It's GO time!

After four plus months of job hunting, Matthew got a job!  He interviewed last Friday, and they called him Wednesday letting him know that he got the job.   Needless to say, we were pretty excited.  :)

We put in an application for the apartments that we decided we liked best (we thought about it ahead of time... you know, just in case...) that same evening, and since then we've been packing and cleaning and doing all sorts of oh-my-gosh-we-suddenly-need-to-move-because-Matthew-starts-work-on-the-20th activities.  We've been lucky to sell a couple large items (a monitor and a set of dishes) that we didn't want to move again, and along with that we have been fortunate to find a lot of boxes using the power of Craigslist.  Things have mostly been falling into place.  Originally, we were thinking we'd move Monday, but we seem to be having troubles with our current management filling out the paperwork for our background check.  Now we're planning to pester them Monday and then hopefully get to move into our new place on Tuesday.  Hence we have another day to pack and clean.  Hence I have time to take a hot afternoon/evening off to blog.

What with all this insanity, I have mostly managed to consider the forward direction: moving to Aloha.  Sometimes it hits me, though.  After six years in Corvallis, we're leaving this place that I consider home.  I'm also leaving a large number of people that I'd kind of rather not leave behind.  And it's kind of sad.

This is our home that we've enjoyed for about two and a half years. Now we go off to a world with a lot of people and a lot of cars. I have this really horrible picture of Portland/suburbs where all I imagine are big four-lane roads with cars and cars and cars. I lived in Beaverton with Matthew for two weeks right after we got married, and I've been in the Portland area other times in my life, and for some reason this is all I see in my mind. My mental picture of Corvallis is mostly filled with trees, and I'm having a hard time not being scared of moving from tree-world to car-world. I'm also currently scared of big cities in general. It's not even crime or people that scares me, but really just the idea of feeling like I'm surrounded by so many people and buildings that I'm lost and kind of alone. I also have obsessive-compulsive worries about figuring out where to buy good food (we're so spoiled by living about half a mile from the co-op), figuring out how to use the MAX successfully (we're so spoiled by being able to easily walk, bike, or ride the free bus pretty much anywhere we want/need to go), learning how to deal with everything just being so spread out because it's just so darn big, and figuring out what to do with myself since Matthew will be gone most of the day (I'm thinking I'll apply to work at Portland Community College in the part-time pool, but that would start in January...). I avoid thinking about these things too much by allowing myself to stress out a bit about moving and driving our car to our new place by myself because Matthew will be driving the moving van. Then again, I felt like Corvallis was big when I moved here, and I needed time to adjust. I guess that's just how things work.

Wish us luck as we move and adjust!  It feels absolutely wild to not be going to school in a couple of weeks since this is the first time in twenty-two years that it has happened!!