How to decide where to live

[razz]

I wonder what it is that speaks to us about a place and makes us feel at home. I've always been fascinated by that topic - the sense of place.

DH and I had moved a lot in our lives, before and after we married. About 9 years ago (hard to imagine that long ago), DH and I talked to a realtor about moving closer to our children. After he left us with his sales proposal, DH got very quiet in the dining area and I, sitting in the living room. started to cry with a pain in my gut that I had never had about a place. He came and looked at me with the most beautiful tender expression on his face saying, "we're finally home, aren't we?" He was right.

I love this area because - let me count the ways- similar values to the community, lovely seasonal climate with mild winters, beautiful lake beaches, phenomenal year-round food production, accessibility by car/transit to all the art attractions I could want, walkability in my current home, feeling safe and secure, good services of all kinds... I needed some modification to my front concrete steps. A contractor was doing a large project next door so I walked over and asked his opinion on what was involved in the modification; $300 2 days later and it is done at the same time as the large job. Another quote I had received last fall for a much larger effort but the same result was over $2000. I also discovered halfway through that he had been a neighbour of mine when he was about 12 years old or so.

Is finding a 'sense of place' when things that are important to you line up together at one spot? Can you only find it if you explore by moving or by defining what is most important to you and looking for it? Or as we did, by the pain at the thought of leaving a treasured area?

[catherine]

Great thoughts, razz.

You are lucky to have had that visceral response to what you were feeling about moving.

I have to say there's no real love lost by leaving NJ. We don't have a strong social life here at all. But I do love my house. It looked like a crap hole for a couple of decades because we had no money in the early years. Now my kids come to visit and I think there's a part of them that feels cheated. We've finally had the means to fix it up a little. And I mean A LITTLE. It's still no palace. But there's also no more cracked 70's pink tiles in the bathroom; no more yucky scratched vinyl tile flooring, no more burned formica kitchen counter.

But I do have a yard with 3 raised beds, gardens with perennials I chose one at a time, a bathroom DH and I built ourselves after choosing to demo the old one on one New Year's Eve. We have our own home offices several rooms apart. We have a bazillion memories of our kids over the past 32 years.

Shoot, razz, now you have me crying, too!

[Teacher Terry]

IL: I am confused about your friend's reaction because she still lived in the same town and could visit her old neighbors. I could see if they had moved to a different town. I have lived only in 1 town where i was friends with my neighbors. My kids were small and at night we sat outside and watched them play and we became friends. We live in an old neighborhood and we are friendly with our neighbors. When I lived in suburbs you mostly don't know your neighbors.

[iris lilies]

IL: I am confused about your friend's reaction because she still lived in the same town and could visit her old neighbors. I could see if they had moved to a different town. I have lived only in 1 town where i was friends with my neighbors. My kids were small and at night we sat outside and watched them play and we became friends. We live in an old neighborhood and we are friendly with our neighbors. When I lived in suburbs you mostly don't know your neighbors.

Here in our victorian village you know everyone, you see people all the time out and about. You go into neighborhood restaurants and there are people you know. You go to the movie theater across town and there are people you know. You go grocery shopping two moles away and there are people you know, easy.

Neighbors stop,and chat when they are outside. Be ause a lot of people park on the street, we see each other coming and going.

The formal appointment to see old friends means smeone has to call ahead, set a time, prepare the event, etc.

Sure, she can make a formal appointment to see people, but our concerts in the park, the Friday night cokctail parties, etc. are all informal drop -in events to see people you know.

she was unable to engage the attention of people in the snooty suburb. People dont know their neighbors in the suburbs, as you say.

[Teacher Terry]

IL: I totally get it now. why did they ever move in the first place? It sounds awesome to me.

[pinkytoe]

the place where they were conceived.

I was conceived in Denver and both sets of great-grandparents settled in Colorado. All of those ancestors including my parents are buried here. I always craved the sight of mountains and rivers. Being stuck in the flatlands of Texas never felt quite right though I grew to appreciate the terrain there and the friendliness of folks before the invasion of recent transplants. I do know that since we moved to this house in Colorado, that the little street we live on is 10 times friendlier and less pretentious so that feels more like home.

[SteveinMN]

While not self-driving, my current car is the smartest vehicle I've ever driven.

Our daughter has a new car which has a lot of the driving-aid technology you mentioned. As someone who drives as if failure at the task would kill me, I find a lot of it unnerving -- the lights and buzzing that indicate the car is nearing a shoulder, the nav screen's switch to the corner cameras when turning, and, especially, the first time I was in the car when the automatic stop-start kicked in at a traffic light. I'm sure it's all a matter of getting used to it. I wonder, though, if I'm not getting out of all this tech what I should because I'm already attentive and moving my head while driving and all that.

I also wonder how much it's going to cost to replace an electric remote-control self-defosting tinted side-view mirror with a turn-signal indicator and a camera when someone knocks it off pulling out of the garage.

My problem with that sort of technology comes from the fact that those systems sometimes turn themselves off during inclement weather such as a heavy rain which can adversely affect visibility. What would an autonomous car do in that case?

I understand this is a topic of some discussion as these vehicles hit the road. What I've read most recently is that control is returned to the "driver" after some warnings. But the person in that seat may not be in a position of being ready to take control. Then what? Similarly, if all the cars drive themselves except in the really rough stuff, what kind of skills will new drivers need to acquire in coming years? And how will they keep them up without practice? Will license renewal depend on passing a random situational test in a driving simulator? The technology behind autonomous driving is interesting to me, but the social and design issues behind it fascinates me.

[iris lilies]

IL: I totally get it now. why did they ever move in the first place? It sounds awesome to me.

They are 70 years old and had a 150 year old house of 4,000 sq ft in 3 stories plus basement.

It is interesting watching the original pioneers here age. Most of them have been moving out, but a few hunker down and find property here in imaginative ways. One couple took two tiny houses and connected them for their retirement home. Another couple built a small two story house, a sort of carriage house looking thing, in the extra lot of their huge old house. Another couple built a master suite on the first floor of their old Victorian house. Another couple is building a brand new comventional looking replica Victorian house, but it will have a full bath and master bedroom suite on the first floor. The owner said he will never need to go ipstairs.

All of these builds were to age out here, a neighborhood that has precious few small and one story dwellings.

[Teacher Terry]

That is too bad that there are few smaller homes or ones with a bedroom on the first floor. If you had that you could just shut the 2nd floor off. My Mom never went upstairs except to clean before we would be coming home and sleeping in those rooms.

[JaneV2.0]

Hmmm. Maybe it's the introverts who inhabit the suburbs. Of course, the PNW is famous for its avoidance of social interactions anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze
"48th in extroversion!" No wonder I love it here!