Of course, Stephen wanted to see the houses I’d looked at yesterday, so basically our entire day was taken up looking at new builds. We liked the houses a lot, and the idea of having one built to our specifications was seeming more and more tempting. Yes, we’ve heard the horror stories about “houses these days” being built with lesser quality materials, etc, but the thought of moving into an older house and having to redo every room was enough to make me shudder. I’d done that once before.

While we were sitting in one of the displays we had an idea - there are houses being built out in St. Charles County, near S.’s job. Why don’t we check them out? S. was all for this idea, because his drive is currently about 30 minutes one way. This would cut his drive to 10-ish minutes, but mine? Eew.

S. was pretty incredulous that I would even consider moving to O’Fallon. For those not In the Know, St. Louis is a strangely shaped town. The city is on the west side of the Mississippi River, in a little jut. St. Louis County surrounds the city to the north, west, and south. We currently live in North County. There are two main interstates travelling out west, crossing the Missouri River and heading into St. Charles County. Both interstates are traffic nightmares during rush hour, and always have been.

The trouble is that within the last 15 or so years, St. Charles County has gone from being Redneck Central, filled with farms, pickup trucks, and lots of hoosiers, to seeing hordes of people from St. Louis County move out there to get away from whatever it is that usually causes mass migration. Urban Creep, steadily increasing real estate costs, steadily increasing real estate taxes, or just a yen for having more space - whatever.

The northernmost way of crossing the Missouri River is I-70. When you cross into St. Charles County you are in St. Charles proper. Continue down 70 and you will pass through St. Peters, which used to be the edge of humanity. I heard that in 1955, St. Peters had a population of 555, and in 1995 it was pushing 55,000. Continue down 70 even further and you’ll find O’Fallon. Before my sister moved there in 1998, I didn’t know it even existed.

Of course, when she did move there, I made fun of her to no end. Crossing that bridge? No way. Sitting in that traffic? Huh. Driving that far? Forget it. But the reality of it was that, in 1998 (and now) your dollar bought you a much bigger home in O’Fallon than anywhere in St. Louis. I should have paid attention (considering her home value has nearly doubled and all).

When the traffic became too much to bear, the state finally built a new extension to link the main interstate I use (the C-shaped I-270 that circles the entirety of St. Louis County) to I-70, about midway though St. Peters. Although this increased the traffic on “my” part of 270, it was a blessing to those who lived in St. Charles, offering an alternate route for those in the north.

Okay, this is ridiculous. Here’s a (poorly and rapidly edited) map:

“S” is my office, on I-270. “E” is O’Fallon. It’s a long way, shall we say, especially in the traffic. But dammit, it’s a lot of house for the money. 3,000 square feet is nothing to sneeze at. So now, after seeing more houses, we’ve fallen in love with a couple. And I have to decide whether the nasty horrible drive is really worth it.

Torn,
michelle