Flagstaff!!

Our new house

So here I am in Flagstaff.  Soon to be a permanent resident of this fantastic town.  It's weird.  And exciting.  And expensive!  We've bought so much furniture within the last two weeks that the thought of ever moving again is nauseating.  It's funny...we moved all of our belongings out here in a 6x12 foot trailer, and somehow it seems like our stuff reproduced on the way here.  We still have boxes lying around, books without a shelf to rest upon, dishes that still need a place in the cupboard (to be fair, I have this whole obsessive-organizing thing going on...there is plenty of cupboard space, but I'm trying to find out the "best" arrangement for the kitchen...it's a work in progress).  So far we have purchased five book shelves, 3 dressers, a coffee table, three end tables, a large area rug, an 8 foot sofa (it's massive), an oversized living room chair, 2 ottomans, a mattress and box-spring, 5 bar stools, a desk, a kitchen table, and two chairs.  Seriously.  How could we possibly need any more stuff??  And I'm still waiting to hear back from someone about a TV stand. Craigslist has been magical during this time of furniture acquisition.  I wish I had known about it when I bought my house all those years ago...I would have saved a boatload of money on home furnishings.  But maybe it's good that it wasn't around...I probably would have just had more stuff.

The living room with the massive furniture

Moving into this house is almost completely different from the time I moved into my house in Rochester all those years ago.  For one, I'm not alone this time.  Having Simon makes this experience a different one all together.  He does the heavy lifting, I do the organizing, we both fall into bed at night exhausted from all the lifting/organizing.  The first week here we did nothing but move in, unpack, and sleep.  It's finally to the point where I feel like we live in a "home."  Another difference is that aside from the bed, all the furniture that we've purchased is used, and super cheap to boot.  We bought a couple cans of paint at Home Depot, and are slowly refinishing a bunch of the furniture that we bought...stuff that's dinged, or old, or just plain ugly is getting a face lift.  It's actually quite fun, and we like seeing the results after a day in the garage furiously painting.  I still have a ways to go...two end tables, a dresser, and a kitchen table are all sitting forlornly in the garage waiting for their turn to be made up.  I know what I'm going to do with the end tables and the dresser, but am still at odds with what to do with the table.  It's an old farmhouse style table that was painted black, and then must have gotten the crap beat out of it at some point.  It needs some love.  I'm trying to decide how much love I'm willing to give.  I'll definitely paint the table top, but I have no interest in either sanding down or painting the legs.  I'm all about making over furniture, but I do have my limits (as do my painting abilities...I have little faith in my ability to paint the legs without drips, smears, or missing spots all together).  I was thinking that I would maybe whitewash the top and leave the legs black, and then find some funky mismatched chairs to go with it.  It's an idea.

Our back "yard" butts up to the forest. Excited about the fire pit

All that aside, I'm trying to keep the "stuff" to a minimum while we're out here (I kinda think it's a losing battle, but I'm giving it a shot).  We got rid of about half of our stuff prior to even moving out west.  Fitting all of our things into a 6x12 trailer was hard enough.  We pretty much cleaned out our parents' homes and our storage unit before moving out as well.  Pretty much everything we own is here with us in Flagstaff.  And that's good.  I'm enjoying having my entire wardrobe at my fingertips (although I still seem to wear the same thing every day...jeans, tshirt, hoodie, sneakers...I'm a creature of habit), my entire book collection is there for the reading, I have all my kitchen utensils and gadgets at the ready, and I like having my favorite art on the wall and some of my more meaningful knick knacks out where I can see and enjoy them again.  Some of this stuff has been packed away for over 8 years...pretty much the entire time that I've been traveling.  And I got by all right without it...it's amazing how little a person can get by with when it's necessary to pack and live as lightly as possible.  For now, the only packing we're going to be doing is for trips to visit friends and family...and camping.  So nice.

View of the kitchen with that dastardly ficus

Oh, and I forgot to mention that ficus.  How could I possibly forget that bastard of a tree?  It was given to us for free by a couple who was downsizing.  We had gotten quite a few pieces of furniture from them, and they threw in the ficus for free.  And that thing has been nothing but a pain in the patoot since we got it.  First off, the thing must weigh 250-300 pounds.  It's huge.  And part of it is dead.  And we've moved it to no less than 5 different locations since we brought it inside.  Luckily we had the foresight to put it on a little throw rug when we first brought it inside, so now we just drag it around on the rug to wherever we (I...obsessive organizing) think it needs to be.  After several different moves, it's back where it started in the kitchen.  And it's going to stay there for a while, because we're tired of dragging it everywhere.  It's a pretty tree, and I wanted to have some plants in the house.  I just think maybe we went a little overboard by having our first plant be a giant indoor tree.  Should have started out with a little jade plant or something.  We'll know for next time.

Amy and Simon at New Belgium's Clips and Brews film festival in Flagstaff

This is our roommate Amy.  She's a tiny little rock-climbing, mountain-biking whirlwind of energy.  I'm envious of her energy, to tell you the truth.  I work with Amy at the hospital, and she's been an awesome addition to our household.  She actually likes the pugs, and has tried to have them sleep in the bed with her on two occasions now.  I say "tried" because their snoring tends to keep her awake all night...hahaha!  She also brought her record player along, and we've been having fun combing thrift shops for cheap vinyl.  I remember listening to my mom's records when I was a kid, and I just love how they sound.  So we've been having a lot of fun with that.  I picked up Ann Murray's Christmas album the other day for 50 cents, so now our house can sound like my parents' house did all those years ago around the holidays.  I'm a sap, what can I say?  All that nostalgia aside, Amy has determined that she's going to get me out on the trails on a mountain bike, and that I will be accompanying her to the ski hill this winter.  Funny, she's the person I sold my snowboard to when I first moved out here last fall.  So now I get to comb Craigslist for a decent mountain bike, and have to face the inevitable fear that I will find  myself out on a ski hill for the fourth time in my life.  On skis this time.  I'm done with that whole snowboard bit.  I don't know why I thought that was a good idea.  So yeah, it's been fun having a new dynamic in the house.  We've settled in quite nicely...to the point that Amy and I had the fireplace going the other night and fell asleep on the couch together...on opposite ends, of course...there was no spooning going on.  We don't know each well enough yet for that sort of thing.  Hahaha!

Brie on her new favorite blanket, courtesy of Isaac Patten

So yeah, the addition of a roommate and the fact that we're still renting makes this whole "settling down" thing not so daunting.  It's like we're settled down, but not for real.  I struggled with this a lot.  For the last 8 years, traveling from place to place and living out of a suitcase was all I knew.  There were times that it was stressful, there were times that I hated it, but overall it was a great way of life and I really enjoyed it.  And I can't even begin to describe how much it helped me as a nurse.  I had hospital experiences while traveling that I never would have had in one single hospital (both good and bad), and I'm so grateful for that.  I'm hoping that I can bring some of those experiences with me to the hospital here in Flagstaff, and maybe give them some ideas on how they can improve on the great workplace that they've already got going.  They actually have a whole committee made up of employees from all levels of the healthcare system who get together and brainstorm how they can make things better, more efficient.  Part of me is a little nervous about getting out of touch, about losing my skills.  Hopefully that doesn't happen.  I guess if I start feeling that way, there's always the option to travel again...nothing is so permanent that I'm stuck in any one place for an indeterminate amount of time.  It's funny...when I was traveling I would count the shifts that I had worked, and how many I had left...a 3 month contract equalled out to 39 shifts.  I still find myself counting, even though there's no reason to, and there's no end in sight.  Old habits die hard, I guess.      

Looking like a goon at sunset

We have no idea how long we'll be in Flagstaff, but for sure (unless something major and unforseen were to happen), we will be here for 3-5 years, if not longer.  Hopefully longer.  It seems like this will have all been for naught if we just pick up and move again in a couple years.  And I like it here.  It's starting to feel like home, especially lately since we're no longer sleeping on an air mattress and we actually have somewhere to sit.  The puggers settled right in with little anxiety or fuss, which was nice.  They're pretty chill these days and seem to be content as long as they know we are nearby.  We've already had friends over for dinner a few times, and we frequently meet friends downtown for coffee.  Amy, myself, and our friend Jeremy drove up to Snowbowl the other night to watch the sun set over the mountains.  We were late (my fault), but the sky was still so beautiful.  It's still amazing to me that the mountains out here are so easily accessible.  20-30 minutes from home and we're nestled among the pines at 9,000 feet watching the sunset.  It's pretty surreal.  I'm excited to be here.

And it's funny...I think I posted a while back (prior to moving to Arizona last year) about how every time I had an ache or a pain I was absolutely convinced that I had cancer.  I don't think that out here.  It's weird.  I'm so much more at peace here than I've been anywhere else that I've lived.  I don't stress out as much, I don't freak out about stupid stuff, and I don't wake up every morning convinced I'm secretly dying of one thing or another.  It's such a relief.  I don't know why living here would have that effect on me versus living anywhere else, but it does.

Oh, and I solved that whole seafoam green pick-up truck conundrum that I was trying to figure out last fall...they are trucks that either belong/did belong to the Forest Service.  I have no idea why they went with that particular color, but there it is.  On to the next thing.

So that's that.  I've been kind of absent from the blogging since the half-marathon in August, but a lot's been going on since then.  I'll catch up.  I need another one of those "blog every day in May" sort of things to keep me typing out the thoughts and whatnot.