Settling In

Internet and cable have finally been installed!  So now instead of alternating between putting things away and napping I can just not do anything at all and lazily watch television while surfing the internet.  Ah, the glamorous life of the non-working.

But seriously, there is a lot of stuff here to put away and I mostly just don’t even know where to begin.  Before we found our place (which is pretty perfect for what we were looking for) I kept telling Wes that we could find a less-than-perfect place and just move out in six months while we figured out the island and where we wanted to live, but after watching all 149 boxes and such I looked at him and said, “We are never moving ourselves.”  The thought of packing everything up in boxes and totes and then hauling it across the city just to then schlup it into whatever place we choose just sounds awful.  Luckily we found a place that fits us because I would hate to be living indefinitely in a place that sucked.

Yes, I have been spoiled by having all of my belongings packed up.  The downside is that they pack up everything – including the poinsettia that I got on my last day of work.  It was probably dead when they rolled it up in fifty sheets of packing paper; it was crumbling when we finally unwrapped it yesterday evening.  I suppose next time we’ll have to go through everything and make sure that things we don’t need packed are disposed of before the movers arrive.

Our neighbors are incredibly nice – going so far as to come over to our fence and introduce themselves.  A huge change from Orange County where we were the ones knocking on the doors of newcomers but never meeting anyone else.  I feel like we’re living in an actual neighborhood and I’m looking forward to that life.  Domestic.

So domestic, in fact, that our tomorrow looks like this: hanging photos and fixtures and furniture shopping.  We’re setting up our lives, yo, and it’s awesome.

Hotel Living

What starts out as something novel and fun quickly turns into something just plain annoying.  Hotel living was fun for the first couple of days – maybe even the first week.  Someone else makes your bed!  Fresh towels every day!  King size bed!  And yes, the view from this room is pretty amazing:

Pretty nice, right?

But it all quickly turns into this huge bother.  The cleaning crew doesn’t come consistently, so you never know when you should be out of the room.  The t.v. is old and needs a good readjustment.  The internet isn’t wifi and doesn’t come with the cost of the hotel room.  The king size bed is less comfortable than our blow-up mattress.  And I’m so sick of all the processed food we’ve been eating over the past 9 days.

(And let me just take this moment to talk about how I know how ridiculous this all sounds – my hotel living plight in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake and the after shocks.  Yes, people are dying or missing or orphaned.  And that sucks.  I know my problem is a first-world problem, but I can’t help that.  This is my life right now.)

We have luckily found a place to live and will be moving in Monday.  Life will get back to normal, or some semblance of it.  Hopefully I will have a job in the near(ish) future and then life will fully settle.  The place is old military housing that has been renovated (some houses, anyway – we got lucky).  It has three bedrooms and plenty of storage for all the things Wes and I have accumulated throughout our lives.  Today we actually get the keys to the new place and I may even sneak some pictures.

Wes had to go back to work on Monday so there hasn’t been a lot of time to play tourist in our new city.  When we first found out about the transfer Wes and I thought long and hard about what we would do first – after finding a place to live, of course.  Wes came up with Pearl Harbor because we both have a connection to it: my grandfather was on the USS Oklahoma when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and Wes’ family is from Oahu – his grandfather was at VMI when the Japanese attacked and he and his friends left right before graduation to enlist.  I took nearly 300 pictures while we there, which I’ll get to in the next couple of days.

It still doesn’t feel like we live in Hawaii – at least not for me.  It might be different for Wes since he’s had to go to work, but I feel like I’m tagging on one of his business trips. We haven’t had a lot of time to explore and I know we’re going to be busy getting settled in the next few weeks so it will be just as hard to get out and see where we live, but I’m hoping that once we have all of our things this island will start to feel more like home.

I do know that already I’m taking more steps to be a part of the community than I ever did in Southern California, and I feel good about it.  The job hunt still underway, though it may go trudge along for quite some time until something comes up.  I have a lot of people who have been willing to help me in this search, which makes things a little bit easier and less stressful, though I am still prone to bits of drama where I wonder what the hell the rest of my job-life is going to look like and am all Woe is me! but they’re getting fewer and further between.

The weekend will look a lot like this:

Paradise

With maybe some fancy cocktails with those fun umbrellas in them.  I think I may get used to this place.

Frustration

Sometimes I get so frustrated by everything going on that I just want to lay in bed and cry.  Or yell at anyone who tries to tell me that it will all be okay.  That everything happens for a reason.  That all you need is love.  Because while I believe that in the best of times, when things are looking bleak – or just not as easy as I would like – I can’t see how it will all come together in the end.

We’re in Hawaii and this first week is all taken up with finding a place to live.  And, of course, it’s not easy at all.  There is no one website to look at for rentals, not apartment complexes with leasing offices.  There are condos and houses that owners are renting but it seems almost impossible to find those places.  And the difference between the good places and the crappy places is huge.  One nice place set between a busy street and three shit-hole apartment complexes.  The nicest place on the island that we’ve seen so far seems to have no office work whatsoever, so that means I’d be dealing with a huge commute to Honolulu for work or taking some retail job near home.  I’m not sure which one sounds worse.

I was, miraculously, offered a job this afternoon.  A job that is less than ideal, but a job nonetheless.  The pay is $7k/year less than what I was making before, which was nearly $20k less than what I was making in the Bay Area.  And the commute is much more than I was making in Orange County.  But a job is a job, right?  Or is it?  I can’t decide anymore.  I was so unhappy with everything at my last job and I went into that with high hopes.  This new job doesn’t feel exciting in anyway and the pay is worse, but should I take it just to have a job?

Farewell, Lower 48

How does a girl who grew up in land-locked states end up moving to an island?  Why does anyone do anything: love.

Today is one of many move days that Wes and I will experience in the next couple of weeks  while we settle into a new life in Hawaii.  We’ll be living out of suitcases until we can find a place and get all of our belongings moved in, and I may not have a job for a bit so this all sort of feels like a vacation.  There’s something about seeing your boxed up and empty apartment in person that makes moving final, and I haven’t seen any of that yet.

Instead, I flew to Portland to finalize wedding details.  So much has been packed into the last couple of days – things that I thought Wes and I could work on while we were here for a month.  But, of course, things hardly ever go according to plan and instead of coming back from Hawaii on Friday, we are going to stay.  So all of those things I thought I had more time to deal with, were pushed to the front – the photographer, the invitations, my hair.  All of it taken care of with minimal crying on my end.  Who knew that planning a wedding was so stressful?

Now I sit in the terminal of United (side note: it costs $125 to check a ski bag on United.  Good thing Wes’ company is picking up the tab on that, but something that we’ll need to remember when booking flights with skis.) waiting for my 6:10 flight to San Francisco to meet up with Wes and then head to Oahu.  I keep thinking how weird this is that we’re moving to Hawaii.  Who lives in Hawaii?  In my mind, Hawaii has always been a vacation destination and not a place to live and while that’s obviously not true I can’t help but think it: I’m moving to someone’s dream vacation.

Let the Count Down Begin: 219 Days

We found a place and set a date.  And my isn’t that a huge weight off of our shoulders. But after we set all of that the weight was set back on when we realized that we weren’t going to be coming back to the Portland area for a month but were, rather, staying in Hawaii.  So instead of having a full month to figure all the small things out, I (as in Me Without Wes) had two days to do as much as possible.

Yes, I cried a little in Macy’s.  This whole wedding planning thing is more stressful than anyone ever tells you.  Yes it’s leading up to one of the happiest days of your life, but those days leading up to it are just so full of so many things that sometimes it’s nearly impossible to not sit down and cry.

Like the wedding date.  No one tells you that everyone and their fucking mom will have something to say about the date of your wedding, but they do.  There is always some reason why you can’t get married on whatever date you first choose.  So we finally came up with August 14th to try to satisfy as many people as possible, even though I feel a little apprehensive about getting married after I turn 28.  But at least my Maid of Honor will be there.  And my brother.  And two of my bridesmaids.  And close friends who are having babies around that date.

I’m only a little bitter and frustrated.

But I have a date and that cancels most everything out.  219 days to go until I become a Mrs.  I can’t fucking wait.