One Year of the Commute

One year ago today we were in Louisville, Kentucky trying to stuff twelve densely-packed boxes into one very densely-packed Rav4. It was 35° outside – at best. We had not yet seen manatees, humpback whales, roadrunners or jackrabbits. We hadn’t yet acquired an appreciation for Spanish moss, golden barrel cacti or paloverdes. We knew nothing about the Apalachees, the Chumash or the Hohokam. We had only visited two of the Alta California missions. We had only lived in three different states between the two of us. What a year it has been!

Things are coming around to the end, too. Most of you will know, but this assignment will be our last. We are heading back home soon. It’s time. We have loved all this adventure, but we are ready to lead a bit more of a settled life again.

Here’s how it happened: About a month ago we had no idea where we would be going next. Maya had extended this Phoenix assignment for one month (the end of January) because we were both enjoying it here so much. The winter weather is great, the apartment is very nice and Maya was really enjoying her work. Well, when it came to the end of January and it was time to look for the next assignment there wasn’t much open. We had hoped to go back to California, but there were no jobs there is Maya’s field. She tried to get herself extended here again and they were looking to loose staff because of low patient census. Maya was looking at Atlanta, Denver, Bullhead City (AZ) and even Johnson City (TN), but nothing was panning out. For some reason the market for travel nursing was really drying up… We eventually decided that we would have to call it quits and head for home. We had actually started packing, had looked at prices of trailer rentals.

While it was a little sad to be done traveling, we also started to get really excited about home. Louisville has our family, our friends, “our” roads and “our” parks. It has Lotsa Pasta (there is no better gourmet food market; we know because we’ve looked!), has Queen of Sheba, has Pita Delights, has Bearno’s Pizza. We were excited about Food Night, Game Night and When You See the Robot Drink. We were ready to celebrate birthdays and holidays with more than a phone call and a card in the mail. In short, we were looking forward to picking up all the threads of our life that we put on hold and packed away last year.

Then at the eleventh hour we found out that we could stay. The census at the hospital had picked up and they needed Maya to say after all. So now we will be here until the end of March. So after getting really excited about going home, we weren’t. It was bittersweet to be going, but it turned out to be bittersweet to stay too! Crazy how life works sometimes…