2 Days and Counting

Well, here we are, 2 days away from the big move. The moving company came on Saturday and hauled all of our stuff away. Movers are definitely the way to go! 2 guys moved all of our stuff in about 3 hours and we didn't have to do anything but sit there and watch them. It was amazing to see how fast they carted all of our extremely heavy boxes away in a flash. So now I sit on the floor typing in a big empty house. There are a few things here and there that still need to be packed up and put in our cars, but really the move has begun. We leave Wednesday and will get into CA on Thursday. Then, hopefully, our stuff will arrive on Friday.

Ugh, I've been such a mess lately. I'm stressed, worried, sad, and stressed again. I should be excited, but I don't think I will be until we are there. Right now, I feel as though I'm just going through the motions of moving, but my head really isn't in the game yet. Tomorrow we will make the rounds of saying good-bye to family, and I really don't want to. I hate saying good-bye. Especially when there are 2 little kids that we will miss so much. It's really hard to grasp the fact that we will miss portions of them growing up. That will be the hardest part. I'm trying to think positively about the whole thing, but it's kinda difficult. Luckily, we can keep up with everyone through the internet so we will never feel far away. Oy, so long, Colorado!

Oops, forgot I had a blog.

So it's been about a month since my last post. It's weird, I've had a ton of free time, but still wasn't able to write anything. So here it is, my re-cap post.

October 1st: Last day of work! Woohoo! A little sad, but mostly woohoo.
October 2nd: Emma's wedding! What a beautiful wedding! And it was really nice to see some old high school friends again.
October 7th-9th: Trip to California to find an apartment. And guess what? We found one!
October 10th: Helped my dad move out of the apartment he had lived in for 16 years into a house literally 2 streets away from our house.
October 11th: Went to the Bronco's game with my sister-in-law, Megan. FINALLY broke my streak of attending Broncos games where the weather has be shitty and the broncos lost. It's been 3 years and we finally beat the Patriots during this game. Yes!
October 17th: Went to a work event of Evan's at the Old Spaghetti Factory - my favorite restaurant! YUM! Then went to a housewarming party at Kim and Ben's new place.
October 18th: Helped paint my brother's new house. Oy, I hate painting.
October 20th: Ate lunch with a former co-worker and discovered that nothing at work has changed.at.all.

And here we are at October 23rd. Coming up we have dinner with friends, moving my brother into his new house, a big family dinner, LOTS of packing and then.....bum bum BUM...MOVING TO CALIFORNIA!! Holy cow! I can't believe I only have 1 more full week in CO and then it's off to follow that big fat dream. I'm ready to get there already. Enough of this planning and stressing over details, I just want to be there. And soon enough I will and I know it will be a great adventure.

Last Days of Work

As I approach my final day of work, I can't help but wonder what's next and reflect on what has past. 2 days from now, I will be unemployed - let go from a company of which I have 5 years of service. I started here when I was an intern and now my career here has run its course. I have a little countdown ticker on my computer that has been counting down the days for the past year or so. I never thought that it would make it to the end, but here it is only displaying 2 days left.

I can remember my first day as an intern in the credit department. This was my first big corporate job and I was excited to learn that I had a cubicle! My own wonderful cubicle! I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and since I was still in college, my first day was only 4 hours long. I'm pretty sure all I did was learn how to log in to my computer and then sit and look through the office supply catalog that day. The next day was a full day and I was so excited to start training and meet new people.

There were about 6 other interns and admins who were all pretty tight with each other. It was lunch time and although I had brought food, I was secretly hoping that they would ask me to go to lunch with them. I waited and waited and I was starving, but finally as they were about to walk out the door, I was asked to join them. Yes! I was included! I interned for almost 2 years all the way through college. The group changed over the years, but there are still a few girls who I consider very good friends to this day. We all try to get together for lunch every now and again even though our schedules never seem to all work out. In fact, I'm having lunch with one of those intern girls on my last day of work...the same girl who asked me to go to lunch on one of my first days with the company.

I can also remember my first day with the catalog department. I was going to be working with a girl who I had worked with previously in the credit department. Having a little familiarity made my transition to this new team so easy. Also, I was going to be learning all new fun and creative stuff. It was awesome. It was the first time that I could say that I really loved my job. Unfortunately, the climate changed a bit a year or so later and the work I was doing was kind of killed. So I had to transition into more of a catalog role vs. flyers and smaller promotional pieces. I am so thankful for all that I have learned in this position. I am also so grateful to have made new relationships with coworkers. I have never seen and doubt I will ever see another group of people work as hard as the catalog team. Great people with lots of great abilities.

My job also provided me with lots of awesome perks. I only had an 8 mile commute to work, I had great benefits and it seemed that every time I turned around, I was getting a raise or a promotion. Sometimes the work kicked my ass and I hated working all those long hours, but I got through it and I am better for it. I know what I can accomplish and now I'm poised to go even further in my next career. And, like I've said in previous posts, I am so overwhelmingly thankful to have been given the opportunity to pursue my real dream. Layoffs can often be absolutely life shattering to some, but for me it was, is and will be incredibly freeing and a sign that I needed to take my life in a new direction.

My cube is all packed up except for a small Cranium desk calendar and a few office product odds and ends. Soon I will take my box of stuff and walk out the doors at 1 Environmental Way for the last time and take the first steps into my new life.

Wow, that was deep, wasn't it? Yeah, I'm pretty cool like that. :)

Dental work, illness, cleaning, packing = Vacation?

I took 3 days off this past week. Originally, the plan was to use those 3 days meticulously cleaning the house and packing up lots of stuff and generally being very productive. Well, I quickly learned that while I could clean some things, most things (like kitchen and bathrooms) would have to be touched up before we had a showing anyway, so no need to go crazy now. Then I realized that we had packed up the majority of the stuff we were going to store and at this point it's better to have stuff out and organized than stuffed into multiple boxes. So, needless to say, there wasn't a lot of packing and cleaning that I could do.

Since my benefits expire on my last day of work (Oct. 1st), I have about $1600 to use up before that date. I have a few teeth that need crowns, so I figure I might as well get that work done before I lose that money. So, what do I do? I schedule a crown appointment on one of my days off in addition to a regular cleaning on a different day. (I only got one crown because I'm not crazy.) Dental work is never fun, but for some reason I thought it would be a great thing to do in my time off. Oh yeah, BTW, that dang crown cost me about $500! GRR! Why on earth is dental work so damn expensive?! I submitted a form to get reimbursed out of that $1600, but I am extremely pessimistic about actually getting any money from the insurance company.

And then, the pièce de resistance, I get a cold. The day before my time off. So all three days (plus the weekend), I am coughing and blowing my nose like crazy. Not the worst cold I've had, admittedly, but still not very pleasant. So even if I had some cleaning and packing to do, I didn't have the energy to get any of it done. Oy.

However, some highlights of my week were:
-My sister and niece visiting me one morning
-Having a few lunches with my husband
-Moving a ton of boxes to storage
-Watching my nephew overnight
-watching the Broncos kick but against Cleveland!

Mission Gnocchi: Success!!

My sister and I have this thing where we get together and cook dinner every few weeks. The rule is the meals have to be something we've never made before and we switch back and forth between houses each time. So far, we've been pretty successful with only a few minor misses. Well, when my sister told me she wanted to try to make gnocchi (basically italian potato dumplings), I was very intimidated. However, she had a recipe and the confidence that the 2 of us could figure it out. So this past Labor Day, we decided to try it out. Usually our cooking nights are pretty casual and it's only the 4.5 of us, but this time we decided to invite the whole family = even more intimidated. Since we were all off for the holiday, we got started early. We arrived at my sister's house at 3pm and started cooking. Here was our process:

1. Got huge pot of water boiling
2. Made apple crisp dessert waiting for water to boil
3. Started to boil 9 whole, unpeeled potatoes
4. While potatoes were cooking, we made a pesto sauce (delish!)
5. Also whipped together and baked a carrot cake
6. Cleaned up and cooked some fresh green beans
7. After about 50 minutes, the potatoes were done, so they were drained and cooled.
8. We peeled the potatoes and mashed them with flour, eggs, parmesan cheese and nutmeg
9. Kneaded it until we had a dough
10. Then 3 of us took out portions of the dough, made long ropes, then cut 1 inch pieces and rolled them along the tines of a fork for texture of the gnocchi. (this process took awhile since we had tripled the recipe!)
11. Then in small batches we boiled the gnocchi until they floated.
12. Then we fried the batches in some butter.
13. Repeated several times until all the gnocchi was done.
14. Then we made a gorgonzola cream sauce (YUMMMMM!)
15. I assembled a salad of baby spinach, mixed greens, bacon, pears, gorgonzola crumbles and pine nuts in a balsamic vinaigrette dressing.
16. We also baked up some store bought garlic bread.
17. We tossed part of the gnocchi with the pesto, part of it with the cheese sauce and left a few plain.
18. Then, FINALLY at a little after 6pm (yes, 3 hours later!) we ate!!

AND IT WAS FRIGGIN' DELICIOUS!!!!!!! Whew!

Oh hey, September. What's Up?

How is it that tomorrow is the first day of September?! Wasn't I just complaining about winter and now summer is already over? Boo. Well, the great thing about September is it will be a nice transition month for me. It will be my last month here at work and I'll really start mentally preparing to move. I feel like I'm ready to make the big leap and I have just one more month to get through until I start living out my dreams. It's kind of exciting! Things are falling into place with the planning process and I know it will all work out.

Oh...and September also means the start of Football Season!!!!! WOOHOO! Although my beloved Broncos are, um, struggling a bit in the pre-season, I still can't wait for football season to start. Yes, I know, when they screw up every game, I'll be screaming at the tv, but I really do love my Broncos. And I can always use the excuse, "It's a rebuilding year," when they go 0-15. :).

Other than that, I guess my month will be filled with lots of cleaning and packing. It's insane how much junk we collect. You never think you have that much until you have to start packing it - and holy crap! How can 2 people who've only lived in their house 3.5 years have all this? It's crazy! And it's especially hard trying to figure out what is moving, what is going into storage and what is being given away. Going from a 3 bed house to a small 1 bed apartment is going to be quite a shock. And I'm sure that will spawn lots of blog posts. Anyway, that's all for now!

Look Out!! Looooong post ahead!

Well, here it is, the blog I've been waiting to post. The post that was the original intention of this entire blog. Deep breath....we're moving to California. Weird, just typing those words stresses me out even more than I already am. I've known I was moving for the past year or so and I have wanted to move there pretty much my entire life. But now it's real. It's happening. We're going. I've kind of tip-toed around this fact in other blog posts, but now I'm typing the actual words and it's scary.

::: if you don't feel like reading my life story, skip down to the 3rd paragraph from the bottom :::

So, let's start at the beginning, shall we? I have always known or felt that I wanted to be an actress. I didn't much do anything about this urge until high school drama club. The 4 years in high school were awesome and I honestly LOVED high school because I got to do what I loved with lots of really neat people. This is when I promised myself that someday, far in the future, I would move to CA and give it a whirl. Just try. Well, high school ended and off to college I went - to major in business. See, I have this fiercely practical side of me that is constantly fighting with my creative side. Well, in college I thought I had to let that practical side win. I knew I could get a job if I majored in business so that's what I did. I secretly wanted to major in theatre, but knew that I would struggle to make money in that field. I even told myself after I graduated high school that I was done with theatre and acting. It was fun while it lasted, but it was time to grow up. That idea lasted, oh, 2 months maybe. Because in August I was auditioning for my first community theatre show.

I continued my schooling in business (pretty much hating most of my classes. In fact, I hated college so much that I graduated in just 3 years so I could be done with it sooner). However, on the side, I was still doing several shows with a local community theater and eventually joined the board. I loved being on stage and also rather enjoyed the business aspect of running a theatre. Life was good. I graduated college and needed to get a stable job. And so I did. My first, non-internship job was at a small company where I only lasted 3 months because I was so miserable. I gained about 15 pounds and cried every night at the thought of going back there the next day. Luckily, during those 3 months I was cast in another show and had some form of escape.

I eventually got a great job back at the company I interned for. It was wonderful and somewhat creative. It is the job I still have today, although it has changed dramatically over the past three years. I was working in the catalog department for Corporate Express. For the first year or so I was assigned to smaller flyers, not catalogs. Still extremely deadline driven, but the catalog side had it a lot worse. I continued to do a show here and there, but we just bought a house so there were other responsibilities now. Fast forward to about a 2 years ago - I was newly assigned to catalogs. Ugh, I knew it was gonna be bad, but I really had no idea. Because we were so driven by deadlines, we were sometimes at the office until 9pm, 10pm and on a few occasions till midnight. Keep in mind, I come into work at 7am so the days were loooong. Also, the majority of the time we didn't know we were working late until 15 minutes before I was supposed to leave. Needless to say, it was impossible to do any theatre because rehearsals were always in the evenings and if you couldn't make a rehearsal due to work, you clearly can't be in a show. I was miserable, kept having break downs, stressed beyond belief and desperately wanted out.

Eventually, I started applying for other jobs within the company. Jobs I didn't even want or care about. I just wanted a job where I could come in, work my 8 hours and leave. I wanted a job that allowed me to do what I really loved - act. My bosses weren't too happy with this because while I was still miserable I was producing more pages than anyone on the team. So, they eventually worked out a schedule of only 1 late night a week and if I had rehearsal, I got to leave. It was unfair to the rest of the team, but it allowed me to act, so I didn't care. Eventually, Corporate Express got bought out by Staples and work all but ended so doing theatre stopped being in conflict.

Side track--- wow, I didn't realize until just now just how correlated my misery in life is with the fact that something was keeping me from acting. Very interesting. Anyway...back to the story...

Backing up just a tad. Since I knew I had wanted to move to LA, Evan and I decided to take a road trip out there to get a feel for certain areas and look at some apartments. In April 2008 we made a trip out there. It was one of the worst trips that I've been on. I was so incredibly stressed out at the idea of living in LA that I didn't want to leave the hotel room. I cried daily, we couldn't get in to see any apartments, the areas we thought we could afford were far from appealing and I just hated being there. It wasn't until we turned ourselves into tourists and went to Universal Studios that I calmed down. At that point I wasn't ready to move. We didn't have enough savings, I hadn't done enough research, I didn't want to quit my job and be broke - I just flat out didn't want to move. So, we didn't. We decided to save up for another year and try again later.

Then comes September 2008. Staples had bought Corporate Express back in July, but in September we learned our fate. We were retained until October 1, 2009. This means that we got to keep our jobs and "assist with the transition" until October at which time we would receive a bonus for staying plus severance. This was the sign I needed! The decision was made for me - I didn't have to quit my job to move, they were quitting for me and they were paying me to leave!! It was awesome! I had one year to get my life in order and mentally prepare myself for the move. And now here we are - I have 1 month and 26 days till I'm done with work and then off to California we go!

::: start reading below if you skipped all the middle :::

Ok, now that you're caught up. Here are my thoughts on the whole move....I'm terrified. I have never lived farther than 5 minutes from my family. I have always lived in a nice, quiet, safe suburb where one can afford to live comfortably. All my friends are here, I know where everything is...and oh yeah, we own a house here. I'm trading all that in to go live in one of the most congested, polluted, dangerous and expensive places in the country for some sliver of a chance that I'll be successful. I'm so completely stressed with having to figure out how to rent our house out, to hire a moving company, handle the logistics of moving, finding a place to live out there, what I'm gonna do for money, etc that my head is gonna burst. I feel like I'm jumping into a shark pit with both feet in order to chase a dream that might live at the bottom of the ocean.

I try to remind myself that I will forever regret not going and not trying. That I will never get what I dreamt of if I don't try. That it's only a few states away and with the internet, friends and family are never far. But with all that - I'm still scared. I'm going to do it, but I'm scared. Having a big dream is one thing, actually following that dream is quite another. Because what do I have left after I follow it and it leads to a dead end? I have no idea and that's what frightens me the most - that after I hit the end of the road, I won't have anything else to look forward to or to work towards.

I know that I'm not smart enough, strong enough and sure as hell not a good enough actor, but there isn't a better time than now. So I'm going to try. And if I fail, at least I can say that I tried.

The end! Good job for making it all the way through!! Here's a brownie! No, here are 3 brownies!