Movers and Shakers

We have moved once again! Shocking, I know, but it's true. We knew when we moved from Washington that we would be living in our tiny little vacation cottage just for the winter. So for the first time this move wasn't pulled completely out of thin air. Since we've been together, Les and I have moved five times.

Upstairs Lady's cat, taken from the doorway of our basement apartment.

The first time was from an awful basement apartment to a small house, both in Price. We weren't really expecting to move, but we got fed up with the slumlord ladlord being trying to sell the house out from underneath us and generally being ridiculous.

We only lived in that small house for four-and-a-half-months. We had intended to stay longer but Les was offered a job in Vernal and we felt it was important to his career to take it. So we packed up and bought a horrible little house that we kinda hated. But more than we hated our house, we hated Vernal. It was a town rigidly divided between hardcore TBM locals and "oil-field trash." Neither of whom were very friendly or open groups, both pretty hostile to outsiders. We simply didn't have the right last name or wear the right underpants to be happy in Vernal.

On top of that Les's job was heinous. He was working the jobs of three people and only getting paid for one. He was working at least 75 hours a week, usually more and went nearly a year and a half without sleeping on Monday nights. When he was hired it was with the title of editor, but his boss wanted him to use the title of associate editor for a two or three months to ease the community into the change. 15 months later he was still being referred to as associate editor and we found out his boss was bringing in a new guy to be the editor, without talking to Les at all. So we decided it wasn't worth staying in a place we hated just so he could be treated like crap. So he started applying for jobs all over the western United States.

Within a month he had accepted a position in Yuma, Arizona. We made plans to take a trip to Yuma to find a house. But before we left on that trip, Les got another job offer, this time in Chelan, Washington. It was a better job than the one in Yuma, editor instead of reporter, and paid more. So we changed our scouting trip to Yuma to a scouting trip to Chelan. We liked it, it was so much better than Vernal. By this time Les had officially been out of the Mormon church for nearly two years and was overdue to live outside of the beehive state. We packed up our car and a U-Haul truck and drove from Ogden to Ardenvoir in a single day with the help of Les's awkwardly silent father and new sister-in-law.

We planned to stay in Washington for several years. Les liked his job, I loved my job, we both loved the community. The only problems we really had was a landlord who was a little too full of himself. But he was in another state so it wasn't that big of a deal. But after about two years the company started having problems. Little things like bills not getting paid on time and services getting cut off. Add to that a hiring freeze and a pay freeze which meant once again Les was doing two jobs and only getting paid for one for more than a year. The company cut off medical benefits with only a few hours of warning, forcing a lapse in coverage for everyone but the owners, who knew it was coming. Les decided it wasn't worth going down with the ship.

We talked about it and decided that if he didn't find a new job soon, he may very well be out of one. Having come to that conclusion, he started looking for jobs anywhere. And I mean anywhere, he applied for several jobs that would have kept us in Washington state, one that would be a commute, but would probably even allow us to stay in the house we were in. But also in at least 15 other states, probably more. Several of them went nowhere because of proximity. But the one that worked out was in western New York state. So, yet again we packed up and went. But I already wrote about that.

Our new house in Mt. Morris

Finding a place to live from 2,800 miles away is no easy task. So we wound up with a lakeside vacation cottage for the winter. We knew it was only until the spring. Now we have a house in Mt. Morris and, while we pulled the entire move off in just two days, it was the most planned one we've ever done. And with any luck we'll be here for quite a while. We keep saying that we're staying put and then taking off at the drop of a hat, the goal is not to do that this time. I don't mind it, I grew up spontaneously moving all over the country, but Les's parents still live in the same house they bought the year he was born (one of the many things about his family I simply can't wrap my head around). So I think it's harder for him.