When we moved back West

One night Adam was playing basketball with some friends.  One of them, Jared, was getting a joint Yale-Harvard degree.  (You know, one of those unambitious type people...)  Jared's friend from Harvard was there playing too and he and Adam talked.

He invited Adam to Boston for a job interview.

So Adam went.

Adam called me from Boston after the interview.  He said that he'd been offered a job.  In San Francisco.  Starting in a few weeks.

I was sitting on the floor, in my pajamas, talking on the phone and I felt like my head was going to explode.

Moving to the West was what we wanted.  We wanted to be closer to family.  We wanted a real job.  But moving across the country?  In a few weeks?

After I got off the phone, I did what I do.  I made a list.

I wrote down everything I could think of that needed to be thought about.  When Adam got home he saw me toiling away at my list.  "I love you," he said.

(Which I distinctly remember because it's nice to have positive proof that sometimes my manic list making is endearing.)

From there, life was a blur for awhile.  Adam flew to San Francisco and found us an apartment.  I stayed home and found us a moving company that could move us with such short notice.  (Some moving companies just laughed at me.)  I packed and arranged and said tearful good-byes to our dear friends.

It turned out I was really sad to leave Connecticut.  A lot had happened there.  It was the refiner's fire and we'd come out stronger.  I loved the pretty place and we'd made spectacular friends.  I was also happy to be leaving though.  It was giddy to be moving on to what felt like real life.

We sent our belongings on with the less than scrupulous moving company (turns out there was a reason they were the only ones available at such late notice).  We got in the Saturn--two parents in front, two kids in carseats in the back--and we were off!

A pivotal part of the journey was when we ate at Cracker Barrel in Iowa (the beginning of a beautiful friendship) and people were really friendly.  The West!  We were getting closer!  It's not that people weren't kind and good on the East coast.  They were.  It was just different, especially in any sort of customer service capacity.  For example, once we were in Boston on a shockingly cold day.  We were walking the Freedom Trail (because when you're poor like we were, it doesn't matter how cold it is, you are doing the free stuff).   We needed to change Braeden's diaper so we went into a public library.  You had to get a key from the desk to use the bathroom.  Adam asked for the key.  The woman eyed him suspiciously and said, "You're not changing your baby in the bathroom."

She refused to give him the key.

Adam said, "I can change his diaper here on your desk or in the bathroom.  You decide."

(Because we had sort of learned to fend for ourselves by that point.)

She gave him the key.

Besides the curiosity people showed towards our children in New Haven, strangers wouldn't smile and nod at you in a friendly way like they do in the rest of the country.  At Cracker Barrel someone held the door for us and there were all sorts of unsolicited hellos and smiles.

We saw lots of country as we drove.  We were in terrific mid-western thunderstorms and saw plenty of amber waves of grain.  It was wonderful.  You can't beat a good road trip.

Since our belongings weren't going to be in California for another week, the kids and I stayed in Nevada with my parents and Adam went on alone to San Francisco.  Then we found out it was going to still be several more weeks for our stuff to arrive. Grrrr.

Adam and I decided we'd rather be together than apart and we would rather live in our empty apartment than stay in a hotel.  So we went to California too.

Our apartment was in Pittsburg.  I didn't know there was a Pittsburg.  I knew about Pittsburgh which is the Pennsylvania variety.  I'd never heard of the California variety. 

The woman I called to have our telephone service hooked up had never heard of Pittsburg either.  She said, "I don't think we service there..."

I told her it was in East Bay, Between Antioch and Concord, by Bay Point?

"Oh," she said.  "OK."

We bought some lawn chairs, some little kid table and chairs and an air mattress and moved in.

here's hoping Emma learns how to hold a baby before my grandchildren are born...

When our ineffective moving company finally delivered our belongings, things were missing and broken.  Luckily, we didn't have too much of value to start with.

Right when I discovered a box of dishes that sounded like crumbs (I didn't even open it--I didn't want to see the damage), Marianne called.  I sat on the floor to talk to her and I started crying, like you do when you're talking to your older sister and your dishes are broken.

Braeden brought me his favorite blanket and handed it to me.

It helped.

Once the boxes came, Braeden and Emma instated these boxes as their furniture.  They called them their snuggle boxes.  They're in TV trances for this picture.

This picture is several months after we moved in.  I love those brown-eyed beauties.