The Dreaded Month of December 2007

So, I get a sick feeling in my stomach when I think back to December, 2007. Nobody could pay me enough to relive those 31 days. During my last month of school, I had to get up at 0545 so that I could drive in frigid cold winter weather to Idaho Falls to attend a 12 hour day of clinicals. Then, on most clinical days I had to drive yet again in the dark of night back to Pocatello to attend my Espanol class at night. Those were long days where I never got to see the light of day, unless it was through a vomiting patient's window. I barely survived those last few weeks of school.

Then in the middle of all that Dallin and I got to go to Ilwaco, WA for job interviews. It was a fun trip...minus the 12 hour drive. We got to Ilwaco late at night. Washington had just had the most wild weather the Washington coast had seen in like 50 years and we were lucky enough to see the aftermath of it. Before I go into describing some of the damage we saw, can I just say the Astoria bridge, holy cow! It's a pretty awesome bridge. When we first went over it it was night time. All I could see was the sky high bridge that seemed to be floating in the sky above the water magically. I thought to myself, "Lori would never make it across this bridge." Once we got across it without dying little did we know that we were headed to another dangerous and perilous place. We were traveling along this highway, minding our own business when we noticed ahead that there were flashing lights and an orange vested man that was holding a cigarette and a stop sign. We stopped and upon stopping we noticed that the road seemed muddy. We looked off to the side to see a mountain side with water that was still running off of it. We put two and two together and decided that hhmmm there must have been a mud slide here. The car we were driving at the time had a sun roof. I looked out the top of the sun roof and saw trees that were growing out horizontally off the mountain and were now towering above our car. I just knew that at any time all those trees would come crashing down on us and the smoking guy at any moment. Later the next day I was informed that those trees weren't growing horizontally but that just the day before they had been knocked over along with 4 houses when 1/2 the mountain came sliding down. The next day our job interviews were pretty painless and we felt pretty confident that we would be moving out there within a month. We did some house and apartment hunting. We also went and saw a light house. The next day Dallin and I drove to Portland to hang out with Cathy and Corky. Jake was unfortunately not home. On our way to Portland we decided to take Brad's advice and stop to see the Astoria tower. The drive up to the tower was pretty cool because you have to drive up all of these really, and I mean really steep side streets. Once we got up to the top our car died. Yep, you read right, our car died, and not only that it started to rain really hard. We just sat there hoping that someone would be driving up there. Luckily in about 15 minutes someone came up there and gave us a jump. Back in Portland Cathy cooked us a really good dinner...again. And the next day we said our goodbyes thinking that we would be seeing each other soon. Little did we know that Salmon was going to pull out the big guns with their offer. No matter how much Cathy, the ocean, and the green forests called our names we had to go with Salmon.

Moving was definitely not fun. We moved within about a week. We also had to make another trip to Salmon so that we could find a place to call home and put all of our crap that we had acquired over 6 years. I was so sick of not being home and driving that if it was a real disease I would have been admitted into the hospital...probably the one with all the crazies. Dallin's family and Mom and Dale came up to help us move. We couldn't have done it without them. I also need to get something off my chest. My plan in writing about this is that it will give me some kind of therapeutic benefit. My name is Jennifer, and I am a fish killer. Yes, I did hate my fish and wished for their natural deaths everyday but when it came right down to killing them it was almost too much to bear. I did not want to take them with us to Salmon so Dallin and I disposed of them with much crying on my part over the stupid things. I still have nightmares about it and I still get teary eyed when I think about them. I will never own fish ever again. Before any of you cast judgement on me just remember that you don't know what it was like until you have walked a mile in my shoes...or however that saying goes. Now that chapter in my life in Pocatello is closed.