The Land of Entrapment...

Brent always jokes that I only married him because he was getting the fuck out of Albuquerque and would take me with him. It's funny, but it's not strictly true.

I was more than ready to move out of my parent's house, but some of that stress actually came after Brent and I had already decided to get married. But I was always the person in my friend group that was never going to leave Albuquerque. I didn't see a reason to live anywhere else. Albuquerque was home.

My brother always called it the Land of Entrapment (the actual motto is Land of Enchantment) and it was supposed to be a critique of the police department, which it is, but for me it always seemed more like a statement on how you can never leave. It gets its hooks into you like a particularly wicked goathead and you are stuck.

I have a lot of friends who left, went off to seek their adventures in cities that weren't as lame as Albuquerque. Places that weren't decades behind in pop culture. Places with a nightlife that consisted of more than house parties and running from the po po. And then they would come back. Sometimes right away. Tail tucked between their legs running for the safety of home when the big bad world was a lot badder than they had thought. Some when parents needed help. Some when just the craving for home became too much. Because it really is like no place else.

We even came back for a couple of years when Brent first got out of the Navy. Bought a house and everything. Made plans to settle down there. Already thinking about how we would afford to send Katie to Academy for high school. But Intel transferred us to Portland and...

I love Portland. Katie loves Portland. Brent loves us to be happy. And to be fair he likes it a lot as well. We get all the seasons without any of them being too much. It's not too cold in the winter, it's not too hot in the summer. Spring and Fall are gorgeous. I always say I love the rain like only a kid raised in a desert can. Our brief sojourn to Colorado Springs just cemented that Portland was where we belonged.

But...

It's really expensive here. A house the size of our current house in the Albuquerque area would be hundreds of thousands of dollars less expensive, with more land and no HOA. And taxes are lower. And utilities are lower.

MORBID ALERT

Brent and I think about retirement for him a lot. Part of it is because we really like spending time together and retirement for him means more of that. But there is always the drumbeat that Mastenbrook men tend to die young. When his dad had his heart attack at 58 it seemed too young and we were 38. Now that we're 56 it seems WAY too fucking young. My father also started having heart attacks in his mid 50s and my cholesterol levels are not great. But we worry more about him than me. His mother's health also crashed early. High blood pressure and diabetes and a few other things. She was managing them okay, until COVID.

So we think about how much time we might have left. I used to say we were going to live to be 100. People in my family have. It wasn't that big of a stretch to think I could be one of them. And Brent hates to tell me no so I just told him he had to live to 100 as well. And then because of *waves hand* all this it doesn't seem as likely anymore that anyone is making it to 100. Suddenly we are honestly looking at how much time we have left to enjoy each other, and just life in general.

Which leads us to what do we do with this great unknown amount of time? Moving to someplace less expensive gives Brent an earlier out at work. Assuming, of course, that we still have any sort of savings left after Trump stops crashing the economy, and that we have any sort of SS or Medicare available. And even if all of that happens, or maybe especially if that happens, living somewhere less expensive would be a good idea.

Brent has been trying to convince me to move to the midwest for years. I just can't wrap my head around doing that voluntarily. Snow? Wind? Cold? Michigan especially is on his wishlist but politically it's just not stable enough Blue for me. Illinois or Minnesota are options but...Brrr... I've been looking at some of our smaller towns here. Florence has decent priced houses, for instance. Doesn't fix the tax issues as much, but it does take a chunk of our monthly nut down. And it's still in Oregon, so it's still green and lovely and close to Katie. But now that Intel has gone back to having to be in the office 4 days a week we can't really move that far out.

Then talking to Katie a couple of weeks ago and she said that New Mexico politics and prices were probably the closest to what I want. Which Brent had mentioned in passing a few times as well, but he knows that I do not want to move back so he didn't push it. It was a no go from the start. But with both of them saying maybe you need to reconsider your never going back stance, maybe I need to reconsider my never going back stance.

Yeah, I went from I never want to leave to I never want to go back. It's hot. It's dry. It's so brown. All of the shades of green we have up here there are shades of brown down there. It's fraught with complicated familial issues. I do not want to move back to New Mexico. And moving in and of itself is terrible. And selling our house in this economy terrifies me. And how do we manage showing the house and not traumatizing the cats? And getting our electric car across a few states that might not be as covered in chargers as our area. And moving the cats. And how expensive would it be to move all of our things? I mean not just the furniture but I have a full gym in my garage, will my treadmill and rower make a move without breaking and, and, and...

Yeah, I overthink and worry about everything. It takes me a long time to make a decision. Give me a year and I might convince myself that moving back to NM is fine.

But Intel is moving up our timeline. We don't know what's going to happen there and if we are going to move we need to do it while Brent is employed. But if he doesn't stay employed will the savings be enough if he doesn't find work again because in NM the options are fairly limited and... (stress spiral starts again) I don't not make major decisions quickly. It's just not my comfort zone.

I do not want to move back to New Mexico. But I also do not know if we can afford to stay here. I don't want Brent to feel as much pressure as he is facing now. But I don't want the added stress of a move, especially a move there. But it would give us some breathing room.

I can do that back and forth all day.

And I will.