This Makes My Stomach Hurt A Little

We've lived in Texas for eight years now.

It was my idea, mostly, to move here so we could be closer to my parents, who in the grandest twist of irony I have known, moved to the exact town we moved away from one year later.

When we pulled into our driveway for the first time, we had to ask the neighbor kids to move off the porch so we could unlock the door. We had to ask the same kid's parents to move their cars out of our driveway so we could park ours there. They all pretended not to speak English. It didn't get much better after that. In fact, I pretty much began plotting our departure from crap-ass neighborhood before the boxes were even unpacked. Have you ever gotten the distinct impression that you don't belong somewhere?

That was eight years and four months ago.

At this moment my husband is talking with our mortgage company trying to get us preapproved for loan on a house we have been stalking admiring for months. It's a brand new home, never been lived in, in a gated community we really can't afford. The house has sat empty for almost ten months and the price has continued to drop and drop until it's now only nine thousand dollars more than our self-imposed limit. We're going tomorrow to see how badly that extra nine thousand means to them.

We like the neighborhood. We've sat in the house and watched the minimal traffic drive by. We've watched the kids come and go from the park. We've introduced ourselves to the neighbors and, so far, they seem pretty easy to get along with. The backyard is smaller than we'd like and we'd no longer be on a cul-de-sac, but we like the neighorhood. It seems to be a place where we might actually fit.

I think it's time.

Keep your fingers crossed.