Move out of Massachusetts.

Oh God, Massachusetts is just horrible. Way too much traffic, everyone is angry, roads are terrible, everything’s expensive, no one is friendly or helpful, everyone thinks they’re the greatest gift to earth, winter is miserable. I absolutely can’t wait to leave. I’ve been here for 12.5 years.. 2 more to go til I can LEAVE! :-)

So I spent some time online yesterday, looking at houses in Saratoga Springs. I found one just outside of the city—ten minutes from Skidmore—with nearly an acre of yard, a nice interior, even a porch, all for less than $200,000. We’re not going to get this particular house - we can’t move until next summer - but its very existence makes us hopeful.

Of course, we still have to actually visit Saratoga Springs to see if we like it there, and if we like the surrounding towns to which we might move. Unfortunately, the city is run over with horse racing enthusiasts for all of August, so we’re going to take a mini-vacation there in October. It’ll be nice to see it in autumn, anyway.

Before Nicole and I got all hell-bent on leaving Massachusetts, we tried to find an economically viable way to stay, without resigning ourselves to life in places where the schools are falling apart and the politicians are straight out of Orwell. We were told to check out Pittsfield, where the real estate market isn’t completely insane, and where there are some cultural amenities nearby. So we did.

If you read about Pittsfield online, it sounds like a city on the verge of reviving itself, but if you actually go there, the downtown area looks pretty depressed. The place is not without character, but there’s a vague dreariness we couldn’t escape. Locals we talked to didn’t seem too excited about Pittsfield’s efforts to redefine itself after GE closed its plant there in 1993.

We did find a nice residential area nearby, with lots of families playing outside in yards pitted with dandelions. But without a stronger town center, we didn’t think Pittsfield was the kind of place we’d want to move to.

There was a pretty eclectic museum, though—The Berkshire Museum. It has dinosaurs and insects and fish and reptiles and … early American paintings … and vintage children’s toys. Like I said, eclectic. Maddie liked it, mostly.