All Moved!

Wow, last time I was writing here I was saying "Let's go!" and we certainly went! We arrived in Pennsylvania on Sunday, July 2nd after a three-day long, 1,800-mile drive. We stayed with a close friend for six weeks while we house-hunted and bought a house. We caught up with our oldest friend, went out and enjoyed our new hometown and the surrounding area, and went hiking in a nearby state park (where my husband promptly got lost). We bought a house that we absolutely love and have since spent the days getting situated in our new place.

The best part, we're happier than we've ever been! Now... even though I've been trying to write this since October, it's mid-January and we're still so happy here. We've gotten completely mostly settled (we still have one room that's taking forever to unpack) and we're enjoying our forever home. 

That has not come without some complications here and there, but being happy has made it easier to overcome those hurdles. Here's to many happy returns! 

Let's go!

You know the old adage "ask and you shall receive"... yeah, um, the universe is listening. I mentioned before that I was ready for this house sale business to be done and for us to be on our way right now, rather than in the middle of July. Turns out that's exactly what's happening. We're moving this week! Our house closed today, the moving container will be here tomorrow, the moving help will be here on Wednesday, the junk removal will be here on Thursday, and then we'll be on our way Thursday evening. I am nervous and excited. Time for the next phase of our lives... let's go!

Moving is Exhausting

I'm trying to stay positive, but moving is exhausting and I'm so emotional. I want to leave right now. Not 3-weeks from now, but right now. I'm itchy to get the hell out of Utah and be on to the next part of our lives. I'm eager to have my husband back, rather than living with this depressed shell of who he is. I'm impatient to escape and even though we have a ton to do, this last month here seems to be dragging on and on. 

The 8 years we've spent in Utah has been filled with downs. We've spent the most unhappy years of our marriage here. Not being LDS, we've both struggled with a culture that shuns non-LDS people. Not being outdoorsy, we've struggled to get along in a place where people think you're strange if you don't enjoy hiking and rock climbing. Not being particularly social, we've struggled to make friends in a place where being outgoing is king. Not having kids means we've struggled in this place where having huge families are the norm and not having kids makes you the subject of a whole lot of unnecessary pity. To sum things up, we've struggled here.

I've spent the days packing up and, honestly, it feels surreal to be putting things in boxes. It's happening and I can't seem to shift into the mindset that it's happening. My brain can't seem to wrap around the knowledge that we are finally getting out. Maybe this is why I'm so impatient to leave. Maybe I'll feel it's real when we're on the road to Pennsylvania and putting Utah in our rearview mirror. In the mean time, packing up our house is consuming all my time and I'm counting the minutes until it's time to go.

3:30am

It's 3:30am and I can't sleep. The thunderstorm, my anxiety, and my last day of work have all colluded to make sleeping impossible. Add my cats, who seem to be the universe's agents this morning, rubbing themselves all over my sleeping self, and I'm up for the day a bit more than an hour early. 

We sold our house earlier this week. We've technically been in escrow for three days on a (probably) 30 day escrow. The inspection and appraisal was yesterday. It's time to start putting things into boxes, which I also did yesterday. I packed two whole boxes, which barely made a dent in a bookcase, and came to the realization that packing up our 1,260 sq. ft. house is going to be more time-consuming than I had anticipated. I'm a bit rattled by the pile of work we're facing in the 3.5-weeks we have left here. 

Truth is, I'm daunted. But, you know, every time we jump a hurdle and move closer to this move being a reality, I become simultaneously more anxious and more excited. It's causing me to break out in red splotches, upsetting my rosacea, playing havoc on my emotions, making sleeping impossible, and I keep wondering when I'm going to stop being anxious and start feeling like this is a reality. I think the answer is going to be, when we have the check in the bank and we're driving off into the sunset. Well, we're going east, so I guess we'll be driving off into the sunrise in this particular case.

Planning to Move

My husband and I are planning to move away from Northern Utah. If you've ever lived in a functional theocracy parading as a democracy, you know it's bullshit. Utah is beautiful, but it's also disgusting. If you're anything but a Mormon, you're a second class citizen in Utah. Since we're not Mormon and never will be, living here has become intolerable.

For the moment, though, we're stuck. We both have full-time jobs, we're buying our house, and we don't have enough savings to pack up and move, especially since moving is expensive. So we talked about what we need to do to be able to swing a move and it's deceptively simple: 

• Save $4-5k
• Get at least one stable, remote job between us

Looks easy, but saving $4-5k when we're living paycheck to paycheck isn't that easy and finding a stable, remote job in either of our fields isn't either. The markets are flooded with solid candidates with more experience than we have.

And we'd have to sell our house which is easier said than done. The house needs a little bit of work, a coat of paint inside, a repair here and there. I wish I could said either of us were motivated to do that work, but if I'm honest, we're not. We're going to have to get motivated if we want to move. I think we also need to move out before we sell it so it's empty. Empty spaces sell better.

The hubs has been searching for remote work and putting in a lot of applications. I'm going to meet that effort by starting to pack things away into boxes and putting them in the garage so the house is less cluttered and we can see the work that needs doing. 

• Our goal: Be somewhere else by this time next year.

We're thinking Pennsylvania or Ohio, we have a great friend there. We're not completely sure yet. What we know is that we want to move somewhere less conservative, not governed by a church, and where we can be happy. I want a forever home, not a temporary place, I want to make this move and then never again. At almost 45 years old, I'm ready to be settled.