my baby's in the white fluffy clouds

So if the stuff earlier this week wasn't enough, I found out soon afterwards that Krinn isn't moving to Tucson, you know, Monday as previously planned. This is for a great reason --- she got offered an awesome job in Seattle --- but it still sucks for me, since I was really looking forward to her being here and now... that's not a thing I am doing. :/ (We'd negotiated that she could and should hunt for a job elsewhere up until the deadline, which in retrospect was a really dumb thing for me to negotiate because I hate uncertainty, but, well, education is what happens when you don't get what you want, as Rik likes to say.) This leaves me with a few options, which I'm going to discuss here, in part because it's a useful way to organize my thoughts and in part because I really would like some help figuring out what the heck to do here. Krinn and I are pretty committed to living together, and we're both willing to move to do it, although it would be a bit of a stretch to say that either of us wants to move. (Separately, I am so ready to be done living airplanes-only distance from all of my partners. I would like to be done with that... Well, I was kind of looking forward to Monday. Still a little bitter. If this is still the case for me in 2016 I will be very unhappy.)

Option one is --- I could just move to Seattle! There are some things about this that are awesome: Krinn loves Seattle, I have some friends in Seattle, there's good vegan food, there's a good Pokemon scene (although I wouldn't be nearly as in charge as I am here), there's decent public transit in the city itself, Rik is, at least right now, there. (He, Rowan, and Timber, all of whom I count as important to me, may be leaving at some point, so I'm hesitant to be like "I will settle there!! Rik will be there!!!" but... seeing Rik all the time, that would be pretty great.) The biggest downside is the climate. I get sad in the winter in ARIZONA. I get cold at night IN ARIZONA. I'm actually allergic to the cold, like, I break out in hives, it's bad. I hate rain. I hate clouds. Climatewise, I know with certainty, I will hate Seattle. Seattle's also much more expensive than here; between Krinn and I, we can afford to live somewhere almost as nice as where I live now, but a lot of incidentals are more expensive and owning a car would not feel effectively free [0] --- although maybe I could just not own a car, which frankly, would be kind of okay. (In a city with goodish transit, I would mostly need a car for getting to card game tournaments and for carrying large objects; these can be accomplished with zipcar and asking friends for favors. I'm used to being the friend asked for favors and I don't mind that role --- 1 car per 4-5 people in a social group seems right to me --- maybe I could just not be the person with the car for once?) There are also social issues: Some folks there don't much care for me, which is fine, h8rs gonna h8, but they're in Krinn's social group and figuring out how to handle that is not a thing I look forward to? I think it's perfectly manageable, just, not a source of warm fuzzy feelings, you know?

Option two is --- Krinn could work the job in Seattle for a year, settle debts and accrue savings, and then move down to Tucson in December or something! In some ways I like this solution the best, because dude, I'd get to stay in Tucson. I love Tucson most of all the places I've lived by a wide margin. I have a community here, I'm making the community here better by running events and taking care of children and I'm like. a mentor? I am a mentor here. It's bizarre, it's not what I imagined myself doing, but it's super important to me and I don't want to leave and also the sun is bright and the skies are blue and the mountains are beautiful and I will miss my mountains if I leave oh god. Krinn didn't have a great time when she was here a couple of years ago --- it's a little small for her, it's hotter than she'd like in the summer, and it doesn't have the kind of tech industry that would like to give you piles of money to play with fun computer problems. There's also not much of her community down here, which is a major thing. At the same time, she could build a community, and taking a stab at that while less depressed would probably work better, and she's had a great time when she's come to visit while in a better headspace? So it's not such a bad move for her that I think it would be terrible for her to take it, but it would definitely involve sacrifices for her and that's a thing I'm very mindful of. ...Also we wouldn't get to live together for another year. That part's ass.

Option three is --- We could wait a year and then both move to a third place. We were originally considering a third place before she got an awesome job and my financial situation got tighter, and it's something we could still work towards and achieve. It would probably take around a year, so similar to option two. (And part of the negotation for either of the first two options is that if one of us was like "I just hate this place" we'd move together.) This has a lot of potential upside, but I think we're both pretty much in our favorite places to live now? (Krinn might prefer San Francisco by a hair, I don't think she's sure.) There's also the weird thing that our lists of places we're willing to live are pretty divergent --- mine is like "Tucson, Providence, ooh, maybe Albuquerque, I could survive with Phoenix or I guess LA" and Krinn's is "Seattle, San Francisco, maybe Portland?? San Diego's probably tolerable" and there's a clear pattern where I want to live either in the desert or in my homeland and Krinn wants to live in a large West Coast city. [1] It's likely that we'll live in a large West Coast city eventually because I worry Krinn would like Providence less than I'd like Portland, Oregon? And I want us to find the thing that's net best for both of us but not gonna lie kinda wish I didn't feel like I was going to end up not getting what I want.

Option four is --- We could not live together full-time? The most clear thing in this space, which is really more of a space than an option, would be me being a snowbird at 30 [2], keeping the house down here in Tucson, and living here November-March and whenever I needed to come back for some event or just wanted a few days to myself or whatever, and otherwise living in Seattle. If money weren't an issue this might be the best plan, but money is decidedly an issue. It's one thing to keep the house down here and rent it for a little less than my mortgage payment in exchange for some long-term value and it's another thing entirely to keep it habitable by _me_ while paying to live somewhere else. Maybe we could swing it. Maybe Krinn'd even be able to convince her job that it was reasonable for her to work remotely a bunch of that time and she could come with me. I'm not sure I'd be able to convince the cats this was a reasonable plan, though. :( Can cats actually get used to a thing like that? Selene's almost 12.

Ooh, or I could move to Providence and then move somewhere else with Krinn in a year, and that would get my "not have to fly to get physical affection" box checked off which let me tell you is a big deal, but two moves in a year and change, especially when you own as many nouns as I do (I have a lot of nouns), suuuuuuuuucks. I guess Krinn could just come to Providence after that year? That's a line we could consider? Providence has all the climate problems that Seattle has and then some, though, so I'm not sure that's the best choice for me anyways, and while I think and hope they'd leave me alone there are people there I don't really want to be spending time with, either. So it's not as slam-dunk as it might be even though there are some really great things about it; I'd need to take a room in my place and paint it the colors of desert noontime and just leave a space heater and a sunlamp on basically all the time. And then live in that room in the winter pretty much. The cats, I bet, would really like that room too. I guess that's actually a fine room to have in your house and maybe I should consider having that room here.

We could also just... not live together? But we really don't want to do that.

Any thoughts? ...Help? :P

( footnotes )

OK! So, not that you all necessarily care, but I have the move mostly planned out now. It will go something like this:

• Ongoing: PAAAAAAACK
• Ongoing: Make list of things to bring in van
• Before Jul 20: Get one or two air mattresses
• Jul 15: Rik arrives
• Jul 18: Trailer arrives
• Jul 18-20: Fill trailer with most things I own
• Jul 20: Trailer leaves
• In between: Prep food for travel for me, since I can't eat truck stop food at all
• Jul... 21? 22? 23?: Start drive to Tucson, caravanning with Rik and me in my car and zanazibar and N. in their car. (There's a possibility we'll have another driver; we don't need to fly in like four people anymore, though, thank god.)
• Next day: Arrive at house, unpack cats, crash
• Jul 25: Trailer arrives
• Jul 25-27: Unpack trailer
• Jul 28: Rik flies to Seattle, I fly to San Francisco
• Jul 29: Sit at Wicked Grounds or something and work all day
• Jul 30: Wander SF with Krinn, maybe some social time
• Jul 31: Drive from SF to Tucson with Krinn and her things
• Aug 1: unpack Krinn's things

Yes, I am moving across the country and then immediately flying a thousand miles to help someone else move. Given the choice between awesome and reasonable, I will generally pick awesome.

 Our stuff is still mostly in boxes, but I have my desk set up and the kitchen is usable for some basic cooking, so it's sort of like we live here? There's network (which means phone calls are OK now), so I've been able to get work done for my job the last few days more easily, and that's provided some comfortable normal-feeling for me. I'm still waking up and expecting to be in Somerville; I don't know how long that will last. I lived in the same place for a long time and was very happy with it. I'm crazy excited about this house, which is awesome; I've also met a couple of people already and they're really cool, and I have other contacts to follow up on once we're a little more combobulated and have the energy to go meet new people.

All of the people who helped us pack and load and unload are amazing and wonderful --- we were kind of embarrassingly not ready, and without all the help, we either would have had to wait another week or abandon a whole lot of stuff. It's good to be reminded that I'm privileged with a whole lot of amazing friends, some of whom I've known for a decade now, and some of whom I'm still getting to know. Also a few of you I think I might owe a blood debt to now or something, in particular Scot and Kim for driving. ;)

Other than unpacking, I've been spending a lot of time staring out the window and looking at birds, and it's helped me calm down a lot. (This arguably adds a lot of credence to the "Rachel as cat" theory.) At a friend's recommendation I've been using birds.cornell.edu and I think I'm going to go ahead and buy a birding book, because I'm really enjoying this. Here's what I've seen so far just in my front yard:

( bulleted list of birds )

The day after I got here, my laptop died; I was eventually able to fix it with some bizarro /sbin/fsck_hfs incant, -pyr I think, and so far it seems OK but hoo boy did I run a backup as soon as I got that sorted out. My desk is now mostly set up, although I need a better light source --- this house has way too few ceiling-mounted lamps, even though there is a light switch in every room. I honestly thought there was a fixture in most of the rooms... oh well. A couple of them we'll solve with exciting lamps, a couple we'll probably call in an electrician to wire up. eredien's been having all sorts of trouble trying to hook up the gas dryer --- she's not awake yet, but I think we're at least in endgame on that project. Then get get to assemble beds and bookcases and dressers and unpack into them... then we have to figure out what to do with all the rest of this crap. :)

I miss people in Boston already, but I've already been missing people in Seattle and Minnesota and the SF Bay and LA and San Diego and DC and so on for ages. I think and hope this won't feel very different once we're settled in here --- and believe me I'll be traveling a lot to see as many of you as I can. In the meantime I have this huge tasklist and it's not getting any smaller. I hope you're all doing well and I hope I get to see you soon.