East, West, North, South

Doc Holladay said it, not me.

It's starting to get seriously hot in Arizona. I wouldn't notice much if it weren't for my dear husband, who melts at the very thought of 85 degrees, not to mention the 120 averages we can look forward to. Added to his weird job and our accommodations on the floor of our apartment, I really can't blame him when he says out of the blue, "We have to get out of here!"

Ideally, we would return to the place we met, Beautiful Boston. I had made a conscious decision to live within the Hub's radius when I completed my degree in England because anything else was just too far from civilization. Boston retains so many old world traditions it's practically madness, including letting cattle "plan" the city layout. But I know the city layout. It's carved upon my heart, no matter who came up with it originally.

Boston thinks it's a big city, but really it's a cozy size, surrounded by suburbs that count as Boston in any normal tally. On a nice day with good shoes, you can walk from end to end of the city limits effortlessly and see hundreds of years of history as you go. Alternatively, the public transportation is not only safe and convenient, but real people use it every day, to the astonishment of some Westerners. This is all in contrast to where we live now, where everything I'd like to do is so far away from where we live that the buses won't take me there unless I ride for literally hours. After waiting for 45 minutes under the burning sun. (Why don't people in the desert create shade? The Pima had ramadas for a reason, people!)

I fell in love with Boston during my college days. I went to Wheaton College, which is much closer to Providence, Rhode Island, but both of those places are satellites to the Hub. It's still easy to see the city as the ultimate college town, so there are a lot of intellectuals and resources for a writer like me. Also appealing to me, they have nonstop flights to Spain and something like 8 Spanish restaurants, most of them very good. I could go on and on.

But it's far from healthy to do so. Boston has its disadvantages, the only one I can think of now being that, as a coastal city, it will be flooded with rising ocean levels by midcentury.

But seriously, we may get out of Arizona soon as a result of my husband's never-ending efforts in that regard, but it will probably not be a return to the city where we met. We just don't seem to be welcome there among employers. While I too, will be glad to put an end to our Arizona Year Without Furniture, I will hold some things about it very dear: the progress I've made in my writing, editing career and blogging, and an announcement I'll save for later this month. Luckily, these things are not material, so they'll fit comfortably with us in our compact car when we leave for... the next great adventure.