Rocky Mountain High

out my front door

Four years ago Mike and I moved from Cambridge, MA to Sandy, UT.  As we drove all of our earthly possessions (including a bag of socks Mike used on his mission in 1996) across America I plotted our return to the East Coast. 

Somewhere in Kansas, or maybe Iowa, I turned to my husband of barely two months and gave him the first (and only) "ultimatum" of our relationship:

"Unless you want to sleep on the sofa for the rest of your natural born life," I said, "You better get me out of the god-forsaken state of Utah by January 2014." 

I know it sounds dramatic but 02138 is the kind of place that gets in the blood and I was convinced that life is only worth living on the East Coast so it seemed completely justified. I was looking out for us! It didn't help that my first few months in Sandy only confirmed my biases about SL, UT. 

Anyway this is all to say that Mike probably didn't expect me to have a nuclear meltdown when he announced in August that he'd been offered a job in Boulder, CO and wondered if I'd be interested in getting out of dodge. 

"NO!!!!!" I might have screamed while holding up my gold print of the state of Utah, the one with a big heart in it. 

Poor dude. He'd done what I asked (on schedule too). 

Somewhere along the way Utah became kinda like home. I can't say if that's just what happens after you live in a place for a while or if it happened because we made some truly wonderful friends in "that god forsaken state." Either way I'd grown to love the beehive state so much I'd been considering letting Mike out of the "ultimatum.", maybe buying a house (I had my eye on a 113 year old place in the Avenues) and getting a Utah driver's license (which if you know me is major).  That's love, yo. 

So I had every intention of digging in my heels and telling Mike he should work at McDonalds because I hear they offer extra pay to people with high school diplomas (imagine the premium he could get with a JD!). But somehow, and against my better judgement, he convinced me to fly out the Boulder and check things out.  

I saw this and I was done. 

Short story long (isn't that always the way with me) we live in Boulder now, this hippy town in the mountains. 

I like it, but don't worry Utah it's not home (yet).