#movingtospokane

Recently, there was a small but crucial change in my Moving To Spokane Plan, affecting countless other plans, such as the related Leaving The South Forever Plan, and the Having A Job Generally And Not Having To Eat Garbage Plan, and while widespread, this change went completely unnoticed by the husband and me until this morning. After several months of complaining without cease about my fears of leaving home permanently, to establish a new one far away, I believe I now have a bit of breathing room. Less urgency. Less fertilizer for fear.

Zach was made permanent employee at the IRS! This happened last week, and we knew it was a good thing--Zach cannot now be subject to involuntary furlough; he has real job security for the first time--but otherwise we took it so stoically that we completely failed to realize its effect on the urgency with which we feel we must move. Maybe we were too busy anticipating his birthday last Saturday. He was certainly looking forward to it, more than he was looking forward to working at IRSenguard for the rest of his whatever.

Now he and I have talked about it a bit. Here’s how it seems to be unfolding: He has job security. No longer does he need to worry that he’ll be furloughed, or that president fuckstick will freeze hiring and delay his start date after furlough, etc. In addition, for the first time, they have really recognized him, in a meaningful way, for the work he’s done there. (He works his ass off there, and is good at it.) As a result, the urgency to leave is lessened.

At the same time, I’m anxious as hell about everything, and it doesn’t help that our target date, next early March, is seven months away and approaches with disconcerting swiftness each and every second.

He had a brilliant idea: Why don’t we maybe visit there first? We’ve saved a good hunk of money for this project, and we’ve never been there. Why not use some of the money to go there and get a car and drive around?

To sum up, then, the headline is as follows: Brilliant Couple Recognizes Own Move Date Flexibility, Ratchets Panic Downward Slightly.

This doesn’t seem like much, but it’s positive and tangible for me. To put it simply, if I know Zach is suffering less while living here, I don’t have to feel like this whole thing is an emergency that has to be dealt with decisively at the earliest possible second.

Yep, that’s a picture of Spokane. Lots of people seem to take pics of the city from this overpass. 

You know you want a bullet list. Here, enjoy the verbal savings! This is a list of everything I can think of that scares me about moving to Spokane.

Either one of our cars breaks down on the drive there.

Kitty gets traumatized by the multi-day car trip. I hear they have kitty Xanax now! You can dope kitty up and turn the whole thing into mind-blowing, travelling kitty Woodstock.

We get there, and three months go by, and no one has a job yet.

We can’t find a place to live because we don’t have jobs yet.

We get there, and discover that Spokane is an international nexus for white supremacy.

We get there, and the only other gay people in town are pretty and look like Legolas.

We get there and, due to global warming, it never snows there again. Average high temps in the height of summer go from 80s to the one-hundred-teens.

The only job I can find is working at a pork packing plant, taking out the eyeballs for making hot dogs.

We get there and find out that the weather is, in fact, depressing as fuck.

Someone has a medical emergency during the period when neither of us has health insurance.

Someone hates on us for being in Spokane while gay. I’m not hugely worried about this, but I’m small-ly worried.

Things go badly enough that I simply never again achieve the quality of life I enjoy here in overpriced Austin.

I never see Joel, or Tom, or Jason again. You won’t know who these people are, but I do.

It would be out of character of me--I hope--to give a whole list of depressing shit without, for your sake and mine, a list of good things I think might happen once we’re living in Spokane, Washington.

Because it’s close to Canada, the free health care just kinda overspills their border and gets on me and Zach.

Because it’s close to Canada, poutine is cheap and plentiful, offered in about the same percentage of restaurants as those who give chips and salsa here.

We will end up in a nice two-bedroom house. That, and the weather are two of the biggest potential prizes of the whole caper.

Because of this, we can have a garden.

We end up in a place where it’s possible to get to any place you might need to get to with just a bicycle.

There are record snowstorms our first winter there, forcing the whole city to shut down for days at a time.

We’re able to purchase all the same food at the store there as here. I mean, I know they’ll sell Coke and Pringles and Wolf brand chili, but they damn sure won’t have the Hill Country Fare Hamburger Helper knockoff I currently enjoy, fer damn sure.