Ways that I am ready to move

In my article I wrote about yesterday I talk about how it is more important to become aquainted with the wild that is near by than those inspirational trips to the "greats". I talked about the little bits of wild that exist in the city.

But for me right now I am ready to move from the city to someplace where there is more wild near by. I want to be able to go for a morning walk on a dirt road and smell the leaves or spend less time driving than hiking. Denver is great, but after four years I am done being in a city.

Perhaps it has to do with Alder and how he has made me slow down and appreciate my days more. Or the fact that sometimes I feel both lost and confined. What ever is causing this feeling I am ready to move to a smaller city or town. I am ready to know more of my neighbors and to care more what happens around me.

Living here has jaded me. In our last apartment there were some kids living in a basement apartment who were prostitutes and cooking meth. We lived in once of the nice neighborhood, right on a park with a zoo and museum. The houses around us were sell for over three hundred thousand dollars and most blocks have monthly meetings and socials. Yet in our small six apartment building we had these kids, a stripper with a "sugar daddy" and a family that had the police called on them a few times a week because the dad beat the mom.

I know these problems exist in all sizes of communities, but I am ready not to be loaded in with them so many at a time. Apartment living, which I did for the first 18 years of my life, is not for me. If I am going to deal with people who frustrate me, who are either rude or beyond my help, I want more of my own space to retreat.

I have found myself getting snippy on more occasions lately, especially with teenagers. I know it is because I do not have anyplace that is truly away. In our apartment now we are hemmed in. To the west is the other apartment in the building, sound travels through the walls. To the east are some awful neighbors who have late night drunk/ stoned parties on their deck which is fifteen feet from our bedroom window.

When it is nice out we can even sit in our yard since the landlord decided that he would xeri-scape it, without putting either thought or effort in to it. The front yard is small rocks, too large to set a chair on and too thin to keep the black plastic from showing. Out back is just a slab of concrete. There is no respite here. At least the apartment itself is nice, a bit on the dark side, but nice.

But complaining isn't what I meant to do, I just wanted to explain why I am ready to move. There is also one other big reason (not including all the important ones I haven't mentioned) Denver summers are way too hot for me. I would rather have a few weeks below zero that a few weeks over 100. Alder was born on a cool day, it was only 95 but the next week of my recovery it was all over 100. We don't have air conditioning.

Of course I will miss things from Denver. I've made some of the best friends I have ever made here and it really is an easy city to have fun in and get around. But the other things still trump those. Not to mention that there are over 800 acupuncturists in the Denver area (no work for Kevin).

So for the rant.