running four miles fast and a lot of push ups...

can cure almost anything.

I've always been one to turn to exercise when I'm angry, upset, whatever. A hard workout, loud music and a lot of sweat have a way of getting rid a lot of emotions or at least helping you work through them. Running for me helps me keep my head on straight.

Yesterday was one of those days when I needed to run to clear my head and get me back on an even keel.

We switched our car insurance yesterday to a NC policy, and our bill dropped by about $60, which is cool because we've been paying WAY more for insurance than we should have been. But we had to pay them yesterday for the new policy, even though they just took out a payment last week for our old policy. And even though they are going to put most of the other payment back in our account, it just set me off.

This move has been so much more expensive than we ever thought. It has taken virtually all of our savings, even though we had planned initially that we would have enough money in checking to cover just about everything and not touch what was left in savings. The universe had other plans apparently. Combine that with the fact that I haven't brought in a substantial paycheck, and won't bring in a substantial paycheck until the end of next month, and we've been doing the fast money juggle and shuffle. We have a very small buffer for an emergency, but after being so good about saving for so long, it's hard to just keep see money flying out the door and seeing our available money until Tim gets his next paycheck get smaller and smaller. For a while, it was even looking like we wouldn't have any money to do anything for my birthday.

So paying an extra car insurance payment just really put me in a bad mood. I KNOW our money is going to be stabilizing soon. I know that once July starts and once I start at Duke, we'll be pretty much to where we were when I was working at OHSU. But in the moment, it was hard to see that. So I got on the treadmill, cranked up my shuffle and just ran. Set the treadmill on a fast setting and just sweated it all out. And then I did about 50 pushups.

Needless to say, the anger burned off, I was able to think clearly again and get my head on straight. And know that things really will be ok.

Kansas...better than what you expect

So today was Eastern Colorado, Kansas and just into Missouri. All along, we had been expecting brown and never-ending flat when we drove through Kansas. And parts of it were like that, as was Eastern Colorado....flat and green and brown for as far as you can see -- which out there, is about 20 miles in any direction. There is quite literally nothing there.

But then Kansas started to improve. Rolling hills. Lots of green. More varied than we had anticipated. Also, their rest areas are great. Free wi-fi, clean bathrooms, and huge green grassy areas for Myrawonderpup to play or walk and go out. So, we were pleasantly surprised today.

However. We are still 16-17 hours away from Durham. I really, really don't want to go into a 5+ hour interview on Wednesday coming off an 8-hour drive. So, tomorrow is going to be our one really long day. We have the alarm set for 6:15, with plans to be on the road no later than 7. Our route -- drive from Kansas City, MO to Asheville, NC. Go on and map it on google. Actually, I'll save you the trouble. It's about 13 hours, but it means that Tuesday we'll have less than a four-hour drive which is much better.

Getting really excited for our house now, I can't believe our new life there is starting in just two days. And I don't really mind the 13 hour drive so terribly much, we are driving in 3-hour shifts tomorrow. It is just a LONG time to be in the car.

Halfway there...

Good morning from Aurora, Colorado, where the mountains are beautiful, but there was more flat farmland than we were anticipating. I think I somehow expected the entire state to be mountains lol.

We have driven for three days, we have three more to go. We aren't quite halfway there with miles, we will hit the halfway mile marker this morning.

Yesterday was Wyoming and Colorado. Wyoming, at least southern Wyoming...SUCKS. Big. Flat. Not that pretty or interesting. Nothing to look at. No stops for hundreds of miles. We stopped at a rest area to let Myra go out -- it didn't go well. Poor pup apparently has sensitive feet, and since that part of Wyoming is mostly desert, she didn't want to be on the grass at all, she kept picking up one of her feet like it hurt her, but really, she just didn't want to be walking on dry prickly desert grass. Because there wasn't really any grass, she was having a really hard time going out, she's always gone on grass. We finally just walked her down a gravel road off the rest area for a little bit, until her body overrode her desire to not go the bathroom in this strange place. After that, she was great for the rest of the day.

We passed an exit with a McDonald's and Wendy's right after we stopped at the rest area for Myra, and we weren't quite hungry for lunch, so we decided to keep driving till the next exit. Big mistake. We drove for more than two hours after that (doing 85-90 for most of it) until we finally found another exit. Not just another exit with food, another exit. There were maybe five other exits in between, with two advertising food. But it is so flat and empty out there, you can see for miles in either direction, and there was nothing there, not even houses. The two exits that proudly proclaimed they had food -- they had old gas stations and that was it. That does not count as food. We couldn't eat and get out of Wyoming fast enough.

Once we got into Colorado, things improved. We stopped in a real town (after Wyoming, it was like the Mecca), got real coffee and drove out towards Rocky Mountain National Park. Wow. Just wow. HUGE mountains and rocks, driving alongside a river, winding up the mountains, watching the clouds and light change. We intended to drive to one of the parks and go on a nice little walk, but we were driving up the mountain for over half an hour with no idea of when we were going to hit the park, and it looked like it was going to rain, so we stopped along the side of the road, and let Myra have fun sniffing around at new things. It made us all feel better.

I actually got to have a real dinner last night, and not more McDonald's or Wendy's salad. It's weird that after 9 years of not eating chicken, I've eaten it twice a day for the past four or five days. But if I wasn't, I would either be starving or very malnourished at this point. At least I'm eating fairly healthy this trip, on the first drive across the country, I lived off veggie burgers. Now I'm living off chicken salads, but at least there are some vegetables.

Today is Kansas and Missouri, and we are planning to have a really long day today, since obviously there won't be any scenery. Now that we are officially at the halfway point and are past all the pretty states I wanted to see, I just want to be there, and see our new yellow house. Few more days...

Day One

Yesterday we began packing up the truck and our life, trying to make it all fit into a space no longer than 8' long (we would get charged extra for going over 8'). Tim, poor boy, had to load the truck virtually by himself. Our friend Steve was great about coming by, helping with the couch and boxes we had already packed, but he had to go home to get ready for his class. I had to run around doing last minute errands for a good part of the day. That meant Tim was the only one moving boxes into the truck.

And why is it that it seems that no matter how much you have packed, you always have more to do, and it seems like you will never possibly be done? We were packing and cleaning past midnight then got up bright and early to finish up.

At the end of day one, we are safely in a La Quinta in Caldwell, Idaho, near Boise. (If you have pets, and travel, stay at La Quinta. They are really great). I now love Myra more than ever, because she was a complete angel today and last night, even when she had no reason to be. Her whole world has turned upside down and inside out, and then had an 8-hour car ride. She was flat and quiet for most of the trip, and she was annoying us initially because she was refusing to go poo, but then we realized she would let us know when it was urgent, and she did. The only real side effect to all this change is that she seems more clingy with both of us. If one of us leaves her sight, she gets whiny and pacy and wants to come with us. But I'm sure she will get back to normal when her world normalizes.

It's weird to know that we have left Portland and Oregon only this morning. It seems longer and further away from when we got in the car this morning. The drive proved exactly how changeable Oregon is. We went from city to lush green fertileness in the Gorge, to flat desert area to an area with mountains and evergreens that looked like Idaho, to these really cool hills in shades of brown, red and green that were really pretty to drive through.

Myra asleep now, and we are one day closer to our new life.