The Square Footage Of This Blog Entry Is Far Bigger Than My New Apartment

It was a long day, beginning with the short plane ride from the city I was living in (boo, hiss) and the city I love (oh San Diego, how I love thee, how I someday want to own real estate in thee, but will probably have to settle for owning a condo). Baby was in a great mood, coupled with the fact that some little kid in the airport was blowing kisses at her. On the plane nobody wanted to sit next to us, passing us by with a look that said "heck no, a baby?! A BABY?!"

She's good I swear.

Finally an older lady and her husband stopped and eyed Baby up and down "don't wear dear," they said "we actually like children." Baby took one look at them, latched on to her bottle and fell asleep for the entire plane ride.

I thought about... square footage.

You see, I've spent the better part of the last two years in a three bedroom house in the suburbs. Not my first choice, but affordable for the area we were in, and it allowed Husband to have his own office where he could spend late nights playing World of Warcraft (yep, WOW for those that actually haven't gotten around to playing WOW). We had the cat, the backyard, the lawn mower and the neighbor who complained because our lawn wasn't as green as hers and also because we'd left our Christmas lights up on the bushes outside of our house.

And I hated it. I hated how quiet it was at night (creepy actually, it's creepy to walk out to the car when there is NOT A SOUND AROUND YOU), I hated how you had to drive 15 minutes to get to ANYTHING, I hated how a trip to Starbucks was a TRIP (pack Baby up, put her in the back of the car, strap her in, get in the car, strap myself in, pull out of drive way, drive 15 minutes, unstrap myself, get in the back of the car, unstrap baby, get out of the car, go inside, order, wait because the people that work at Starbucks figure "hey, you live in the suburbs, you have nothing better to do then wait", order, wait some more, finally get your drink, get back to the car, strap Baby in the car...).

And don't get me started on the weather (WINTER anyone?).

But a three bedroom house wasn't bad, if you like that whole space thing. And in San Diego we had settled on... a one bedroom UPSTAIRS apartment... two blocks away from the beach. Yep, we let our love of everything beach cancel out our need for actual places to put our crap.

So I thought about square footage while Baby slept and the lady next to me told me about how she was going on a cruise to Mexico now that her husband had finally retired.

Square footage felt important when we picked out the house in the suburbs, at least people told us it was. They kept telling us about getting the house, getting the pet and the garage and the new car and how it was really important to have all that square footage. I kept telling myself how important it was, to have the new couch and the king size bed (actually, that is important as currently Baby sleeps with us). I kept telling myself that life in the suburbs was all it was cracked up to be. Even with the across the street neighbor's son who was constantly staring at my boobs when he ran over to say hi.

And what if square footage was important. What if we finally got all of our shit into our new, very tiny, very small space and came to realize NOT ONLY do we not have enough room for our stuff but we do not have enough room for each other?!

I kept thinking "we made the wrong decision. We must have. It's bad of us to move to an apartment by the beach, it's bad of us to move to a city that sees babies as a weird surprise to their day. It's bad that I'm trying to go back to a place where I once spent the better part of an evening hanging over the banister puking my guts out. I'm a bad person, a bad wife, a bad mother, a bad, bad person."

When the plane began it's descent I was ready to call the whole thing off. My husband was on his way to the airport to pick us up and we hadn't signed the lease yet, so we still had time to change our mind. I'm sure if I called my poor father (who was on his way down with our stuff) he would turn around and sacrafice the rest of his remaining back muscles to move us back to our nice three bedroom house in the suburbs... but then I caught sight of it... San Diego, that city by the water with the bright ships and the sunny skies, the way the entire plane perked up when they peaked out the window, how can you not smile when you watch the sun dance on the water?

Screw square footage, this is San Diego we're talking about.

Just as we were about to land I leaned over and told the lady next to me to "have a great vacation. I hope it's fun."

And she smiled and replied "Thank you dear. You are already on a great vacation, you get to live here."

Yeah, I totally do.