I decided to start this site to have a place to keep track of my various crafty addictions instead of using something static like a scrapbook. In addition, I expect to chronicle the trials and tribulations of living and breeding in San Luis Obispo county, the 7th least affordable housing market in California, the least affordable state in the US (At least according to some national homebuilding association). I think at last check only 14% of residents could afford the median home price, sitting somewhere in the $400-500k range.
How is it that my husband and I manage to own a home here? We were in the right place, at the right time and had the cojones to sign lots of scary legal documents resulting in borrowing more money than I’d made in my lifetime up to that point. We bought our house in February 2001 for $270,000. At that time, we both had full-time tech jobs and impeccable credit, perfect for securing a mortgage. Nevermind that we’d each spend 6 months unemployed over the 2 years that followed. In any case, we have somehow managed to have a pretty comfortable life in a part of California that hasn’t been completely spoiled by traffic, smog, and overbuilding.
The “breeding” part is where things are gonna get challenging. We both feel pretty strongly that one of us should make a career of child-raising, at least during the early years. Having the biological advantage of breastfeeding and such, we have agreed that I get first dibs. Working out how to make it on one income with the added cost of a child is gonna be interesting (much like the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”), considering that more than half of our monthly income is going to housing. I’m currently working part-time but I can imagine that there will come a point where part-time is going to be too many hours in the day.
Another challenging aspect is the state of health care in this area. Technically, we’re considered “rural” so the rate of reimbursment for doctors is fairly low. Combine that with the outrageous housing costs, the influx of retirees who made a buckets of cash selling their homes in SoCal and the Bay Area, and the closing of the county hospital a couple years back and we’ve got a big mess brewin’. There are no freestanding birth centers within 100 miles. There is only one midwife that does homebirth (at least until the other one comes back from a sabbatical in 2006 — if she comes back). There are about half a dozen nurse midwives who do hospital births. Neither of the two San Luis Obispo hospitals will “allow” water birth (one has a tub for labor up to the point where the membranes rupture).
… but I digress. What you’ll see here in the future are probably more ranty things, lots of crafty stuff, and a plethora of pics and anecdotes about the daily activities of our pets.
