Portland, the Magical City of Wonder

Imagine looking out your window and seeing some trees, a pretty city, and a mountain that is covered in snow year-round.  That’s what it’s like to live in Portland (PDX).  It is a magical city of wonder, filled with artists, hippies, yuppies, and hipsters.   It’s home to Voodoo Donut and Powell’s Bookstores.  It is the anti-Walmart.

[To be fair, it's not perfect: traffic sucks, it's overcrowded, and the cost of living is high.  All three of those are true of Baton Rouge and Charlotte and we lived there, too.]

Portland Skyline with Mt. Hood

The first time I lived in Portland, it was for a couple of years in the early 1990′s, after returning from a year’s stint in Phoenix with Buzz.  That’s actually how I ended up in the helicopter crash in 1992…  which is a post for another day.  The second time I lived in Portland, it was with Kepler, and it was practically perfect in every way (except that Big wasn’t with me and Kepler didn’t want her to join us, and that was a deal breaker, ladies.)  We had a decent little apartment, but it was the best place because it had a fantastic view of Mt. Hood.

Eugene is home in 100 ways, but Portland is where I think we have to return.  A lot has changed since we left Eugene.   Eugene isn’t ruled out, but my energy is getting poured into Portland.  I already have several job leads.  Finding a job as an educated English speaker with near native fluency in Spanish has always been easy for me [knock on wood.]  I have to get out of teaching and education, entirely.  My recent history in independent schools has taught me that the educational system is broken and I’m not the person to fix it.  It’s the perfect time to transition to my second career as a midwife and Portland is the perfect place to make it happen.  Everything points to Portland.