I Guess We Should Explain

Back in April we posted a very short message announcing that we were moving out to Crystal Lake, and since then, I've been talking around it by posting about packing, our wonderful hallway neighbors, and the things we'll miss about our West Town, Chicago neighborhood.

But I figured that I should talk a bit about why we're moving, since it seems a little out of character for us.

It was a perfect storm of sorts: motivation, opportunity, and romance. You see, Trevor has always envisioned living on water (notice that our blog [which he named way back in 2006] is called "Archipelago" and the web address is "seafolk"). He even mused about us moving to Alaska so he could become a deep sea king crab fisherman. I quickly--very quickly--forbade him to even think about it. I refuse to be a sea widow. (is that a thing? well, it's a thing now. and I don't want to be one.) So we just lived in our shoebox loft, happily.

But our romantic daydreams of living on water were pushed into the realm of quasi-reality when, last summer, we considered buying a little cottage in downtown Sturgeon Bay, WI, where Trevor and his siblings have been vacationing and visiting his grandparents since they were all little Power tykes. Trevor, who loves to look at houses and apartments online, found a 400 sq.ft. cabin (and you all thought that our loft was small!) for sale. We visited it--twice--and got close to getting it for a vacation house. But we ultimately realized that rehabbing a house (it needed a lot of work) while we were living four hours away wasn't going to work for us. Plus, two mortgages is, um, twice as many mortgages as we currently have.

400 square feet of absolute Wisconsin adorableness. But not for us.

But of course Trevor kept looking. He found a house on an island somewhere in northern Illinois that was very cool, but unrealistic for year-round living (unless we were okay with snowshoeing across the frozen lake in the middle of January to get to our car, which would be parked on the mainland, and then driving to work. nope. not okay with that). He found a few houses around Powers Lake (in Wisconsin. We couldn't justify crossing a state line to go to work.) and he even explored Trevor, WI (Wisconsin again, but there is a bar called Foxy's, so there's that. oh, and it's called TREVOR! and it's close to Powers Lake. kismet).

And then, sometime in late fall, he found a little house for sale in Crystal Lake, only three miles from the college where I teach. When he showed me the listing, I thought it's another cute house we won't buy; not because I didn't like it, but because...well, because it was Crystal Lake. And we live in Chicago. End of story.

I define myself by living in Chicago, in fact. I mean, really, I do: my Twitter handle is @chicagocommuter. It's who I am. It's what I do. I live in Chicago and I commute to Crystal Lake to teach at a terrific college. I've been doing it for over seven years, and I fully intended to do it for another twenty-five years (at which time I would retire to focus on my writing and urban gardening and I would work weekends with Trevor at his art book store). And I forgot all about the little house and I started the spring semester.

But a couple months later, Trevor mentioned it again. Should we actually think about it? So we thought about it. And thought about it. And thought about it some more. We had an equally long list of reasons to move as we did to stay. We're currently only miles from a lot of our family, and Trevor works so close to our place that he sometimes walks. We have everything we need--grocery stores, restaurants, bars, museums, theaters, music venues, (sandwiches!), family and friends--at our fingertips. But moving would mean a bigger place (an actual house!) with a yard, and a beach and lake only steps away from our back door. It would also mean a ten minute one-way commute for me, which would be quite different from the two hour one-way commute I currently have. But if we moved, Trevor would have to commute.

So, with our list of pros and cons totally even, we were at a stalemate. What would we do? We'd do nothing and continue to think about it.

But then, one snowy afternoon on my way home from work, I drove past it. And it was pretty damn cute.

Apparently we like houses with big trees in the front yards

So we talked about it some more (and then some more), went to look at the house, and, at the end of March, we decided to do it. We were going to move to Crystal Lake.

Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Crystal Lake, it's a city of just over 40,000 people in McHenry County, about fifty miles northwest of Chicago. It's not a suburb, and not only because it's really too far to be considered to be a suburb. It's not a suburb because it's rural. And I mean ru-ral. This is the two-lane highway that takes me the 2.8 miles from our new house to my college:

See that stuff off the road on the right? It's corn.

There's also a cow farm (dairy farm? I'm new to this.) right around the corner:

Our decision was not made lightly, but we feel good about it. In addition to being just a couple of steps from a little shared neighborhood beach, our house has three pot-bellied stoves (one in the house proper, one in the garage, and one in the room built out above the garage [our future game room/reading room]) and a fireplace in a screened in porch off of the kitchen. Trevor is going to be chop-chop-chopping wood until his heart's content. And seriously, he's looking forward to this. I got him a hatchet for his birthday. It's also got a yard for Roo, a spare bedroom for guests (I'm looking at you, reader), and an office where I'll be able to close the door and look out the window.

And Trevor has assured me that he doesn't mind the commute, as long as he can take the train and not have to drive. I believe him; I didn't really mind commuting, myself. It's a time for quiet, decompression, and anonymity, a time for working or reading or listening to music and staring out the window at the landscape rolling by. We're only two miles from the CL train station, so I'll give him a lift or he'll ride his bicycle or motorcycle.

So, essentially, we'll have a lake house lifestyle all year round. And after fifteen years of living in Chicago, I'm ready for that. Once we decided to move and we knew that it was really happening, I started to notice the noise, the litter, the smell of garbage in the alley next to our building, the crowds, the traffic...the city. Now, will I miss the city? Of course. A lot. But I'm really excited about this new adventure. And we're expecting that all of you will come visit us (not at the same time; the house really isn't very big).