Where in the World...

Sometimes I forget where I am.

So I go to google maps and wait for the blue dot to start winking at me.

I am really in the middle of no where! Getting used to being on Pacific time is a challenge. I feel like we are catching up the rest of the world all day... not to mention when people are live tweeting something they are watching on the East Coast and I don't realize and then its all like NO NO NO my EYES stop... Spoiler Alert.

Korean Tacos!

Gosh I am getting sentimental about leaving our temporary housing in the Pearl. 

I can walk to the food carts every day and rejoice in the delights such as Korean Kimchi Tacos!

But yet more change awaits us as we move to our new place this weekend... once you are out of your comfort zone, you are really out there.

Bridal Veil Post Office

I should probably start of by explaining a little about the relocation over here. My husband was offered a job, and he accepted. The company had flown us both over for him to interview him, and we both liked what we saw. The offer came with a good relocation package that moved us out here in good time and helped us considerably with the entire process.

He is, um, well, he is massively paranoid justly concerned about safety, so lets just say for the purposes of this Blog he is called TJ. When I first met him, he was wearing a baseball hat, and I thought he looked like TJ from Recess. 

Right, so TJ and I have actually already been married twice (to each other). First we went to the court house in NY, and then we had a small ceremony in Brooklyn. His family is American, and mine is mostly all from England. So we are having a third (and final) wedding in May this year. So while I refer to him as my husband, he isn't really in the eyes of God, because we haven't had the church ceremony yet. 

We relocated at a pretty difficult time for us personally, planning this wedding in England, and just generally it all happened very fast. So I was making our invitations and trying to get them letterpressed, and sent out so they could all arrive giving guests the appropriate amount of time to consider and respond. I designed them in Brooklyn, had them printed, and shipped to his parent's house in NJ then calligraphed the envelopes and brought them in my hand luggage to post in Oregon. Don't get me started about return addresses. We didn't have one and it made me want to scream.

The point of this post is that we got to mail them from Oregon. And when we had been here for the interview we had taken this trip up the Columbia River Gorge and passed all these beautiful waterfalls and then stumbled across this magical post office.

So we took this wonderful trip back there to mail our invites! This post office is tiny, and the village literally only has this one small wooden building to mark its existence. The lady inside was so lovely and friendly, and she sold us some pretty stamps (roses, butterflies) and hand stamped the envelopes herself. Because TJ was such a good sport at this obscene romantic indulgence, I let him buy some Muscle Car stamps for our personal use.

All in all the trip was delightful and we stopped by the Multnomah Falls for another breathtaking waterfall, before headed back home.

The plane with pets

Packing up the house was relatively painless, and it was a rather lovely experience having people do all the hard lifting. Our little Brooklyn apartment looked like someone else's when we left. One last sweep through, and it was time to close the door on our life there.

I thought I should write a post on how to travel with pets. Or how to travel cross country with pets. 2 pets: one dog, one cat. Plus one husband.

So the key thing to remember is bag size. My cat was a starving little rescue kitten who never really realized his full potential of being 'cat' sized. He's remained kitten like, so he fit perfectly in the bag we got. This would have been ok if we didn't have to take him out of the bag to go through security.

I had tricked him into a harness earlier by offering treats and capturing him. Then I put on a leash. He wasn't really having any of it and as I held him close he flipped out, trashing, scratching my arms and lacerating my left wrist. The spectacle was regarded with amusement by the bored TSA staff, who found it funny. I purell-ed my arms from finger tip to arm pit.

Achilles, who never really likes to be told what to do, jumped back into his bag and stuck his head in the corner, in total denial of the whole incident. He spent the rest of the journey counting his lucky stars tucked safely under the seat in front of me.

Now the dog was fine. Dexter tolerates being in his bag for hours - a trick that comes in very handy when traveling on the subway in New York, or say, a long brunch with friends. So he sauntered through the airport without a care in the world. 2 hours into the flight, however, he was bored and wanted out. He started cartwheeling the bag around our feet and became a bit of a problem. So we took him out and he sat on my lap for the rest of the flight.

This is how I developed lack of feeling in my legs for the next 24 hours, and why I walked like a cowboy for sometime afterwards.

As for the Husband? Well he was happily watching his iPad and required no other special consideration.

We arrived in PDX, stiff, but excited for our new adventure together!

Coming up next ... Life in Corporate Housing.