[Ohiogirl]

We are hoping we have made our best choice - for us for now - as well, by going back to Ohio for about 4 mos this summer, plan to be there from early May until early September.

Since we are selling the Ohio house to a grown child, and sleeping in a remodeled space in the basement, with a bath, we feel we will have the best of both worlds - no worry about an empty house and no expense of 2 homes to maintain. We will help out by doing most of the summer yard work and dog walking. It may not work forever, as lives change, and we also hope we recognize the time to move on.

I do feel that you have to work to maintain the friendships back north - email makes this easier, and we have also invited our close friends to come visit - some dog sit, some come for a short visit. Work, yes, but worth it to maintain our friends and social life up north, we hope. We also both have regular activities (tennis and golf and gardening for me, quality summer band for Ohioboy) to do up north, and we are making a point to do daytime things with other friends who have recently retired as well.

All those things we never had much time to do when we were working are now available - bike to baseball games, day trips to nearby attractions, etc. We no longer have to wait for weekends and hope we hit the weather right.

I think I could also be happy living year-round in TV, and that will probably happen also, but for now, this is the right choice for us. We know several other couples who downsized up north to a condo so they don't have the worry of a big, unoccupied house, and some lucky folks who have lake houses they are used to closing up for the winter anyway. Another perfect choice for some.