We Need a REALLY BIG Grid
Major news around here -- we're leaving D.C. and moving to Minneapolis! We're going in three weeks and I still can't quite believe it's really happening.
We had toyed with the idea of moving half a dozen times in the last few years. A bank needs to start complying with new regs, they call up the guy whose name is on the regs and see if he wants to come over. Karl talks to the bank, does an interview or two, and we spend a little time on Redfin imagining what life would be like in San Antonio or Portland or Buffalo or Birmingham. And we basically decided that we liked life in D.C. and wouldn't move except for a really awesome job in a city where we have family. We set aside the idea of moving and took on new projects and started some home renovations so we could stay here for another decade.
Of course, that's when Wells Fargo contacted Karl about joining a newly-consolidated regulatory compliance group. Their industry folks knew that Karl had worked on a bunch of the recent major regs, can hold his own with the business/quant guys, and can handle sub-zero winters. It's a very small class of people.
So we started the possible-move fire drill again. Things percolated slowly over the summer. We kept expecting one of his interviews to signal that this wasn't a job worth moving for. But the job kept sounding better and better. It's right up Karl's alley, but there will be enough opportunity for him to shape the role however he wants. The people in this group all seemed genuinely nice and have good reputations. An acquaintance in their in-house legal department says his office is a ghost town by 6:30 (and the lawyers always stay 15 minutes later than everyone else). Karl will be heading a big group, leapfrogging him into management without the silly pre-requisite of blowing $150,000 on an MBA.
The job sounded great. And there are two dozen wonderful Reitzes and Schraders around Minneapolis. Realistically, it's the only place we could move for family -- St. Louis has no banks, Eric and Julia left Seattle, we aren't crazy about Atlanta. If we're ever going to move, this job is probably it. Yikes.
I was half-hoping they wouldn't make him an offer so we wouldn't have to decide. He got the offer right after Labor Day.
We talked around and around it, trying to weigh all of the variables. It was like the time when we were getting ready for our wedding and the baker gave us a dozen cake samples and a dozen frosting samples and told us to pick a combination for each layer of the cake and we couldn't remember all the pairings we had tried and eliminated, and someone finally, loudly, perhaps drunkenly, declared, "WE NEED A GRID!" Yeah, just like that -- except the variables are huge, unquantifiable things that will radically alter our life trajectory.
I can't draw a grid in blogger, but we beat the deliberations to death.
Karl accepted the Wells offer the second week of September, they spent a week in back-and-forth over terms, and we flew to Minneapolis the week of my birthday to find a new house. (House hunting and selling has been insane. That's a WHOLE 'nother post.) The movers are coming to pack us on October 20-21 and we're closing on the new house November 3. The last few weeks have been a nonstop whirlwind.
It's bittersweet. When I think about leaving D.C., I get all weepy. When I think about a new adventure in a new city (with free babysitters) and a new house to play with, I get pretty excited. Seven years since we bought this house and thirteen since we first moved to the District. Quite the end of an era!
We had toyed with the idea of moving half a dozen times in the last few years. A bank needs to start complying with new regs, they call up the guy whose name is on the regs and see if he wants to come over. Karl talks to the bank, does an interview or two, and we spend a little time on Redfin imagining what life would be like in San Antonio or Portland or Buffalo or Birmingham. And we basically decided that we liked life in D.C. and wouldn't move except for a really awesome job in a city where we have family. We set aside the idea of moving and took on new projects and started some home renovations so we could stay here for another decade.
Of course, that's when Wells Fargo contacted Karl about joining a newly-consolidated regulatory compliance group. Their industry folks knew that Karl had worked on a bunch of the recent major regs, can hold his own with the business/quant guys, and can handle sub-zero winters. It's a very small class of people.
So we started the possible-move fire drill again. Things percolated slowly over the summer. We kept expecting one of his interviews to signal that this wasn't a job worth moving for. But the job kept sounding better and better. It's right up Karl's alley, but there will be enough opportunity for him to shape the role however he wants. The people in this group all seemed genuinely nice and have good reputations. An acquaintance in their in-house legal department says his office is a ghost town by 6:30 (and the lawyers always stay 15 minutes later than everyone else). Karl will be heading a big group, leapfrogging him into management without the silly pre-requisite of blowing $150,000 on an MBA.
The job sounded great. And there are two dozen wonderful Reitzes and Schraders around Minneapolis. Realistically, it's the only place we could move for family -- St. Louis has no banks, Eric and Julia left Seattle, we aren't crazy about Atlanta. If we're ever going to move, this job is probably it. Yikes.
I was half-hoping they wouldn't make him an offer so we wouldn't have to decide. He got the offer right after Labor Day.
We talked around and around it, trying to weigh all of the variables. It was like the time when we were getting ready for our wedding and the baker gave us a dozen cake samples and a dozen frosting samples and told us to pick a combination for each layer of the cake and we couldn't remember all the pairings we had tried and eliminated, and someone finally, loudly, perhaps drunkenly, declared, "WE NEED A GRID!" Yeah, just like that -- except the variables are huge, unquantifiable things that will radically alter our life trajectory.
I can't draw a grid in blogger, but we beat the deliberations to death.
- We love Capitol Hill. It's the kind of neighborhood I always wanted to live in. The combination of architecture and neighborhoodiness and livability is unique, unlike anywhere else in the country.
- BUT the crime is getting to be a serious concern. There is violent crime on a regular basis and D.C. is doing squat about it.
- AND the schools....I love our (free!) Montessori elementary school but we have virtually zero middle school options.
- AND it's really important to me that the kids have some freedom to roam outdoors. That can't really happen here. In addition to the crime, the traffic is terrible. We live 100 yards from a park and I would not let Henry cross the intersection to get there alone until he has been driving for 20 years. Because I almost get mowed down on a biweekly basis and only avoid it because I've been driving 20 years and can see when the A*hole drivers aren't going to stop. It's already difficult for Henry that he can't run around and look for someone to play with. That's only going to get worse through the elementary school years.
- I love my house. I love it SO MUCH. It had been sitting here for a hundred years waiting for US and we've put seven years of blood, sweat, and tears into making it exactly like we want it. It's beautiful without being ostentatious. It has quirks and character. I thought it would be the house our kids grew up in.
- BUT we might have been tight on space as the kids got older. I really like being cozied up now, and I am openly disdainful of suburbanites who think each of their two precious children need their own landing-sized bedrooms and en-suite marble baths. But our little kids will get bigger and too many pigs in a pen will chew each other's tails off. Especially since I can't just send them outside.
- Karl's government job has some major upsides. He gets paid well, has killer benefits, gets four weeks of vacation a year, and comes home at 5:30 and virtually never checks his Blackberry. And he can't get fired. That's worth a lot when he is (at least for now) the sole breadwinner for all these people.
- BUT he's getting bored. He has been at the FDIC for more than a decade and it's getting stale. A few more years in government and he would be pegged as a lifer. It's not good for someone that smart to be unexcited by work from age 35 on.
- Minneapolis has family. HORDES of relatives! Not just Carol and Dave, but now Eric and Julia with Alden and Nona (the only cousins our kids may ever have, and certainly the only ones remotely the same age), Bob and Joan, Mark and Gail, Teresa, Andy and Katie, Hilary and Andy and their boys. It would be so good for the kids to have all these people around. And pretty excellent for me and Karl, since they all seem to want to babysit.
- BUT, suburbs. Blech. Running car errands with children is waaaaaay up there on the list of things I hate.
- AND we'd abandon the investment in the community we've made here. Karl has some college and work friends here, but this one was mostly me. The neighborhood is my SAHM office and I really like my work environment. Doing the baby-and-toddler thing around here is awesome. I finally made awesome mom friends and got some projects going at the kids' schools that I cared about. I'm sure there are interesting people and things in Minneapolis but starting over was not exactly appealing. I hate friend-dating.
Karl accepted the Wells offer the second week of September, they spent a week in back-and-forth over terms, and we flew to Minneapolis the week of my birthday to find a new house. (House hunting and selling has been insane. That's a WHOLE 'nother post.) The movers are coming to pack us on October 20-21 and we're closing on the new house November 3. The last few weeks have been a nonstop whirlwind.
It's bittersweet. When I think about leaving D.C., I get all weepy. When I think about a new adventure in a new city (with free babysitters) and a new house to play with, I get pretty excited. Seven years since we bought this house and thirteen since we first moved to the District. Quite the end of an era!
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