Once we decided that, yes, we are moving to Portland, we then had to figure out just how the heck that was going to happen. At the time we made up our minds, Lily was about 16 months old and I was pregnant with Amelia. We also had a dog and 2 cats, 2 cars, and a house full of way, way, way too much stuff. Oh, and my parents were also going to be selling their house and moving too, ideally at the same time. We didn't have a time frame worked out yet, but we slowly started getting rid of things we hadn't used in a long time or didn't intend on taking with us. We packed storage totes and labeled them for Portland, but at that point, it was still just a dream. We talked about it all.the.time. but there was an annoying feeling in the back of our minds that it wasn't actually going to ever happen. Eventually, we got the ball really rolling by listing our house. We kept getting rid of things, stopped accumulating junk, and we moved out of our house in January 2014.
We temporarily moved in at my parent's house, and started the incredibly difficult task of cleaning out a giant house that had been lived in for over 20 years. My mom had totes of old artwork from me and my brother, I still had papers from high school in my old bedroom, and Mark and I had tons of stuff from college stored in the garage. We had 2 garage sales and had a charity come haul away an entire truckload of things. Several times a week, we would all just sit at the dining room table with our Macbooks and do Portland research and talk about moving. We looked into where we should live, where we should work, even what grocery stores we would shop at. And most importantly, we kept asking, "How are we going to move to Portland?". Moving is expensive, and moving 3100 miles is ridiculously expensive, but our main issue was figuring out how we were going to move all the animals - 4 dogs and 6 cats - safely. We considered flying and shipping our cars, but our vet really recommended against it because Stanlee would have to go as cargo under the plane. Even a nonstop flight in mild weather would be too stressful for him. So, that solidified our mode of travel - we had to drive. Our last road trip with the girls had some definite rough patches (ie, screaming children) so we were pretty concerned about how they would do on a 3100 mile trip. A so, an iPad was born.
By spring, my parents had listed their house and quickly had an offer. I had been applying for jobs, as Mark and I decided that if something good comes along, I should take it and we should just go. I actually ended up turning down a job that didn't seem like it would be a good fit for me, but I had a handful of pending applications out there. We started getting the feeling that our Florida address was holding us back though. I had gotten my Oregon nursing license and had all of my certifications up to date, but we were concerned that hospitals were going to chose local nurses instead of one on the other side of the country. Once my parents had the offer on the house, things changed in an instant. We were told the closing date would be in 4 weeks. I was still at my job that I had been at for 9 years, but policies there were changing frequently because they had been taken over by a corporation, and the following day they were going to begin requiring 3 weeks notice to resign. After some hesitation, and then encouragement from Mark and my mom, I turned in my resignation that day, and I cried. I was happy and sad and just in shock that this pipe dream was actually turning into reality. I had spent almost a third of my life working at that hospital, and I didn't always have good feelings about it, but I was finally in a good spot there and had friends that I really enjoyed working with. Quitting was truly harder than I thought it would be. but of course it was a necessary step to get to the west coast.
No comments:
Post a Comment