Hi! My name is Gee Darling and I am writing my blog about travel, writing, cooking, being a woman, photographing, but mostly I am writing this blog to learn how to step into another person's world while keeping a foot in mine.

It is the 5th of July. God saw fit to rain out any plans I had yesterday so I thought about it for about a split second and decided that SHE had another plan in mind: writing. Well, as things go around here, I set about blocking HER will with my own free version. Here is what I did to spite HER for raining (literally) on my parade:

I spent nearly three hours looking at every rental space and house for sale along the coast of South Carolina (via the web). I told my husband, who was upstairs rehashing the civil war online, that I was seeking a small cottage near the ocean with two bedrooms, 1 bath, a wrap around porch, gardens and I wanted to spend about $60,000. Well, after three hours, I learned that that ship had sailed about 30 years ago and to get my cottage NEAR the ocean would probably cost me a little more like $600,000.

I did learn something about real estate and the economy in the process. At least, the real estate/economy in South Carolina, and that is that there are lots of people who are trying to cash in or cash out and take some luxury or second home type property off the table. I expect they wish to dump mortgages or stash cash. Everyone is hurting. The rental calendars are empty past the fourth of July but stubbornly people are still asking thousands of dollars a week for the priviledge of sleeping in a four bedroom house near the beach or, god forbid, owning a four bedroom house near the beach.

So, I started looking inland and lo and behold, I found it!! I mean lots of its. But mostly I found an unbelieveable bonified southern mansion on the auction block because of foreclosure. To be sure, the neighborhood is heading towards commercialization but maybe three doors down a top knotch mansion is for sale for 10 times the price. I'm thinking about it.

My biggest problem is this: who wants to live in that little backwater? Hell, I already live in a back-assward place and I was hoping to move somewhere closer to HER. Well, anyway, having grown up on the gulf coast I am pretty sure SHE lives by the sea. I have a hard time finding and obeying HER around here.

Around here happens to be the Midwest. Can you believe it, we don't even qualify for a real direction. But that is another subject for another blog, Misplaced Southern Belle, on which I will be writing further about my boring fourth of July. I hope it will be a little funnier than this. Go see.