Back to Minnesota

Well, we've arrived, safe and relatively sound.

Apparently, after a year without snow and ice and frozen temperatures, your body develops an aversion to those things and doesn't easily re-acclimate as you might expect. I literally feel like I'll never be warm again. And that's not a nice feeling.

The past few weeks have been very busy. We loaded our moving pod last weekend. We did it entirely by ourselves, which simultaneously seriously sucked, and feels like an accomplishment. We can do hard things! (Like we didn't know that already...). We sent our things to MN and signed the house-closing papers on Monday, and then I had one last dinner with my favorite friend. I gotta be honest, it really hurt to say goodbye to her. She's the one person who really gets what life is like for us each day, and I'm going to dearly miss her.

On Tuesday, we packed the car, cleaned up the house, and set off for Montana. We kept behind a blow up bed for our last night, and slept in the Samuel room. It felt like the right place to say goodbye to our Oregon home.

Goodbye House

The temp when we left

The strange thing about grief is that it changes how you react to other grief-inducing moments in your life. Leaving Oregon involves grief. It's leaving behind a place we wanted to stay, and a life we wanted to live. It meant returning to a place we purposely left. And weather we never wanted to live in again. And leaving a dear friend who really made life easier to live.

But, oddly enough, despite the feeling of tears being lumped in my throat, I didn't cry. At times I think I used up my lifetime allotment of tears crying for Samuel, and mostly have none left. But I also wonder if experiencing such a great loss gives me the ability to just go with life as it comes instead of fighting it, because I know for sure that you just don't have a real say in how life is going to turn out. Or maybe I'm just dead inside. All are equally possible at this point.

So, we drove to Montana the first day, and I have to say, it was the scariest driving we did the entire trip. The mountains in Idaho are treacherous in the winter. It's down-hill, icy roads, no lights, heavy wind, and trucks passing you going too fast. I told Bryan we were going to meet Samuel, several times per hour. Sadly, we did not get to go to him. But happily, we didn't die in a fiery crash in the middle of the night on a dark icy highway, as I assumed we would.

Death-trap road in ID. What you don't see is the sleet and show coming at us straight on , and the huge trucks zooming past at 70mph. 

Due to the ice and rain and messy driving, it took us significantly longer than we anticipated to arrive, and did not get to the hotel until the middle of the night. By then, I was frazzled, and the cats were completely done with the car, and we were beyond ready to dive into bed.

The next day, we woke to a much prettier scene.

Missoula, MT

We ate breakfast at the hotel, and then packed everything - including two cats who were quite upset the trip was not over - and headed to North Dakota. The drive was significantly better, and we made it by the evening, as we'd planned.

the super exciting drive through North Dakota. Very scenic, as you can see. 

The final day we drove to Minnesota. We were going through Fargo, ND, so we took a detour to see Bryan's alma mater, NDSU. It was fun to see where he lived for those years.

 

The Engineering Building

We arrived in the evening on Thursday. My parents met us at my aunt and uncle's house* to greet us and help us get settled.

*In case you don't remember, we're house-sitting for them for the next two months while they are traveling. It's a good opportunity for us to have a place to stay while Bryan continues his search for a job.

When I climbed in to bed that night, the tears finally came. I'm sad to be back here. We left this state on purpose, and coming back feels so defeating. I never knew how much living in snow and ice really is a detriment to life until we left, and now we're right back in the middle of it. As I write this, it's -8 degrees outside. No one should live in a place where you cant' even leave your house because your skin will freeze and you can die just from going outside. It just feels bad, physically and emotionally.

But, if I try to find the bright spot, it's that I am close to some friends and family I haven't seen in too long, and will get to catch up. And, I know things could be much, much worse, so I'm trying to be thankful for a warm home to stay for these next two months.

As for Bryan, it's funny, and also we figured, as soon as the holidays were over, it was like the phone wouldn't stop ringing. He has three promising second interviews (with three companies) this coming week. I'm really hoping he finds a job he loves - and one that, you know, pays him money - very, very soon.

It still feels like our life is up in the air, because we don't know where we'll land, but for now, we're safe and have food to eat and friends and family to care for us.

Once again, I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has been supporting us. We are truly lost for words by the love we've received.