Moving to Maine?

Whenever the subject of retirement comes up in conversation my friends invariably say something like this—I guess when you retire you’ll be moving up to Maine. Almost every time, I hear some version of this statement. Its certainly understandable. Everyone who knows me knows how much I love the place. All of you follow along with me on my yearly trips to Maine. You see the beautiful pictures I post, you read my glowing testimonies of what life is like for us when we’re there. So I suppose its natural that people would assume we would move there when we retire. There are two reasons why we will not be moving to Maine when we retire. The first is the fact that Virginia is our home. I have lived here since I was born and Pam since she was ten years old. Our family is here, our friends are here, our church family. In short, our lives have been crafted in Virginia. We feel an attachment to this place, our roots are firmly established in its soil. Sure, every summer and fall we leave for Maine. It is our home away from home. We love everything about it and our lives would be diminished without the ten weeks a year we spend there.

But there’s this…

Today is March the 24th. These pictures were sent to me this morning from my good friend who lives in Jay, Maine. That big hump in the first photograph is his wife’s Jeep. They got 24 inches of snow yesterday. Again…its almost freaking April!! Add to this outrage, the horrible pounding the coast of Maine has endured this winter and any sane person would come to the conclusion that to voluntarily relocate my home to the State of Maine would be the clinical definition of insanity. No, I am perfectly content to delight in the ten weeks it gives us each year. I’ll leave the rest of it to the locals.