3 weeks and counting....

August 4th will be a bittersweet day. It will be the day that I will start my journey back out to Utah. Despite my somewhat sad and depressing posts the last year and a half, not to mention my negative attitude about the people in Cleveland, it might surprise you that I am actually extremely sad to leave. After all, I will be leaving a place that I have grown to love. I love watching the leaves change in the fall, I absolutely LOVE the old houses that are found in my neighborhood, I love my job and all the people that I work with, I love feeling like I can take care of myself, and most of all I love the people that I have met and the friends that I have made. I know that I have seriously undermined their importance in my life, and I just pray that I have not hurt any of their feelings in doing so. Cleveland is my home, I know where the grocery stores are, and where to find the cheapest gas. I know how much to buy at the grocery store and when to buy it. I know what my schedule will be like week after week and have a routine for going to the gym. For the first time in my life I have settled down and have made Cleveland my home.

In everybody's life there is always a place where they can look back and think, "Man, I sure did a lot of growing up here." Whether it's the cabin you went to every summer, or that year in college when the real world came knocking and you realized that you were no longer the care-free teenager who only had to worry about what boys liked her and what she was going to wear to school the next day. One day when I look back and think, "When did I become an adult?" I will remember that the process started in Cleveland. That is where I learned how to find an apartment to live in and set up the gas and electricity in that apartment. I learned how to juggle the demands of work, church, and social life, and to budget my money. I learned how many decorations, appliances, furniture, linens, etc are actually needed to fill an apartment and I learned how to successfully navigate myself around the ghetto. Most importantly I learned who I am, what motivates me, my discourages me, what hurts me, and what makes me happy.

Yes, August 4th will be a bittersweet day, I will be packing up my car with everything I own (hopefully it will not get stolen this time) and driving to MN while singing at the top of my longs to this song by Jerrod Niemann

And of course this one too!!