To Florida, and Back Again

I'm getting there! This is the total "miles walked" (15 minutes cardio = 1 mile) since early 2010. It's the distance between our apartment in NJ and the apartment we had in Kissimme, Florida, the place we're yearning to go back to.

When we moved there in 1999, when my husband was forced into early retirement before the age of 50 because the army base he worked in since high school was closed thanks to the BRAC committee, we moved to Kissimmee to be near my parents. My son and I loved it there, but my husband, not so much. For him it was more the shock between a government clerk job from 27 years versus the "real world" of employment and not the geographical area. After a few months he insisted we come back to urban NJ, and he insisted we move back to the same city, same neighborhood so our son can be with his old friends again. At 12 years now, this is the longest we stayed in any place since we married 33 years ago.

But we both want to go back to Florida. He was ready t move back on 9/11, and said at the time that if he knew it was going to happen he would have stayed down in Florida, crappy job, love bugs and all.

We spent months surrounded by armed National Guardsmen at our city's borders because of our proximity to Manhattan. Each day now when he leaves for work we never know if he'll make it there and home safe because of the subway bombing plots.

Unemployment is highest in this part of the country than anywhere else, even for those with advanced degrees like my husband and my son, or those with decades of experience in the engineering fields like my brother.

What's keeping us here, when we know we could all easily get jobs in Disney   if we moved back to Florida? The elderly aunt. She's failing since her concussion in May, but still feisty enough that we know that even though she's now 93 she could very well live to 100 or more. Since we're the only relatives that will put up with her, we're stuck here until she goes.

And as soon as she does, and as soon as her estate is settled (my husband is executor and we're willed her run down house that has to be fixed up to be good enough to sell), we're out of here and back to the Land of the Mouse, maybe even back to the same apartment complex.

Until then, I have to be content with all my Disney movie soundtrack cd's and videos, photos taken those 10 months we lived there, and this mileage ticker showing me how I could have walked down there, one step at at time.