home every night. It's like I'm living two separate lives and at my age it's getting harder to do this. I'm sure trying to make this decision is where some of my bone weary tiredness is coming from. I want to just move our cozy little cottage over there with everything in it, but that can't happen so it would mean finding another "home" or sharing one with my daughter's family. If we do that, we will definitely need our own quarters and not just a bedroom and bath. I don't know if I would want to do the apartment thing again, but I sure don't want to buy a house either. There are a lot of pros and cons to think about, but all my heart can see is that there is no family there for my daughter, her husband, and our almost two grandchildren. We are pretty much retired so we are free to go anywhere. We are also settled in where we are....and it's not much fun moving at our age anymore. I'm going to be spending the next 3 weeks in Texas helping my daughter so hopefully our decision can be made by the time I come back here to Louisiana.
@Cody Fousnaugh Cody, a wonderful compromise between your humid but warm location might be a halfway point between mountain extremes and the arid desert below them. Arizona's Verde Valley area came to my mind; if you have never travelled there, you might want to look into it. There are no large cities anywhere near, a number of small towns prevail. My nephew, who recently retired from teaching at Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, which is quite cold 9 months a year, is considering the Verde Valley area, which is located between Flagstaff and Phoenix. It looks like this there: I'm guessing the largest town in that area is Sedona. A fairly informative site is: http://www.sedonaverdevalley.org/attractionshighlights/whattoseewheretogo.html Frank