I’ll be in Portland! I found out I was going to have a few days off the week before Gareth gets into town. Which was kind of the worst timing ever and felt a little like the universe was mocking me. He’s always worked when I’ve been in London, but he has much more sociable hours (if I’m also not working–if we were both working with his crazy schedule, we would literally never see each other). But he’s come to the states three times, once in May of 2015 after my job had ended, once to LA before I found a new job (during the dark months of unemployment), and once over Christmas (which I guess was still during the dark months, but I could pretend it was just the holidays). Never when I’ve been working. And I work like 12 hour days, which is going to feel like pure hell when I know he’s just down the street and I’m sitting in my office, trying not to feel like I’m wasting his whole trip working.

BUT! The extra days off. Before he was set to come. Well, he changed his plane ticket–only by a day, because all the flights were booked before then–but then we suddenly had a long weekend together. So we did the only rational thing–immediately booked tickets to go on what is shockingly our first proper trip away.

We’ve spent time in Cornwall with G’s family, gone to a few Crossfit events, had the best new years ever on a secret island with all our friends, hung out on Martha’s Vineyard with my mom, spent a weekend in Boston, and NH, and a night in Santa Barbara –   but none of those places felt like getaways really. They were either spent with family or places one of us had already been. There was no mutual discovery or exploring together. We never had that feeling that it was the two of us out in the middle of the world, far away from “real life.” (That’s a lie, I’ve felt that in his mom’s house and in my parents’ houses, but it’s still different.)

So we’re doing a jam packed long weekend in both Portland and Seattle. We’re going to fly to Portland at 6:00 am on Friday, getting in around half 8 in the morning. We’ll spend all of Friday and Friday night in Portland, before eventually taking the train to Seattle, where we’ll spend Saturday night. We don’t fly out until Sunday at around 8 pm, so we’ll have a little more than a day in each city. Definitely a quick stop in each place, but we are happy to just stroll along the waterfront, have some delicious donuts, take a photo booth picture at the Ace, maybe go to the space needle, and definitely check out Powell’s Bookstore (but not spend the whole day there!). Also find as many happy hours as we can, obviously.

I’m SO excited. That we get to go somewhere neither of us has been. That I get him a day earlier and a day longer. That this four month (minus my last minute whirlwind bday trip) separation is finally over. We’ve done four months once before and it was horrible and I insisted we’d never do it again, but here we are. Thank god, almost on the other side of another one. But I mean it for real this time. Never again. It’s just too long.