A look back...

Two weeks ago...T and I had our first christmas and I rediscovered my passion for the holiday. The music, the lights, buying presents, opening presents.

Three months ago... things were about as bad as they could get at work and I made the decision to leave. There have been some challenges and some settling in, but it has definitely been a healthy, positive, empowering decision.

Nine months ago...we had one of our most challenging months, when everything seemed to hit at once. Forced to move because of our previous landlord's crazy flipflopping on whether she was going to sell the house we were living in, dealing with telling her we weren't going to pay our last month rent and were going to use the security deposit because it was the only way we could afford to move. My wallet was stolen out of my office at work. Sarah died :( and Tim had to get a last minute flight back east. I finally saw clearly that I didn't have a real friendship with my supposed best friend back east and I made the decision to just end it and walk away. But through it all, Tim and I kept each other sane and moving forward.

A year ago...was our first January in Portland. We went back east for a belated christmas the first week of January and had the fallout from that. From my mom saying she didn't understand how I could make the money I said I did and not be able to afford to come back on Christmas to lots of comments of how it really wasn't christmas because we weren't celebrating on the actual holiday.

16 months ago...my mom had a seizure and got a compression fracture in her spine. It wasn't the first time we wondered if we should continue living in Portland, but we definitely talked very seriously about whether we would need to move back. I felt useless here and had practically no money available to fly back. I wanted to go talk to her doctors, get her into a real hospital in Boston, not the crap one they were at, and just be there.

17 months ago...I got the job at OHSU, complete with a huge pay raise. It felt like the job had been written for me, and I felt very lucky to have been selected. Even though the office part of the job didn't always work out, it was such a great experience for me to be there, I learned a lot, and I love that I can continue working for them.

18 months ago....we moved into our house on Freeman Street. It was cute, and we had more privacy, and we were out of the hated Atherton apartments. I was still working for Athena, and I flew back east three times between the end of June and end of July. I'm still not sure how we managed it financially, since we don't have credit cards and had to wait until I was reimbursed for one plane ticket before I could buy another one.

There's been a lot of growth, a lot of change, and a lot of settling in. But despite the challenges, I've loved the ride and I like the path we are on now. I have some great friends out here now, my job situation is much healthier, Tim and I love Portland even more now that we know it better, we are in a good place to buy a house in the next coming months, we are feeling good physically.