part one of however long it may take:   

If you want to read the backstory (eg, me endlessly whinging about being laid off) click here.

Foreword:

It all started when we got an apartment that should have been impossible to get in my hometown of Baton Rouge and the almost five year old wonderboy and I packed up the movables and hit the road in search of a better life and the actual possibility of employment, the dust of the Michigan recession fading through the back window of the Nissan. 

But that's too easy a summary.  Before we got to that point, I had spent almost four months fruitlessly clicking links online, networking while maintaining the facade of being fine while growing more and more scared as it sunk in that there were simply no jobs to be had and the unemployment and the nest egg continued to shrink. 

I was thinking Portland would be a good option, if perhaps a bit crunchy for me.  I've made huge moving jumps before, but never without a job, house or friend in wait - and the wonderboy made everything even more complicated - if i'd been by myself, I'd have been willing to do the classic two suitcase move to the local hostel until I'd nailed a job and a place to live, but with a child in tow, that just wasn't a possibility.

My parents are pretty well on their way towards their seventies and my mother had been urging me to move closer to home.  The wonderboy had been intermittently badly ill all winter and spring - and remained undiagnosed, though they thought it might be the beginning stages of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.  If I was going to move, it wasn't the worst idea to be near family backup in case he had to continue to miss huge chunks of school, as there was no guarantee that i'd again land a job that I could work from home if needed.

But I was stuck in the classic dillemma of needing either a job or a place to live before moving.  I'd investigated the possibility of joining the service corp in louisiana -  they were interested, but the stipend was impossible to live on with a child. 

I was stuck.

Then the way seemed clear, from a chance comment from my mother - a two bedroom had opened up in her complex, smack dab in the center of Baton Rouge.  Housing's been impossible in Baton Rouge since Katrina, when half of New Orleans moved in, hugely increasing the population overnight - there was very little chance that an unemployed single mother would be accepted as a renter - but I was.

So now I can throw in that tidy (if rambling) opening sentence in a more proper place:  It all started when we got an apartment that should have been impossible to get in my hometown of Baton Rouge and the almost five year old wonderboy and I packed up the movables and hit the road in search of a better life and the actual possibility of employment, the dust of the Michigan recession fading through the back window of the Nissan.

Chapter 1:  The Migration 

Stuck in a hideous traffic jam on the bridges of Cincinnati, he devises a sing-song chant:  

oHIIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr…

oHIIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr…..

oHIIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr………. 

This is the youngest child out of four, the only one still at home, so I’m fairly immune to this sort of thing.  Unfortunately for me, this is clashing with the interior viral song playing on an endless loop in my head:

Baby, if you’ve ever wondered, wondered whatever became of meeeee…..

(oHIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr)

....I'm living on the air in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, WKRP...

(oHIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrrr)

…Got kind of tired of packing and unpacking, town to town, up and down the dial….

(oHIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr)

…baby you and me were never meant to be, just maybe think of me, once in a while….

(oHIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr)

I’m at WKRP in Cincinnati…..

(oHIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr)

(oHIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr)

And did I mention that I drive a six-speed stick, fearless girl that I am? So not only are bad 70’s tv theme songs competing with child chants, I am endlessly clutching and unclutching to move forward three feet, then throwing it back into neutral so save my left leg, which is cramping from holding in the clutch.

To save what’s left of my sanity, and the possibility of the wonderboy actually reaching the age of five with intact vocal cords, I throw in the latest Green Day and crank his current favourite, ’21 guns’.

And so we traveled from the bleak economic environs of Michigan, towards our brighter (or at least, much warmer) future.

Next Installment: The Camps (or, where we lived and why and how)