big girl pants

   For some reason, I’m big on pro/con lists. On a piece of paper, slowly accumulated in the Memo app on my phone, mentally – it doesn’t matter the form. Can’t decide if you should take a trip? Pro/con list. Thinking of cutting your hair? Pro/con list. Wanna eat that brownie? Pro/con list for sure. But I’ve never had to make a pro/con list that will drastically change my life depending on either outcome. Change the next five minutes, maybe, but not the path I’m on in life.

   I just found out last Friday that the company I’ve been interning with this summer has decided to offer me a full time position once I complete my Masters degree next summer. It’s a great feeling to learn I made a positive impression and worked hard enough to be desired by such an impressive company! It was hard work and I definitely had some ups and downs, but overall it was a great experience and I don't regret it for a second. Being supported by Garrett and my family, having a handful of friends and family in Alaska, and the thrill of being somewhere new made for a great adventure.

But now for the biggest pro/con list EVER!

   If I take the offer, Garrett and I would make the big move up to Alaska in September 2014 and begin our lives in a very new environment. If I don’t take the offer, we would stick around Bozeman and hope for an offer from my other two internships with smaller local firms. Either way, I would be totally happy with my life! That’s the hard part. I just need to decide which life.

Moving to Alaska:

Pros – the adventure of living in a different state, new people, new places, a respectable job with a big company, the number of professional opportunities that will open up to me, the growth opportunity for Garrett and I, soul-searching, a big paycheck, the overall Alaska adventure

Cons – the distance between me and my family, Alaska weather, the complexity of working for a Big 4 firm, city life, not having our core group of friends, being completely out of my element

   So what’s a girl to DO?! There are so many good “goods” yet so many not-so-good “bads”. Luckily I’m not facing this decision alone. Garrett gives the best advice and I’m confident that whatever we mutually decide to do, we will be perfectly happy and everything will be just fine. I just sometimes wish I had a tiny crystal ball that I could take a quick peek in to see which choice would be the “best”…but that’s when you just learn to trust.

que sera, sera.

onto the next “home”

   2013 has been a weird year. On one hand it has been completely awesome: graduating from college, spending time at home, getting married, moving to Alaska, moving back to Montana, etc. On the other hand, it’s been extremely inconvenient. I’ve realized that for the last five months I haven’t felt like I’ve had a home. In April, I began moving out of my cozy little Bozeman apartment. I moved back in with my parents in May and spent a month in a weird transition stage, half of my things in a storage unit in Bozeman and the other half in produce boxes in the hallway of my parents’ house. After Garrett and I got married, we immediately left for Alaska and spent a week living out of a car that was so packed, you couldn’t even lean the seats back more than an inch. When we arrived in Anchorage, we tried to make our dinky little apartment feel like home but struggled. I still have a few boxes I don’t care to unpack because it’d just clutter the place more. Next weekend, we’re moving out of this place and in with Garrett’s grandparents for the weekend: more living out of the car. Then it’s back through the Yukon for a week: car living again. Then home for a couple days: produce boxes in the hallway again. Or, heck, we might not even unpack the car! Just lug in a few pair of undies, our toothbrushes, the puppy – you know, the necessities. Then back on the road to Bozeman where we can’t move into our new apartment until September 1^st so we’re staying with some friends for about a week – half of our stuff in the car, the other half in the storage unit. Ugh! I feel like a gypsy, but I’m assuming gypsies have way less stuff to keep track of. I’m so excited to move into the new place and live somewhere for a YEAR and not just a few months, a few weeks, a few days. But I also can’t help finding it to be bittersweet because it IS only for a year, and once again we’ll be moving. 

   Whenever I imagined my married life, I always pictured me and Garrett in a quaint little fixer-upper – decorated exactly how we’d want it, our dog lying on the living room rug, hanging out on the porch with friends. That isn’t how it’s turned out so far, obviously. I want to make a home for us, but it’s just so hard when you know it’s temporary. I find myself thinking “should I print out those pictures and buy some frames to put on the wall? Well, that’ll make holes…and our lease agreement said no holes…and we have to leave in a month…I guess we’ll just keep staring at the bad paint job and barren walls…” I see friends on Facebook who are also recently married, and they’ve got cute little kitchens with nice plates and leftovers in the fridge and a broom in the corner and it’s so obvious they live there together, happy and fresh into marriage land. Meanwhile, Garrett and I live in damp basement that I’m pretty sure grows mold in the corners (I’m assuming that’s what it is…) and is the PERFECT climate for fruit flies to prosper. I want to make Pinterest crafts, dang it! I want to make a nice place for us, I want to bake cookies without having to buy every single thing before doing so including the pan, I want to feel comfortable walking around in bare feet, I want my clothes to dry in less than five days if I hang them from the shower rod, I want to feel like I can lay on the couch without something crawling out of the depths and laying eggs in my ear, I don’t want to have to go out of the garage door every time I leave the house. I guess I’m complaining about a lot of mundane things. 

   I just have to keep telling myself “home is where the heart is”, and that’s wherever Mr. Morris is. And now Remy, too!