Really, it was that warm in Norfolk. And humid. In our attempts to corral the cat, who broke away like something out of a kitty prison movie, we all broke a sweat. More accurately, we broke a funk. Tidewater air will do that to you.
By the time we'd gotten to the Thimble Shoal Channel Tunnel (say it three times fast!) it was 60 degrees, and by the time we hit the Delmarva peninsula it was 52. Niggling thoughts about global warming notwithstanding, I admit freely that I wanted to turn that car back around and spend a few more days ensconced in the languorous humidity of the screen porch, paying no mind to the danger of six hundred pounds of wisteria vine dangling above.
It wasn't just the weather (which probably turned cold an hour after we left). It was the pace of things -- the way every person we passed walking on the street stopped -- actually stopped -- to say hello. It was the absence of car sounds and diesel buses and helicopters and sirens, the ability to meander down the street with a two-year-old and a three-year-old and not have to keep up a deerlike level of alertness for approaching cars/trucks/buses/muggers/poorly controlled German shepherds. It was the way the sky wasn't brown around the horizon. I love Philadelphia, I really do, but I realized, maybe the day after Christmas, that I would have to consciously adjust back to my city way of living -- head up, walk purposefully, and never ever ever leave your purse in the car or your car unlocked. And I felt...tired.
I'm so glad we live here, and I hope we live here for at least another year. Furthermore, of all the places to live in Phillly, I'm glad we're in this particular one. But but but but but.
The week in Norfolk solidified what's been slowly congealing around the edges of my mind (and Sean's mind too. We're a team, dammit! Never leave a man behind!): we can't live in a big city forever. We need a smaller city, possibly even a more southerly city. We want a place where we can actually afford a little house in a decent neighborhood, a weird little overgrown yard maybe, architectural quirks and places to walk to and a life that isn't cut up by commuting and having to hop in the car to do every damn thing. A little humidity or fundamental Christianity doesn't faze us, either. You just have to not move around too much and drink a lot of iced tea, maybe with a little bourbon in it.
Thanks so much for all your comments on Nashville. The future is seen through a municipal government website darkly (not to mention the job posting list, yike) but it's helpful to hear about the possibilities. Because if there's one thing I love doing, it's constructing imaginary future worlds in my head to the exclusion of the actual present real world. That, and casing the MLS for real estate. Oh! And making scale diagrams of rooms on graph paper and arranging furniture (also drawn to scale) in them.
Oh, and to get a jump on a New Year's good habit (I refuse, resolutely, to make resolutions. In fact I resolve never to do it, at least not this year): I have started doing my T-Tapp workouts. I am a BRICK HOUSE, people. Good stuff.
