Yesterday I had the Cher song “Give Our Love A Fightin’ Chance” stuck in my head. Endlessly looping around in there—“We can talk it over baby, woman to man/Give our love a fightin’ chance!” How crazy is that? I don’t think I’d even thought of that song in at least months, if not years, and there it is playing over and over in my head.

Really wanting to leave this town today. I have no idea how I’m going to make that happen. I mean, there’s the whole matter of getting another job and finding a new place to live. Heidi’s really stuck on Ames right now but who knows if that’ll work out? I really just want a new start—a clean slate so-to-speak. It’s not that I’m necessarily unhappy here, it’s just that I think we’d all be happier in a bigger town where there are more opportunities to do things. I would love for there to be something like a book group or a movie group or something, but you know that won’t ever happen here in this small town. I keep reading stuff in the CR paper or the Iowa City paper that talks about people getting together at Barnes & Noble to discuss a book or something like that. And then there’s all the cultural stuff going on. Maybe I am just a limousine liberal (only thing is I can’t afford the limo) because I really like my life to be cultured and caffeinated.

I think Ames would be a good match for us. I mean, I have a history there, but not as extensive as the one I have in Iowa City. I think moving back to Iowa City would be a lot like a step backward rather than a step out of the mire and funk. I think that going back there, although attractive, would be a misstep. We really don’t have any friends up there any more, so it wouldn’t be any different than moving to a completely new city. And I think Ames would be a good place for us to start over again. They have good schools for Anna, it’s close to Des Moines, we’d be fairly close to Mary & Jeff again. I said the other day that I might even consider working retail for a while if I had to just to get to Ames. However, I don’t know that I can do that. And plus, I have to try not to get attached to Ames being the answer to all my problems. I know that moving there would cause other problems in our life to crop up. We’d bitch about traffic again, we’d barely know our neighbors. But as Heidi said, it’s not like we know our neighbors all that well here in Washington and that’s supposed to be one of the draws of small towns.

Maybe we’re just private people and it’s *us* that’s the problem. Maybe we’re likely to feel this way wherever we go. Who knows.