Fibermania

Why Move to Tennessee?

Dave took many family vacations to the Smoky Mountains and when he became a motorcyclist his destination of choice was the Blue Ridge Parkway. Thankfully he always returned unharmed despite zooming along at death defying speeds.

So when we talked about retirement he suggested the Smokies and I had heard that I should move to Asheville NC, as it is soooo arty. Close enough.

But when we started looking at homes online, I was nudged by several blog readers (thank you darlings) to look in Tennessee. Something about lower taxes and more for your money...

You know how I love bargains and it was easy enough to find them in Tennessee and then Georgia and then Alabama and before long I was totally confused.

It took going down there to get the picture. But when we went down in April I was still of the mind to buy the big whopper dream house and keep working for about five more years. So we put money down on a huge home (see April's archives) and then changed our minds when we got the popcorn ceiling/asbestos news.

After that fiasco we cooled our jets and decide to wait til our house in Cary sold.

That cooling lasted minutes.

I went back to daily online looking and finally had about 50 possibles lined up again. One day I found a really cute house on an acre in GA. It was only $115000. Adorable and so great for a little old lady or man to live in alone. That was a subject that kept arising...going poof.

If we bought something that inexpensive, I could retire too. At the time of the discussion I wasn't ready, but Dave's recent health events have me convinced that I want to end my itinerant career and stay home with him.

So eliminating the big house idea and looking for the big garden instead became our focus.

Nothing on my list of 50 seemed to work.

I threw up my hands, being the drama queen around here, and said "You find it then!"

Minutes later he did. Just like that. Praise the Lord.

Going down there this time and seeing the countryside west of Chattanooga instead of staying in the city showed us that country life is what we really wanted all along. Just beautiful, placid, verdant, and spacious. And it comes with chickens.