The Art of Chilling Out

I thought a blog would be a good way to keep people up-to-date about our move and transition to Seattle. A blog would also be a good way for me to process all these changes because

New City + Apartment + Job = One million new things to worry about!

Mike and I are moving out of our first apartment (cute, good location, TINY!). Unfortunately, I don't have many great pictures of this first apartment, but here are a few:

Tomorrow, we are beginning the 32-hour trek to the Pacific Northwest. 

Here are a few things I am sad about:

• Leaving awesome family (who have been so helpful these past few weeks!)
• Leaving really good friends and great people I have met throughout my three years in GRPS.
• Leaving Grand Rapids, especially since, in our old apartment, we could basically walk anywhere downtown.

Here are a few things I am excited about:

• Road trip! I love road trips (even though these will be driving days of at least 10 hours). We have tons of music and audio books (Amy Poehler's book, the Maze Runner, a Miles Davis biography).
• I LOVE setting up and decorating new places, so I'm looking forward to getting to our apartment and putting up my cute turquoise mirror and frames.
• Doing a crazy adventure with Mike. He's been really good about getting all the logistics figured out for this trip, and we are ready to get going now that we've figured everything out.

Speaking of Michael, I think this process has been a wonderful test of his patience and loyalty to our marriage, since apparently the concept of moving across the country has turned me into a crazy person. I have the normal worries about the new job and money and all that jazz, but the fears I am focusing on have been completely irrational. 

Sarah's Top 5 (Irrational) Fears that She Really Needs to Get Over

1. Today or tomorrow, I drive somewhere boring like Walgreens and get into a fender-bender and then we will have to shell out a fortune to fix our car before we can leave.
2. I go to my first Professional Development training, and the HR department tells me they made a mistake and they meant to hire someone else, sorry.
3. We arrive at the apartment on Monday and our landlady tells us that she decided she doesn't actually like us and she rented the apartment out to different tenants, sorry.
4. We will be driving up a hill on the highway and the hitch will come undone and the U-Haul trailer will roll down the highway toward the other cars and we will be responsible for approximately 20 deaths.
5. We will be driving on a mountain and the trailer will start to wiggle back and forth and the wiggle will gain momentum and eventually it will flip over and it and the car will spin side-over-side and we'll fall off the cliff and die. ( I shared this fear with Linnea when we picked up the U-Haul, and she couldn't stop laughing for some reason).

I joked with Mike that I need to take a Valium or at least three Dramamine pills before we leave so that I can just be unconscious during the drive. I knew we were perfectly safe when Mike driving the car and trailer back from the the U-Haul place, but he had to deal with an unending stream of Sarah-panic (what-was-that-noise?-is-it-just-a-quirk-of-the-car-or-is-it-something-that-needs-fixing?-do-you-need-to-pull-over?-you-see-the-brake-lights-up-ahead-right?-make-sure-you-give-yourself-extra-room-to-brake-MAKE-SURE-THE-TRAILER-DOESN'T-WIGGLE-BACK-AND-FORTH-AND-FLIP-US-OVER!)

So I need to practice the Art of Chilling Out. Things will go wrong: we'll miss an exit and get lost, and plates will probably brake during transport (although maybe not because Mike's dad is some kind of Tetris-ninja when it comes to packing boxes snugly into trailers!). But this is an adventure, and one that we're going to enjoy.