More about Cleveland

You'll have to bear with me here, Bryan and I are making big-time life-changing moves here in the next few months, and Cleveland has a lot to do with it. Just gotta talk it out...

So, in addition to my last post outlining stuff we love about Cleveland and job situations here in Beckley, here's another reason why we want to move to Cleveland:

We love Cleveland. --And we figure, not many people love Cleveland. We further figure that if someone does happen to love this dirty, cold, windy city with failing professional sports teams, they ought to at least have the decency to move there if they aren't already living there. There are enough people who hate Cleveland, within and without it, so it's a Cleveland-lover's obligation to obtain a job and some real estate there.

Seriously though, we want to live in a place where our kids someday might choose to come live near us, and not only because they love us, but because they love where we live and can find good jobs there. There are plenty of kids in West Virginia who come back home to live, usually right in their parents basements for awhile, and often start meth labs down there... but that's neither here nor there. They come home because they love home and they love their parents, but they usually end up working in the food service industry, as sales representatives, at call centers, in the mines, or not at all. And if they do get a cool job that they love--like Bryan's sister Jamie did when she first finished college--it doesn't pay a living wage. Bryan and I were very lucky that I found such a cool, profitable, kushy job in this area. And we loved living close to his parents (but that's for the next post...).

Also, houses are cheap in Cleveland. We can get a really nice, large house in a great neighborhood for the price of a small dinky house in a bad neighborhood here. --And believe me, that's saying something, because Southern West Virginia is one of the cheapest places in the country to live.

Final reason we want to move to Cleveland: Tremont. (check out its Wiki Page)

We love Tremont, and want to live in it. It houses many of our favorite places in Cleveland, like Lilly's Chocolates, Lolita's, and Lucky's Cafe (all eateries). There are also many art galleries, restaurants, bars, and shops that we've never tried there, including Farenheit, a very happening upscale restaurant. Tremont has a lovely Montesorri school, grades K-8, which I am in the process of getting in contact with to talk to its principle about what they offer to extra smart kids like ours. Tremont also has monthly art walks, and I just found out that it has a weekly farmers market, even through the winter.

There's one house in Tremont that's for sale, and across the street from it is a little local book shop. (Beckley now has absolutely NO book stores, except a Christian book store. If we want books, we can just go to the book section of WalMart. I'm not kidding). Tremont also has a quaint little community pool, several playgrounds, several beautiful Gothic cathedrals, and Lincoln Park, which is just a big rectangular green space for walking.

Next post will be the reason that makes it very hard for us to move to Cleveland... stay tuned!