My Favorite D2 album

In the past two months, Hubby & I have spent more week­ends in Detroit than we had here in Chicago. That’s the most we’d been home since the begin­ning of the year.

Need­less to say, we’ve been lis­ten­ing to a lot of good tunes in our dig­i­tal library dur­ing five-​​plus hour drive home.

Lately I’ve been on a Duran Duran kick; thanks to Hubby down­load­ing their entire dig­i­tal library. And it’s been fun singing Rio and Hun­gry Like The Wolf at the top of my lungs some­where between Bat­tle Creek and Jack­son. But I must admit, I’ve been play­ing their first stu­dio album more than the others.

It’s that album, sim­ply titled Duran Duran, that reminds me of being 12 years old again and camp­ing in Kitch­ener Ontario with my cousins. Where we’d play that cas­sette tape over and over again, most likely dri­ving our par­ents insane.

It’s fun lis­ten­ing to the songs that never made it to the radio; those B-​​sides or other non-​​single-​​worthy ones. (Night Boat, any­one?) It’s like going back to visit an old friend and rem­i­nisc­ing about old times. Remem­ber­ing how things were back in those days.

Duran Duran’s first stu­dio album was very … New Wave. Lots of synth and dis­torted gui­tar; awe­some awe­some bass lines and — as I lis­ten to it more and more — some incred­i­bly com­pli­cated drumming.

Not that I don’t like the rest of their albums … I just won­der what it would’ve been like if they stayed in that New Wave sound, rather than head­ing to a more Pop-​​oriented direc­tion. Per­haps they wouldn’t be as main­stream. Per­haps they would have never hit it big. Who knows?

I had that thought in my head since our drive back to Chicago last week. And that thought lead to another one which had me con­tem­plat­ing a cou­ple “What If’s” in my own life.

Now, I must clar­ify before I head down this path … I typ­i­cally don’t do this; travel down the road of “Shoulda, Coulda , Woulda.” Espe­cially since I’m usu­ally pretty delib­er­ate about the choices I make in life.  (Well, at least I am now … ) So what I’m about to write below, is more of a … dream sequence, if you will.

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A “New Roman­tic” Duran Duran

When Hubby & I got back from our hon­ey­moon, we started house-​​hunting. After see­ing quite a num­ber of houses, we finally nar­rowed it down to two. One was closed to both our places of employ­ment and per­fect as a “starter home.” It was only built two years prior; and it had more of a mod­ern feel to it with open ceil­ings and sky­lights. It was one we thought would be easy to resell if we needed to move to a big­ger place once we had our kids. But for the time-​​being, it would have been a per­fect two-​​story home for the two of us.

The sec­ond home was older and a bit fur­ther from our work places. It a ranch-​​style home with big­ger bed­rooms and a fin­ished base­ment. It had a large kitchen and din­ing room where we could see hav­ing fam­ily gath­er­ings. Oh, and the best part (at least for me)? In-​​ground pool in the back yard (it’s the Can­cer in me that looooves water!!). This was a house that was was ready for a fam­ily; ready for a cou­ple to start their family.

So, out of the two … which one do you think that Hubby & I chose? I’ll even give you a cou­ple sec­onds to think about it.

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We chose the first house. Well, rather *I* chose the first house; Hubby defaulted on me to make the decision.

To me, it made more log­i­cal sense. Close to work. Easy to sell (so we thought at the time). And per­fect as a “starter” home. Oh, and not to men­tion quite a bit less in price than the sec­ond house.

And I truly did love our house. It was funky; it was cute. And it was close to two “down­town” locales where we could hang out on a nice sunny day.

Except now it’s been close to 14 years — not to men­tion a move to a dif­fer­ent city — and the house remains ours. There had been no need to “upgrade” to a big­ger house since the kids never came. Nor was there the finances to do so, after all the infer­til­ity treat­ments we had paid for. And when the oppor­tu­nity to move to a dif­fer­ent city amidst the eco­nomic down­fall of 2009, our house remained (remains) in our name.

So this is where I start to won­der “What if.”

As in “What if I chose the sec­ond house? Would we still be liv­ing in Sub­ur­ban Detroit? Would we have had no rea­son to move to another house … let alone another city? Would we have those chil­dren we always wanted? Would Hubby & I have stayed in the same jobs … or bet­ter yet, move up in our respec­tive careers? Or, bet­ter yet … would I have finally been able to be that stay-​​at-​​home Mom that I always wanted to be?

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My Cousin got to meet JT back in the late ’80’s. Totally jealous!

At the end of August, our lease will be up on our 2^nd floor walk-​​up in Chicago. With Hubby free­lanc­ing and dili­gently work­ing at try­ing get finan­cially vested in a “vir­tual” ad agency that he & two oth­ers have started … well, the income hasn’t been too steady and reliable.

And me … well, let’s just say I’m still unem­ployed. For now. Which means that I have no income com­ing in at the moment. (Cross your fin­gers that I’ll not be unem­ployed for much longer!)

In any case, this means that our stay here in Chicago may be time-​​limited. Although not com­pletely set in stone (things change from day to day), it looks like we’ll be mov­ing back to the house in Sub­ur­ban Detroit. The same house that con­tains many of those mem­o­ries that I hoped to put away once we moved to Chicago.

Real­is­ti­cally we know that it makes sense to move back and regroup, so to speak, until our house sells. But emo­tion­ally … I feel as  if I’ve failed in my goal to start anew.

I know it’s futile to think of what could have been; espe­cially if things didn’t turn out the way they did here in Chicago (in regards to my employ­ment). And I know that my life expe­ri­ences and the deci­sions I’ve made in my life have made me the per­son I am today.

But some­times … just some­times … I wish that I could peer into my future so that I can make the right deci­sions now.

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(Just for you, Kara … )

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