1 month

This past Friday makes exactly 1 month since Bootsie and I arrived in Oregon.  I don't think it's a coincidence that it was also the first day Oregon really felt like home.  Yeah, my house still isn't quite set up (I may finally have a kitchen table, but I'm still sleeping on a floor mattress and storing socks and underwear under the sink!) but I finally feel like I've arrived.

I managed to drive to and from work on Friday without my GPS (which is a HUGE deal!) and am slowly settling into what I think will be my home church.  I still don't know a ton of people, but I've been able to catch up with old friends and it's been truly refreshing to see the ways we've all changed over the years, yet in some ways remain the same.  I'm also tremendously grateful to these old friends who have welcomed me with open arms and open invitations, and incredibly blessed to have found new faces who have welcomed this strange Bostonian into their lives without batting an eye.  Yes, it's been a little strange trying to explain exactly why I left a stable job, circles of friends and my entire family to move 3000 miles without a job...but whatever.  I don't think I'll even know why I'm here for another few years at least.  I just know that I'm here, and now I'm finally here.

My immune system was pretty shot from having such little human contact for the past month, plus the fact that all the little cherubs at work have snotty noses (OK, not really but put 10+ children together and one of them is bound to be carrying some sort of germ) meant that I caught a terrible cold this weekend.  I was out late on Friday and felt fine, but work up at 11am on Saturday feeling like I'd been hit by a truck.  8 cups of tea, 1/4 cup of local honey, 7 hours of Netflix binging and 12 hours of sleep later and I was feeling Okay enough this morning to go to church.  I cleaned the entire house when I got home, drank at least a gallon of tea, studied Ethics in the sunshine and prepared most of my lunches for the upcoming week.  I don't want to jinx myself, but I think I may kick this thing if I get a good enough sleep tonight.  (Which also means I should stop rambling and just go to bed already, even though it's only 8pm.)

I'll leave you with a picture I took this afternoon.  Lately I've been obsessed with the Oregon sky.  It's probably the same sky as back home (in fact I know it's the same sky, even dumb Sarah from Newsies makes the astute observation that NY sees the same sky as Santa Fe) but I just can't stop looking at it.  I think I'm mostly just nervous that one of these days I'm going to look back down at the road and realize I'm driving to work on route 9 and all of this has just been a dream.  If it is a dream, I really don't want to wake up.  I never thought I could actually do this, but somehow I am.  God gave me a dream, He drove me across the country, found me a house, a job, and lots of new people to meet.  I can't wait to see what's next.