Cloud Talk

On the Simpsons, Bart is hanging out with the bullies and they're shooting the shit, looking at the statue of Jebediah Springfield, and up at the clouds looking for shapes of things. Like, a school bus driving off a cliff, a cherry bomb, the statue of Jebediah Springfield with its head cut off. 

They say it would be so cool to take the head off that statue. So. Bart does it. 

And he shows them the severed head, and they get MAD at him. "That was just cloud talk, man." 

Cloud talk. 

Sometimes we sit around talking about stuff. We do our own version of cloud talk. And other times we get closer to cutting the head off of the statue of the town's founder, the guy who iced a bear with his bare hands. 

Doug and I are looking at houses out around Front Royal. As much as we love just taking a ride out there for a day trip, we had our ulterior motive last weekend.

Now, many of you know what happened to us in 2008 2009, 2010, and even 2014, with our old house, when we were in the middle of a refinance with our mortgage company and a certain bank bought it, and ... well. Things got epically fucked up. 

Doug swore that he would never ever buy another house, that no bank would never ever make a penny on interest from him. Ever. Scorched earth. We've been renting ever since.

The pandemic and post-pandemic ponderings have put him in a different state of mind in regards to housing. We were incredibly happy to be in the house we were in when we first moved here, but the owners wanted to sell so we had to move. We managed to get incredibly lucky and found this house 3 doors down the street in 2021, and moved in here. We didn't want to buy the first house, they didn't even offer us right of first refusal they just told us basically we had to move. But anyway - still. Didn't want to buy it anyway. See Doug / no bank / etc.

When that first house here went up for sale, they asked 400k, and it sold for 443k. I checked zillow and it is now "worth" 540k if they were to put it on the market. That would be a fair price for this area. The house we rent right now is "worth" 557k. It's a great little house, great little neighborhood. But we could never afford to live here. 

I don't feel like this is a half million dollar house. 

So we are pondering these things. Rent forever just to stay here? We don't need to commute into work much. Doug has been in three times this year, I've been in twice so far this year. For Doug to get in, sometimes it is a 2 hour ride to go just a few miles to get to his area of Virgnia. For me, I have the metro so that's easy but it's brutal on him.  

Later this month, I've got to go in for a big meeting for 3 days. And there is a day in July that I know I'll be in the office. Aside from that, thank God both of our employers have not instituted a come back into the building work policy. I may never have to enter the building again. 

And Doug can more easily get to where his office is from out West there, than it is to get there from here. And for me, I can drive to the end of one of the metro lines in Virginia there, and Metro in. It'll take forever but I won't have to try and drive into the city at all, and park at my building. 

So technically, we can live anywhere. My colleagues live in Connecticut, Vermont, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago... Nothing is keeping us in this spot, necessarily.

Doug has recently been just feeling that. It's crowded here, it's busy here. The county is expensive. We don't go into the city much. We're over 7 years into our time here, and he's got that wanderlust. 

So we started looking out at Front Royal. There's a lot to like, as far as "vibes" go. And it is affordable. 

The big huge what-if is Geoff. We decided a couple weeks ago not to bring this up with him just yet, you know, in case this is truly just cloud talk. He started talking to us this morning about what he needs to do to enroll in his Associates Degree program. He is taking two prerequisites right now, and the semester is coming to an end so he is thinking it's time to fill out the enrollment process thingie...At the school he's currently attending. 

So Doug and I both figured, now's the time to talk to him about this. 

He took it much better than I thought he would, and MUCH better than 2017. We explained all our justifications. We make DC money but can live out west, it isn't that far away. In fact, if he still wanted to go to the school he goes to, he can. It's an hour drive door to door, but it's already an hour drive door to door with how close we live. 

And, he can transfer. There's a great community college right near where we'd move, and he could enroll there and continue this exact program. He went downstairs with his lunch and came back to talk about driving and commuting and colleges. 

We also showed him that the Shenandoah River has some of the best kayaking, canoeing, tubing in the east. 

"You could go tubing and drink a beer," says Doug.

"That's not safe," says Geoff. 

Hilarious when I think of all these hoards of college students who go on a float with a cooler on its own air mattress. He's still such a Boy Scout, isn't he?

The only thing he'd have to do is decide when to quit his job, when we know what we're doing. And we told him this is all still cloud talk so don't mention it to his boss. He gets it. 

I feel like we all had a really good resolution to that conversation. 

I took myself on a walk while we waited for chinese food delivery. Didn't feel like taking Toffee and having her pull and sniff and drag. I just wanted to listen to the playlist and go. After dinner, I still needed 3,000 steps so... I took her out for a walk to knock down that number. 

Funny, when Dahlia was here, and she was on house arrest, I'd walk her around the house in the morning, several times. And do that several times during the day. Hitting 2k by noon was never a problem. 3k by 3, boom. Today at 5pm I was only at about 4k and I couldn't believe how far behind I was. Gotta up my game during the day so I don't need two walks. 

It was hot out today, mid 80s, humid. We put the AC on at about 5pm. First time this year. 

I was surprised at how well I tolerated the heat when doing both walks. It didn't almost kill me. So I'm feeling improved in so many ways lately. The cat in his picture though, it ws looking for respite anywhere and meowed at me when I said hi. 

I got a nice shower at about 10pm, I never ever shower before bed, but I would have been miserable trying to fall asleep tonight and catching whiffs of my pits. Ha.

Digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  2 walks. One solo, 24 min/1.15 miles. one with Toffee, 26 min/1.14 miles. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

7:30am: 135
4:30pm: 155
11pm: 195

food:
coffee/water
7:30am: phentermine
9:15am: met+glip
12:30pm: english muffin w/pb and bonnie maman's cherry preserves
1:45pm: protein shake
5pm: met+glip
7:30pm: chinese food (general tso's chicken, hunan beef, a little combo rice, 1 spring roll, 3 peking ravioli) 
no wine/alcohol 
10pm: jardiance