Spoke too soon Part 2

Just when it looks like we've made our decision about how and where to live, a twist. This will not surprise anybody who knows us. They've been waiting for it. What's it been, a month or two?

G has been given the opportunity to build and manage a large commercial project with our family being financially vested, courtesy of his mother. It's up in Fort Pierce, Florida, which is only notable for two things: 1) It's the shortest distance between exits from I-95 to the Florida Turnpike; and 2) Its neighbors.

Remember this story? A few years back, a girl felt threatened by some black kids at her Fort Pierce high school and called up the Klan to offer support. They sent over skinheads for bodyguards. It earned an episode on Jerry Springer -- lots of chair throwing on that one.

G and I drove up there in the late 90s to check out an old shopping center that his brother was considering for redevelopment. The old Winn-Dixie supermarket still had three restrooms. Men, Women and Colored. The third had been in use as a broom closet, but the sign was still there. Horrifying and surreal.

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Most people doubt our sanity, and would be unnerved by constantly changing plans. It doesn't bother me, and only recently do I realize why that is. It's all Mr. Casey's fault.

Mr. Casey was my cute, guitar-playing, fifth grade teacher. In the year 2000, he told us, the planets were going to align and wreak havoc. Earthquakes, hurricanes, your basic Armageddon. Let's see, I'll be 35 years old. I wonder if I'll be married? Will I have any kids? Will I at least have had sex yet? I'd better get busy.

I committed myself to cramming as much living as possible into my remaining 24 years. (More on that some other time, perhaps. Suffice to say, I've got some great cautionary tales for my daughters.)

There just isn't enough time. I want to live in a townhouse in Oxford, a stone cottage on a rocky coast, an apartment in Manhattan, a dairy farmhouse in Vermont, a Mayan village in the Belizean rainforest, a boat, a log cabin in a pine mountain forest, Gaugauin's Tahiti, a plantation under the granddaddy oaks, a cave house in Cappadocia...

Thank goodness for books.

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We can keep the island, will probably have to dump the hotel, and will begin looking for something over there very soon. At least that's the plan du jour.

Fort Pierce is definitely not up there on my list of places to live, but the thought of not worrying about the expense of health insurance and retirement plans (of which we have none) and braces and college...

Oooh, and more books.