1,900 Miles Away

Joe and I are now back on the frozen tundra. I’m not sure why we felt compelled to book a return flight to Minnesota, but walking home from the VA Light Rail Station in 16 degrees with 18 mile-per-hour winds out of the north at six in the morning screamed the vacation is over! O-V-E-R. Over!

Looking outside our bedroom window I still see 20 inches of snow on the ground. I can also hear our neighbor, Tim, chipping away at ice dams on his roof and cranking up the ol’ snow blower to clear his walkways again. Despite the twenty-degree weather this mid-March weekend, folks are excited because we have a "warm week ahead of us" with highs in the 40s - possibly in the low 50s, which means we will get rain instead of snow this week.

Minnesota sure has a way of humbling a person. I'm trying to stay strong, but I’m reminiscing about the taste the fresh, ripe strawberries from Santa Maria while our washing machine removes the last grains of California sand from my clothes downstairs.

With a glimmer of hope in my mind’s California-honed eye, I peeked online for apartments near Santa Monica and jobs at UCLA this afternoon. There is an opening for a Senior Fund Manager at the UCLA Program in Global Health. It totally has my name on it and it’s located five miles from the Pacific Ocean. And I’m sure that Joe and I could shell out $2200/month for a small rental in Westwood, within walking distance to UCLA, or a “spacious” 826 square feet apartment located 2 blocks from the Santa Monica Beach. I could do good work by day and, by night or weekend, we could take our dogs to the Santa Monica Pier and learn how to swing around adult-sized jungle gyms with the Trapeze School of New York-Los Angeles.

Or, you know, I could humbly and diligently focus on my New Employee Orientation at HealthPartners, which starts tomorrow at 8:30am and remain in our 1,400 square feet home with a huge backyard that costs considerably less that $2,200/month to own. Yes, I hear wonderful things about working at HealthPartners and I’ll only have a 10 minute commute to work each day via light rail. But, you see, HealthPartners and our home are located 1,900 miles away from the Santa Monica Pier, which is a mega drawback to residing in Minnesota.