Wanderlust Take Two... or Three?

I was a bit surprised to see that my last blog was from nearly two weeks ago. A bit surprised, but not totally. See my team had this big review in DC and we have been working literally night and day to prepare for it. Since I defended my dissertation, this may be the most important presentation I (actually we) have ever made in my career to date. We did it! We got compliments! We were successful in conveying our information! Phew!

While in DC I had hoped to connect up with good friends who moved there recently. Unfortunately it just didn't work out. On conference travel a person is a bit more free to wander around and meet up. But when meeting with a client for two days, the constraints are greater. But that's not to say that I didn't think about them often while there.

I really like Washington DC a lot. I have been there three times in the past year alone and I don't see this visit schedule declining at all in the coming months. I enjoy the Metro and moving through the city easily. I absolutely love the history and the museums and monuments. And I love the good food.

All these are things, I remind myself, that as a resident of a city you don't necessarily view as positively. The Metro probably gets tiring - a friend of mine who recently returned from an offsite assignment in DC cited that everything was hard. Getting groceries was hard, taking kids to a park was hard. That we don't know how easy we have it in a rural region where you hop in the car and drive a mile (if that) to the grocery store. I can see this. I have been in big cities to know that the convenience of public transit as a visitor translates into limitations as a resident.

The museums and monuments? Well just as I don't spend my time in wineries all the time (contrary to popular belief, of course), we wouldn't spend all our time learning through immersion. Same with the food - a different cuisine experience each night is fine while on travel, but not realistic as a family.

I wondered what it would be like to pick up and move? Ok, not the whole logistics aspect - that's a pain and my friends who moved in August are still living this pain. But picking up and starting over in a new town where establishing friendships starts at square one, getting to know the area, the endless options... it all seems somewhat romantic I guess! An adventure!

On the way home we flew into Atlanta. This is a part of the country that I have never been in. I didn't order iced tea at lunch out of fear it would be sweetened. There was lots of big hair and people I had trouble understanding. But it was different! And gorgeous as we flew in and out and saw all the trees. What would it be like to live in the South?

Oh then the mountains of Colorado, we flew right over those and I could identify the ski areas from the sky. And the snow. I love the snow. I miss the snow. Maybe we will get some this year.

Then I thought about the area my children were growing up in - very little snow, very little history I want to share with them at this age, though maybe when they are older they will appreciate growing up in the area that produced the first plutonium for the atomic bombs... no scratch that. Nevermind. Very little recent history, though a significant amount of interesting geological history. Yes, that is what they will learn!

I was a bit down as I ran to my flight in SLC. My poor kids, growing up in an uncool place. Sure, it is great for raising families, but at what cost?

Then we started approaching Southeast Washington and I was filled with fondness. AB and I both have very good jobs. I love what I do - I am very lucky in that aspect. Look at all the crops out there finishing up the remainder of the season. Wow, we are lucky to live in a place with access to fresh fruits and vegetables. And our friends.

I am not sure we would ever find friends like those we have made here. Not to mention, the schools! How could I forget about the high quality schools we have?

Snow? We can drive to that. Museums make for a fun vacation. Eating out? So we don't do it much here, but my kids will grow up to be great cooks and to know good food from the ground to the table.

Wanderlust? Nevermind. I am fine here.

Not so mysteriously absent

And the packing continues, and continues…

Actually this weekend I got a lot of packing done, not much else, but a lot of packing. I am actually finding the packing to be somewhat cathartic. I like the process of cleaning everything out, of sorting and purging. AB has even gotten in trouble a few times for packing things that I wanted to tackle.

But okay, that phase is nearly behind me. Now I am to the just dump it all in a box stage and my mother in law is working hard on that aspect for me today.

Nearly nothing about this process is going smoothly. Once we surmount one hurdle we have another thing pop up. Last week we finished off the inspection documents and the whole water damage thing only to have an appraisal pop up. After being told for weeks that we didn’t need one, the underwriter changed their minds at the last minute. Seriously last minute. Like as in send my husband reeling over the edge last minute. Like last minute in may not be able to close on time, last minute.

All the ranting at least resulted in one thing good, we at least don’t have to pay for the appraisal now.

Our biggest issue that no one seems to get is that we don’t want to move on the weekend. Yes, we have wonderful friends who we can shuttle our kids around to. But we value our time with our kids and want to be in the house getting them settled in, not moving.

We will see what happens.

In other news, I am driving to Oregon to pick up “Skeeter” on Sunday. Her new name is tentatively going to be Freya, named by AB. We keep repeatedly nixing “Obi Wan Kenobi” as her new name. (That one really isn’t bad though compared to the prior options.)

Thank you Leif.

One day at a time. Today I have successfully made it through work obligations. We will see what tomorrow holds.

And then again... maybe not

AB and I returned from Alaska a little despondent. Not so thrilled to be back here. We were thrilled to be home, but felt a little disconnected. For AB it was going "home", back to Alaska where he grew up and dreams of moving back that did it for him. He routinely reminds me that among his friends, he was probably the least likely to leave Alaska. Yet here he is 18 years after leaving and no signs of moving back. He rode in the car with his dad who conveniently pointed out engineering firms along their route.

A friend once related to us that he felt that if you grew up somewhere "cool", it was harder to live in a place with seemingly less to offer as an adult. Where I grew up and went to college - in Northern Colorado - I would call a cool place. Actually it was a great place to grow up, recently rated #1 on the best places to live in the US and is an area coveted by many to live. I understand why.

Looking at where we live now, versus that region... or Alaska... Well this place just seems not to rank as high on the cool scale.

What I love about this region is the size and the family friendly nature and not to mention the really great social circle we have immersed ourselves in. Then there is the wine... very nice to live in "wine country". We have strong, stable jobs here making good money and our kids are in a most fabulous private daycare/preschool.

Why then, given all this, am I sometimes left with an emptiness about where we reside?

For me, what it doesn't have is immediate access to the mountains, to forests of spruce, to mountain streams. And for AB, beyond that, it doesn't have the ocean. Being that I didn't grow up next to the ocean, I could take or leave it. Though I admit a growing fondness for going over to our family cabin on the Sound. I love the tides, the beachcombing and the completely different environment from anything I grew up with. But the big one that it doesn't have is our family.

After returning we somewhat consciously made a decision to start exploring options either in Colorado or Alaska. AB passed his FE/EIT exam making him a full fledged engineer and in theory at least, eligible for many other careers than his current one.

Then yesterday happened.

It seems as though whenever our minds start wandering to the other side of the fence, we get jolted back.

AB came home excited about a new opportunity. Seems that his lead in safety and environmental was in a bragging mood and was joking around in a meeting with the lead engineers who were complaining that none of their new hire engineers passed the recent FE/EIT. AB's lead decided to chime in that he had a safety and environmental guy who went up and passed it on his first attempt.

A sort of "my guys are smarter than yours" thing going on.

A couple days later and AB has been actively recruited by the engineering leads. The neat thing about it is that they are giving him the opportunity to "try it out". AB basically has nothing to lose. If he doesn't like it, it doesn't work out, whatever, he can go back to his job in safety and environmental (which his lead is hoping for). Smart of AB's company actually... after having passed the exam, AB knew he was more marketable with other companies as an engineer. Now? He is looking forward to trying a new position on for size within his company.

We got home yesterday and it was like a competition... who got to share their exciting news first?

I usually win that battle because I can just start talking when AB walks in the door. I have had that little unwind time to relax and formulate what I am anxiously awaiting to tell him.

My opening line to him went something like, "you know you are going to have a great day when your client asks what you would do with unlimited funds and there isn't a hint of sarcasm to her voice!"

My task over the next two weeks is organize my teams thoughts, revisit our Gantt charts and define our critical paths on our suite of projects to determine how much it will take to shorten it. (Like how I am using all this project management lingo?? Gettin' good at this I tell you.) Do we need to hire on a few more scientists to get the work done? It's that important to the client. She closed the call by telling me she has a new and unrelated project to start up and could I please assemble another team for this new project? I have to admit how much I enjoyed e-mailing a group of people who are virtual unknowns to me asking them if they want a project. Rare does a project fall in your lap unsolicited from a client. I enjoyed being the bearer of that news to unsuspecting people.

Later that afternoon I got an e-mail from my much adored deputy sector lead. He is routinely reminding us that he is retiring soon. I am often surprised that he seems to think we are going to forget. When in fact, actually, we will mourn his leaving and are right now just pretending that he will be here forever. His e-mail was actually to a few people with me copied on it, letting people know who he was going to be transferring a subset of his files to.

Me.

Now I am just trying to figure out how to word this for my staff development review paperwork that is due next Friday.

Surprise, remember us?

So last summer, AB hadn't found a permanent job, my job was less then enthusing and so I sent out a few resumes. Then AB found a good job, my job started looking up and we went on our merry way. Then we decided we are lifers here... or at least until our kids graduate from high school and we have enough socked away to retire early.

Today someone AB works with told him about a job in Southeast Alaska he could get on with, with the current company. An "easy" transfer. Hmmm... intriguing.

Then this evening I got an e-mail from one of the big companies in a big pretty city letting me know that the job I was in consideration for was cancelled because the project was not funded. Funny. I hadn't known I was even in consideration, I figured they filed my resume in the garbage. They encouraged me to stay in contact with the company for future opportunities. Hmmm... intriguing.

Which then raises the question of how serious are we when we say we aren't moving from here. Yeah... not very. The right opportunity could flip the table.

Finding permanency

One of the hardest things about the past few weeks and finding this house we liked was hearing that nagging thought in the back of my head.

"We are here for the long haul. We are not moving to Anchorage or Colorado. Or for that matter Seattle or Portland."

Since moving here nearly six years ago I don't think we saw ourselves as permanent here. On the flip side I don't think we saw ourselves as not potentially permanent here either. It was just kind of out there floating - what if? What other options do we have? At the time, not many.

Sometimes it was annoying in that I wanted permanency. I wanted stability. Other times it was reassuring to think we could pack up and move anywhere we wanted on a whim.

I don't have many whims. Neither does AB. But the ability was still there. You know the same reason you keep your passports ready handy... just in case you decide to go skiing in the Swiss Alps on a whim. (Ignoring the fact your kids don't have passports and that you aren't going anywhere without them...)

This seems to have been brought about mostly by the fact that my husband, for the first time since moving here, has a permanent, good paying job he likes with a great company. As of last October, our talk of moving someplace "better", closer to family, etc., seems to have fallen off.

Then that house came along.

And that nagging feeling of, if we do this, we are cementing ourselves.

Cement can be broken of course. It is hard, and sometimes painful to pull your feet out. But it can be done.

It all basically culminated in a discussion Sunday night while we were fixing dinner.

"What do you want to do about a house," AB asked me in the same breath as asking me if we were going to go to church on Easter Sunday given how Palm Sunday had gone with our children not so interested in the service.

And in typical NM style I flipped the question back to him. (Skipping over the Easter question.)

He hmmm's.

"It's obvious that we need to do something and make a decision," I told him. "We need to forge a path forward, we want to forge a path forward. So the question becomes do you want to build, or buy used?"

"I want to build," he said.

And there, it was done.

Nearly.

But I had one more question.

"And you are fine with being here long term?" I asked him.

"Well I am not looking for jobs, are you?" he asked with a hint of sarcasm.

"Nope," I said.

"Then let's get things moving," he said.

A decision was made in record time.

That's not to say I am not sitting here wondering if it is the best decision. If we aren't going to look back someday and wish we had bailed when we had the less invested, before the kids were in school. What kills me in making this decision is that it isn't about "places", the place we live in or the place we don't live, but instead it is about our families.

Frankly, it sucks not to have family nearby. We have friends and we are becoming rooted in the community that we are both growing to enjoy. But nothing replaces your real family.

One of the single best things I ever did was to leave Colorado. I grew up a lot in many ways. AB and I learned to rely on each other and we cemented our relationship (more talk about cement...). The sibling rivalry we both grew up with faded and we were really able to become happy as individuals and a couple with few external factors.

I grew out of my high school days of "who said what about who" and there was no longer the need to look over my shoulder wondering who I was going to run into while wandering Olde Town Fort Collins. Something happens when you leave your old stomping ground.

Before having kids, we were happy to live away from our families. However, seeing our kids grow up having to be reintroduced to grandma and grandpa with every visit is hard. Not having built in babysitters for special occasions or weekend getaways is a bummer. And I wish my kids knew their cousins.

But webcams help with getting to know grandma and grandpa. (Leif told grandma when she left the other day she needed to buy a computer - truth be told she just needs to hook up the webcam she has had for over a year now.) I can pay for a babysitter who does exactly what I tell them to and would never bribe my kids with candy. And how often would we really go on weekend getaways by ourselves? AB and I both grew up with very few cousins and only seeing them on a rare occasion most of the time.

Our obstacles are not insurmountable and we are enjoying a new phase of vacationing with grandma and grandpa. A luxury afforded to us by having good jobs with time in for lots of vacation days.

I won't deny that a fear of the unknown and knowing the grass isn't always greener on the other side doesn't play a little into our remaining here. AB and I are at a place in our lives where we can't afford to take large risks. Financial security and job security are priorities with our young family.

Seeing what's out there

AB (and Leif since he was home from school recovering from a pukey day yesterday) came by and grabbed me for lunch. We ran out to a development nearby where I work. It has intrigued us because it cuts AB's commute literally in half and mine down to about 1/3.

And that's about all it has going for it.

We walked around the view lots, impressed and picked out a few to inquire on. We loved the builder's style and had seen a few of the homes last year at the Parade of Homes. We started writing down a lot of numbers and dreaming "what if".

We went to the model home. Of course we walked into the house, which really threw Leif since we don't just walk into a house. Once he got over the shock of walking into a house unannounced he kept yelling "anyone here?"

Amazingly, there wasn't. We had expected to get bombarded by a sales person of some sort.

We wandered around the three bedroom, two bath house. It was pretty. Nice slate tile, custom cabinets and countertops. Leif kept asking to "go upstairs and wake them up". Because apparently there should be people there and they must have been sleeping.

Our dreaming turned to dust when we saw the price. $439,000. We don't live in the big city. This house had no view, no hot tub, pool, outdoor kitchen, or even a freaking walk in pantry. (One my anal retentive requirements for our next home.) It was about the size of our home, a few hundred square feet larger thanks to the bonus room, but that's it. And we will be LUCKY to get $200,000 for our house - though we hope for $220K.

We actually know a few people in this development who are paranoid and a little freaked out by the stall in home sales around them. Neighborhoods left undeveloped, houses not moving. Yet houses are listing for at least 50-75% more than what would be reasonable anywhere else in town.

We haven't decided when we will move, though it would be nice to be on that path by the time Skadi is moving out of our bedroom and into her little room (thereby fully eliminating my guest room). According to my MIL (one of the most savvy real estate agents ever) we have a lot of work to do on the house (new carpets, paint trim outside, little details inside) before moving - we know this, but sometimes need to be reminded.

We are kicking around staying in the house until Leif goes to first grade - in which case I am thinking I might go the bunk beds route and put both kids in the bigger safari themed bedroom and use the guest room for toy storage. Or not. Not many people visit us anyways, but I like having an extra queen bed around for those nights when AB snores or can't sleep and tosses and turns, or one of the kids is sick and needs us close (our bedroom is across the house).

Then 10 minutes later we kick around the idea of trying to move next spring. Who knows. Our goal right now is to get an idea of what's out there and for how much.

Plus, who knows if we could even sell our house right now. We will have a challenge with selling it in a good market because of the towering monstrosity behind us. In a crappy market? Ugh. My MIL recommended renting it... yeah, that's the headache I need on top of working full time and raising two kids is dealing with a rental.

AB is supposed to be calling the agent for the house on the coveted lot down the street this afternoon to schedule a viewing. It is still for sale and has dropped in price. We will see what that presents. (Though our friends down the street tell us you must like purple to move in... thankfully I don't mind painting.)