Not long after he got home from work I heard the refrigerator door open and the beau digging around for a beer. He opened the bottle with a shunk, and the cap dropped into the bin with a clatter.

I waited through a long pause.

“So I talked to my boss today,” he eventually offered; a disembodied voice from the other side of the kitchen wall.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, frowning slightly at my computer screen. I was in the middle of resizing ad text for my own job and it was not going well. These marketers were always wanting to add more words — didn’t they know the line breaks had been perfect the way they were before?

“He said it’s final.” He appeared around the corner and leaned into the doorframe. “It’s a done deal.”

“Ah,” I replied, and kept on clicking.

And that’s how it ended. What had been an interminable, one-step-forward-three-steps-back process had finally come to a close. 

We are moving to Colorado.

It’s no secret around these parts that I probably would have left years ago, in 2008, if it hadn’t been for the beau. I stayed, of course, but I kept pushing and wheedling and scheming, and after we got married it all ramped up to a fevered pitch. Let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go was my soul song; a constant hum in my brain. I was ready to START NEW ADVENTURES! I was ready to SEE NEW THINGS! Explore NEW REGIONS! Come on! Let’s go rip apart our lives as we know them, and then sift through the detritus trying to rebuild!

DOESN’T THAT SOUND LIKE FUN???

So we planned. We made an exploratory trip to Colorado, and we were tempted by Oregon. The beau, spurred by frustrations at his company, started applying for new jobs in those states. We waited. Until his boss started making noises that maybe they could transfer him after all. We waited some more, locked in the slowest of slow dances with corporate politics and policies.

Limbo. Months and years of limbo.

And you know what’s really extraordinarily stupid? I’ve wanted this for so long that I almost don’t want it anymore.

On the one hand, now that the reality of an actual move is here, I feel guilty for being the one to “force” us into it. Why? Because 98.5% of my consciousness consists of amusing contradictions. 

The timing is another stupid thing, given that we finally have a nice settled rhythm here with friends we see on a regular basis; friends who are also on the verge of pulling the baby trigger, to put it elegantly. Bang, bang, soon it’ll be a shoot-em-up showdown at the Kiddo Corral! Great, let’s run far, far away from ready-made community and start over with strangers!

Also, I mean, I am just not that thrilled about having to pack everything in this damn house in boxes. 

Angst! Fret! Despair!

Yes, I have many feelings, most of which I will probably overshare with you in this space over the coming weeks. In the meantime, though, I thought I’d share some facts about this new wrinkle in our lives:

  • Colorado is totally not even located in California.
  • Colorado is on Mountain Standard Time, which one hour later than Pacific Standard Time. Which means I’ll lose a whole hour of my life during this move. ONE WHOLE HOUR I could have otherwise spent looking at videos on YouTube.
  • Colorado comes just after California alphabetically, which means that when I’m filling out forms online I can just open the dropdown list of U.S. states, press “C”, and then hit the down arrow key once. One extra little keystroke. It’s like it was meant to be.
  • We are transferring through the beau’s job. He’ll have a new position with the same company.
  • I am keeping my job and will work remotely, like the incredibly fortunate bastard I am.
  • We’re moving sometime in late February or early March, which gives us plenty of time to mock ourselves for planning a cross-state move in late winter.
  • My California car registration conveniently expires in March, which is the universe’s way of saying, no seriously, GTFO.
  • I know exactly one person in Colorado, and that person is still known by her rugby name in college: Drunk Mel.
  • I met Mel exactly once, and the next day I suffered through the worst hangover in recent memory.
  • It’ll be a 22 hour drive from Denver to my extended family, which I suppose is an improvement over the 40 hour drive it is now.
  • I understand there are mountains there.
  • And amendment 64.
  • Also, snow.
  • But no Trader Joe’s, which was very nearly a deal breaker. We were definitely dropping some aw hell naws and Z-snaps when we heard about that. NO TRADER JOE’S? How will we ever conduct our grocery shopping? Who are these people?

I guess I’m soon to find out?

And lastly, I thought I’d share some pictures from Colorado last summer, taken in and around Boulder and downtown Denver. It looks so pretty when you Instagram filter the crap out of it.

I can haz home?