Moving Cross-Country

If you've never had to move cross-country, consider yourself lucky. It's a lot of work. In an ideal world, you have an infinite amount of money, time, and resources to not only examine each and every possible scenario for what your life will be like once you get there. I don't believe that anyone really has this. If you have the money, you might not have the time. If you have the time, you might not have the money. Or, you might have money and time, but no way of making it out to the new area. It's always something. The greater the geographic distance, the harder it is. For us, it's a combination of all three.

When I found out Spencer's grandma wanted to take everyone on a cruise out of California, Spencer was in the middle of the interview process. Loma Linda was one of the first places he visited and he was absolutely in love with it. In his mind, it had everything a program could ever want and more. I was a bit more skeptical since it was one of the first and we were heading into another dreary Wisconsin winter so the appeal of somewhere warm was highly desirable, but as time went on it remained his top pick. So when it came time to book flights for the cruise, we decided that we would extend the trip by one day just in case we matched there so we could go look at housing. 

Match day was about a week or so before we left for the cruise. When we found out that we were indeed headed to Loma Linda, we began immediately making plans for how we would get out there, what we wanted to do, and most importantly which areas we wanted to see. We contacted a realtor, and he set up a time for us to meet him and show us a few places.

Most of the places he showed us needed a lot of work. Many were banked owned properties. It's truly amazing how poorly some people treat their homes. In one house, the people had let their dog urinate all over the room they locked him up in. In another, they had let their cats and/or dogs tear up the carpet. Others were in comparatively better shape, but still had cosmetic defects (which we were OK with) or in some cases more serious defects (like water damage) which we were not OK with.

One house stood out to us though. It was a lovely home, a bit small for what I though it should be, but it had a huge yard with a pool and more space than we've ever had. They had done a lot to build in storage and were the original owners. You could tell that they had worked really hard to keep up with the place and really loved it. So, we made an offer. We low balled a bit, but not much, because the other homes in the area we selling for less. They didn't negotiate. We walked.

At this point we were back in Wisconsin and I was freaking out. We didn't really have the time or money for another trip. We needed a place to live. We didn't know how we could find one without actually being in California to look.Miraculously, I was given the opportunity to be flown out to California for two job interviews. Despite being deathly ill, I was able to make it to both interviews as well as visit a property. It turned out to be just the thing we were looking for. We're still in the process of finalizing things because it's a short sale, but we will be able to rent it on a month to month basis until then.

So, at least that part is taken care of. We have a place to live. I've put my notice in for my last day at my job, and we now have a tentative move date. The pieces are slowly coming together. All that's left is to sort out the details.