Movin' and shakin'

This weekend was busy busy busy, but in a productive, happy, and delightfully exhausting way.

Since moving is off the table for the foreseeable future, we are now moving forward with plans we've had for the house. Hubs started building us a deck off the dining room a couple of months ago (in between thunder storms, anyway), but it was put on hold for our vacation up to Washington. Since getting back from our trip, we've been busy and distracted and the deck sat neglected for the last several weeks.

Additionally, I've been planning on painting a few rooms in the house and putting my personal stamp on it. My first project was the guest bathroom. It has this fun paisley-patterned shower curtain in it, and I wanted to play off the colors in the pattern. All of the colors are fairly bright, so I knew I'd only do one wall so as to not cause blindness or epileptic seizures in my guests, and I decided to go with a warm, burnt orange color. I had carried the sample paint chip around in my purse for almost a month, but when it became apparent that we may not be here as long as we'd thought, it clearly didn't make a whole lot of sense to spend the time and money putting my personal touch on the house.

Well, now that we know for sure that we're sticking around for awhile, we spent the weekend working on these projects. I finished the bathroom:

Before...

During...

After!!!

Hubs finished the skeleton of the deck:

View from the eventually-to-be-landscaped backyard

Soon-to-be entertaining area

Soon-to-be steps down to the yard

We used reclaimed wood for the frame, since we're hippies from Seattle and that's just what you do. We're going to seal it with a couple cans of Rescue It (I'm thinking either the Timberline or Russet colors, since that'll complement the house), and then use new, pressure treated decking boards for the top. We're also going to get solar-powered post caps, because again, hippies. Weather permitting, it'll be done (or mostly done) by the end of this coming weekend, and we can spend a few weeks enjoying it before winter comes early and ruins the fun.

I'm planning on putting two potted dwarf junipers on each side of the steps, for pretties. I'm also going to repurpose a set of end tables and a coffee table that we have into planter holders, again for pretties. I'll post pics of the finished product!

Besides helping Hubs with sealing the deck, my next project will be to paint the wall around the front door. Our front door is gorgeous, but it sort of blends in with the wall around it, and I want to make it "pop". I'm going to choose a more neutral color for that; probably something in the toasted almond range, since our living room accent wall is a pretty bright red, and while I love color, I prefer any one visual space to not clash and give people headaches!

That'll pretty much be the end of my painting projects until the basement is done. At that point, we'll be painting every surface down there (the older kids are already contemplating colors for their rooms... oldest is going with a Seahawks theme), and I'll be turning the front bedroom into a guest room (which I'll be painting) and moving my little guy into the center bedroom (again with the painting). I also want to paint the master bedroom, but in all honesty, that's the last thing on my list. Mostly because I want to paint the wall that our bed rests against, and our best is freaking heavy, and I'm too lazy to make the effort. Just being honest.

Everyone calm the f*ck down, mmmkay?

In my last post, I discussed the random challenge we were faced with in receiving two competing job offers in one day. Well, given my overly-caffeinated inability to focus coupled with my mental and emotional exhaustion, I apparently didn't explain the situation particularly well.

Because of this, and the blowback I have received regarding our "decision", let me clarify a few things:

No, we don't hate living here. We just love Seattle and the plan was always to move back in a few years anyway. It's not a waving-the-white-flag situation, so keep your "I told you so" to yourself.

No, it would not have been "selling [our] soul" had we taken the Seattle offer. We knew it wasn't perfect, and that it would have been career-limiting, but it would have gotten us back up there (which was our only reason for considering it). Also, no, I don't make my decisions based on [this individual's] opinions. But thanks anyway.

Financially speaking, it would have been challenging and borderline irresponsible to move back. Moving 1200 miles is friggin' expensive! U-Haul, gas, food, hotels, and oh yeah, buying or renting a house; it adds up. Also, while we would have been able to sell our house quickly, we would not have even made back our down payment since we haven't lived here very long. All of that was a major 'con'.

While our heart may be in Seattle, sometimes you have to be a grown up and consider the responsible choice. Staying here and taking the local offer is the better career move, as well as the financially responsible move. Facts don't lie.

What I know everyone is thinking when
they say "I understand"...

Yes, I would rather live in Seattle than Wyoming. Duh.

Yes, I can be a Seattle girl even if I live 1200 miles away. I will always love Seattle. It's an amazing city filled with incredible art, culture, music, food, and people. And coffee. (God, I miss good coffee.) The climate and geography are amazing. The perpetual green is beautiful. The ferris wheel is... well, terrifying for me, on account of hating heights. But still. Living sandwiched between the ocean and the Cascades is where my soul is fed. Seattle is an incredibly special place.

Yes, I was looking forward to coming back. I had already made plans to spend my birthday up in Victoria with my childhood bestest friend, having high tea at the Empress (delicious!), roaming the cute little shops and bakeries, and hitting up a few of the 8,000 Irish pubs down by the harbor. I was going to kidnap other bestest friend, Ginger Jesus, and their kids for Thanksgiving. I was planning the annual Halloween party with my mom. I was invested in this.

And yes, I was heartbroken when it didn't work out.

But I truly believe everything happens for a reason, and apparently staying put is what we're meant to do for now. Hub's new company will provide him the valuable experience, marketable title, and global platform to grow his career in ways the Seattle job could never have. So while I miss my family and friends terribly, I understand that things worked out for the better. 

I'm sorry I let everyone down by dangling the carrot and then having to take it away. 

But we will be back. That much is guaranteed. 

And until then? We enjoy the journey and the experience. Next stop, Mt. Rushmore and Carhenge!

Like sands through the hourglass...

Yep, these are the days of our lives... The crazy, out of left field days of our lives.

So here's what's been going on. As you know, a little over a year ago, The Husband was offered an outstanding job opportunity here in Wyoming, resulting in our big move from the greater Seattle area to Cheyenne. However, after getting down here and getting settled, it quickly became clear that the job was not what we had been promised. In fact, The Husband had been bold-faced lied to about the job: its future, its duties, even its title.

Over the course of the past year, Hubs was put in charge of a project that was doomed from the start (when the management company includes a clause in their contract stating they do not have to finish the project if they don't want to, that should be a red flag, but Husband's company's CFO signed it anyway). Since then, they cycled through four different project managers (none of whom had previous PM experience), pushed back the project three separate times (it's now slated to go live a full year after its original date), and had the management company remove 80% of the original project items from scope. Husband was the only one at his company technically skilled enough to handle the demands of the project, and therefore more and more duties and responsibilities were dumped on his plate.

On top of that, continually more duties and responsibilities of his core job were piled on as well. It became the go-to to expect Hubs to 'handle it', even when the time constraints made it truly impossible to do so. As the expectations exponentially grew, so to did the lack of respect or appreciation (or even basic civility). Hubs became the fall guy for everyone else's issues (particularly when the Payroll Department didn't feel like doing their jobs). Hubs' manager did absolutely nothing to ease the situation, not even bothering to show up to meetings or update himself on the status of the project. All of the warnings Hubs gave regarding the quality, integrity, and success of the project were ignored, even when all of them came true. And still no willingness from Hubs' manager to give Hubs the job title, pay grade, or even public recognition and respect befitting his massive responsibilities.

Finally, the tinderbox erupted. It became clear that Hubs not only had no future growth within the company, but there was a chance he would be left holding the bag when the project inevitably failed and created a PR, logistical, and corporate nightmare. Hubs and I both reached out to our networks and pursued job opportunities for him, both here and back in Seattle. Some leads went nowhere. Others seemed promising but resulted in bupkis. After our hellish summer of family health crises and vehicular drama, we became all the more aware of our need for a reprieve. Mentally and emotionally, we both were exhausted, and put it out to the universe that hey, we need a break!

Well, be careful what you wish for, my lovelies, because apparently when it rains, it pours!

Last week, Husband received a call from a contact back in Seattle, offering him a job position. It wasn't an ideal position, but it would have afforded us the opportunity to get back to our home turf. Some negotiations still needed to take place, so we knew we had a few days before anything was final. However, we were given verbal confirmation on several occasions that yes, this was going to happen, without a doubt.

Well, yesterday we were supposed to have received the official job offer. By then, we had discussed the situation with our families and a few closest friends, and everyone was incredibly excited about the prospect of having us move back to Seattle. As we awaited the job offer, Hubs received another interesting phone call. A local job prospect that he had interviewed twice with and then didn't hear back from finally called. The president of the company wanted to interview him that afternoon! He went in, and 30 minutes later they offered him the job.

So, now we were facing two competing job offers: one that wasn't great but would have brought us back to Seattle, and one that would have kept us here in Cheyenne for the foreseeable future, but was an awesome career opportunity. It was a genuinely mind-boggling situation that we had never predicted having to face, and we were at a loss.

Cue the DEFCON 1 levels of stress.

Being the slightly OCD, anal-retentive, Type A person I am in a challenging situation, I proceeded to make in-depth pro-con lists. We then took the kids out to dinner, both to celebrate Hubs' new opportunities and imminent escape from his hellish job, as well as to inform the kids of the difficult decision we were facing and get their input.

(Oldest son wanted to go back to Seattle, daughter was good either way, and little guy was sad at leaving his best friend Percy Jackson...)

By the end of the evening, we had pretty much come to our decision, but were still awaiting the official job offer from Seattle. By this morning it still hadn't come, and we found out that the CFO and HR manager of that company had decided it would be more fiscally advantageous to stick with local candidates whom they could hire for much cheaper (because they notoriously pay below market whenever possible).

So that was that. The decision was made for us (though, in truth, it was the decision we were leaning toward anyway).

Hubs starts his new job the day after Labor Day, and it couldn't have come at a more perfect time!