And speaking of not spending money...

As I have complained about before, (okay, who loves knowing how do to links?), I live in a big, stretched-out city. Therefore, my 16-mile trek to and from work takes an hour and 45 minutes round-trip.

I have lived in other cities where you can, say, take the bus or a ferry to get to and fro, and somehow sitting placidly on public transportation is less awful than crawling down a freeway at 11 miles an hour. Okay, I am not literally crawling, altho there are some days where that might take less time. Remember that scene in Office Space where the guy is stuck in traffic and the old man with the walker is getting down the sidewalk faster than the guy is moving in his car?

How funny of a movie was Office Space? And it stars the guy who went on to play Berger in Sex and the City.

Anyway, so for months now Marvin Gardens and I have discussed moving closer to my job. His job has weird hours, including two weekends a month, so commuting is not as much of an issue for him, as traffic isn't awful here at 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday. That is just about the ONLY time it isn't awful: I know someone who moved away from here after it took her an hour to move one mile one busy night.

Have I established that traffic is awful? But as I have also mentioned, moving closer to my workplace means more expensive rent. So, the three-bedroom little house we have here would cost twice as much.

So we'd have to trade some of the room we have, and we'd certainly not have a backyard anymore. Is that worth it for the extra hour and 15 minutes a day I'd get at home?

The other good thing about moving closer to work is that living over there is expensive for a reason: you are right by the ocean, trendy stores, excellent yoga, eyelash perming places, all the things I love when I can spend. Here, there isn't much. Let's face it: it's the suburbs. I got Target and the YMCA over here. And driving to all that good stuff on weekends is -- again -- hideous, traffic-wise.

And finally, since we are not spending this year, we technically would not be allowed to spend the $5,987,655 landlords require for a security deposit. So we'd be breaking our rules.

So that's today's dilemma. I have the feeling everyone who DOESN'T live here will say, "Oh, stay put" and those whose souls have been sucked out by their commute will say "By all means, go!"