A few seconds ago I emailed our agent all the forms needed to officially list our house in Florida and put it on the market. Doing so makes me sad.

I am not unhappy to be here at this job. It is so much better than the last one that there is no comparison at all. I am not even unhappy to be out of Florida. It isn’t a bad place by any means (although Brandy may differ) but I am not attached to the state or even the town. But I am very sad to leave the HOUSE. It felt like home, and it was something I was proud of and enjoyed. It had enough space for the three of us to spread out and still feel comfortable. And I love the lanai and the pool, although we didn’t get to use it enough cause by the time the screen was up, I was practically on my way here. I loved the layout and the tile floors. I just liked how it all fit together. It just felt like a home. It felt like a place I could be in for many many years. It felt like a place that could be a place to settle down, not just a place to be for a little while. But it was just not to be.

And here, we’re going to be in a dinky little apartment for the short term, in a slightly better and larger apartment for the medium term, and then who knows how long it will be before we buy again, and even then it is most likely going to be smaller and not quite as nice. (Unless something unexpected happens, which could always happen, you never know…) Not saying we won’t be able to get something that is OK and nice in its own way, but it will not match the place in Florida. The economic realities of real estate in the two places are just that way.

I may or may not even be able to go back to visit it one last time. That is up in the air. I may have seen it for the last time and not even known it at the time. Sigh.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually do like the Seattle area a lot. In many ways I like it more than I liked Florida. And I like the job. And there is absolutely no question that this was the right choice and the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, not just by a little bit, but by a lot. Overall, when all things are considered, in all other aspects of life other than abode, we will be so very much better off here than there…

But that doesn’t keep me from being very sad and mourning the loss of my house.

(And yes, I felt the same way about the house in Pennsylvania… I loved that house and still miss it too, although I think I feel this one more strongly.)

The market has slowed to a crawl in Florida though. It may take us longer than we would like to sell it, and we won’t make as much as we had once hoped. We would have put it on the market a couple months ago, but there was some work on the house that HAD to be done first, and it wasn’t like we were vacating before June anyway.

We’ll see how it goes, hopeully it will sell in one or two months, not five or six months. But you never know. The days of selling in a few days are long gone though. And until the day it sells, we’re still paying the mortgage, even if we are not there, and that paying for double housing thing makes everything very tight.

Oh well, one way or another it will work out.

And in the end, this is a better place for us than Florida ever was.