"Ahhhh, let's spend our last vacation week of residency having a relaxing time in Utah!"
Somehow we still believe that lie we tell ourselves literally every time Jared takes time off. This week has been . . . woof. I get sweaty just thinking about it. We intended to come down to Utah, sign the official contract with Jared's prospective employer, and then look for a house to buy. Lol.
The first day in Utah, Jared had lunch with said prospective employer, who gave him a contract. Come to find out, the contract was for ONE DAY of work per week. Talk about a huge misunderstanding. No set salary, just production-based. He'd be making less than we make in residency. An impossible amount to live on in Utah Valley. As a doctor. Uhhhh. This is when the permanent furrow in my brow first appeared. "Maybe he just wants to work you up to a full patient load that isn't there yet?" I asked, "Maybe I could use my marketing prowess to help you work your way up to full-time by the end of the year?" We pitched that idea to the doctor when he took us out to dinner the next evening. It was a no-go. He didn't seem to understand, or have interest in growing his practice. He mostly seemed excited about having someone on backup to cover for him if he starts wanting to take more vacation time over the next few years. Cool.
The next evening we had dinner with another prospective employer. A couple who started their own direct primary care business (a flat-rate/subscription-based healthcare model that bypasses insurance) and want to take Jared on later this year when they have a bigger patient base. It was an amazing dinner of smoked burgers at their home, then some morel mushroom foraging in the canyon afterward for fun haha. We love the couple--they're both extremely smart and savvy. We're very excited for Jared to start working with them, but again, not until the end of the year.
At this point we were starting to feel pretttty frazzled. The direct primary care opportunity has huge long-term potential, but Jared was losing so much sleep over how he would be able to provide for our family in the meantime. He started sending his resume to more stable jobs in other states, primarily Washington near where his parents live. It was actually a backup plan that we both got on-board with pretty quickly, but then he had a phone call with the clinics he was applying to and they were all offering waaaay less than what they'd advertised in their online listings. Like, the salary was $70k less than advertised and the sign-on bonus they hinted at was practically nonexistent. Back to the drawing board.
Next Jared found a potential locums (part-time/temporary) job checking in on medicaid patients all across the Wasatch front. He wasn't sure it was legit so still wasn't feeling too great about the Utah job situation. In the meantime I'd been scouring the Utah housing market all week with nothing but depression to show for it. It's brutal out there right now. Very bad time to be looking for any kind of housing in Utah. Even rentals. We were hoping to be able to upgrade to a slightly bigger home than our cute lil' 1400 sq ft residency house, but I quickly realized this wouldn't be possible with Jared's "salary" situation. I thought maybe townhomes could be an option, but even townhomes seem to start in the upper $400ks right now. And if I'm being honest, we really do need some kind of fenced yard for Savvy since I plan to be getting pregnant/horrifically ill and bedridden at some point during the next year. Can't be walking her all around an apartment courtyard every time she scratches to go out like I did back in the Georgia days.
At some point we realized that if we do end up coming back to Utah we'd have to rent instead of buy for the first year or two. I actually feel pretty good about that, although there's always a little fear that the housing market will continue to skyrocket forever and ever and ever. But for now I'm stalking Zillow and Rently for pet-friendly houses and townhomes for rent. The hunt isn't going great. Turns out 90% of rental homes don't allow pets, and what's left after that is verrrry slim pickings. Like, five options in the entire valley slim pickings. We just applied to rent a cute little home in Pleasant Grove. The location is great and it's got a big fenced yard so I'm crossing all my fingers. I'm thinking they must have 100+ applicants at this point so we'll see if they even get back to us. I think our application will be helped by Jared being a doctor, which is maybe the only advantage being a doctor will have given us during the past 8 years if it works out. I really want it to work out!
It was tough looking for housing while Jared was having such huge doubts about whether he should even take work in Utah right now. I was like, "Ok but if we do decide to come back here we'll need somewhere to live, and now's our only time to look in person." And he was like, "I'm freaked out right now." Luckily he finally feels good about going forward with the Utah jobs after he got a call from the doctor he most recently did a rotation with in Utah this evening, asking him to meet him for dinner to see if they could talk again about Jared coming to work for him. He felt prompted to text Jared yesterday, even though Jared had already turned down his offer a month before and told him he'd be signing with someone else. It must be fate because he wants to hire Jared on for 3 days a week, and Jared is scheduled for 1.5 days a week with the other doctor. We'll have to see what he puts in the contract before we make any decisions, but at least we have a few viable options that might hopefully play well together now.
So anyway, there's my long documentary blog post. We also snuck in some family fun during all the drama. We went to the zoo and Jack got lots of amazing cousin time. I'll share more of the zoo pictures next week. For now it's past my bedtime and we've got a long drive back to Casper ahead of us in the morning. Home sweet home!
It's been a whirlwind of a week. We spent every spare moment, including several non-spare moments (Jack watched lots of tv) getting our house ready to be photographed and put on the market. The night before our realtor came over with the photographer, I spent most of the night getting our home decluttered, minimized, and staged. I read Elsie Larson's blog post (from A Beautiful Mess blog) about how she went the extra mile and took tons of "unnecessary" steps to get their last home minimized and perfectly styled for sale and then it sold for $130,000 above asking price. I knew our home wouldn't do that well, but it inspired me to really go the extra mile in prepping our place for showings, etc.
It was a ton of work packing up absolutely everything that won't be necessary for us to live with during the next 2 months, but actually kind of thrilling and totally worth it. And it'll save us some time packing in the weeks before we have to move. Our home photographed so well that it ended up selling before it officially hit the market, and before we'd had even a single showing. It was bizarre! Our realtor had a little meeting with some other realtors in town, and pitched our home to them with some pictures so they could start hyping it up to prospective home buyers. We got lucky selling in a big-time seller's market. There are tons of buyers right now, and only like 50 homes on the market in all of Casper.
Anyway, a couple finishing up an Emergency Medicine fellowship in Iowa made an above-asking offer two nights before our home was supposed to hit the market. They even offered to pay closing costs. The only hitch was that they were asking to move in on May 25, and Jared's residency isn't over until the end of June. We countered with what they had already offered, plus a requirement that we stay through the end of June and they show us their preapproved financing. Their realtor came over the next day to do a facetime tour of our home with them, and five minutes after that was over they signed the contract. I was initially skeptical to take the very first offer, but our realtor told us that 90% of the time the first offer is the best one, so we took his word for it and we're happy we did. I don't have pictures of our place with me, but here is a link to the Zillow listing. It's expired now that we have an offer and a backup offer, but the pictures should still be there. It was a bit of a yucky day so the exterior shots aren't too exciting, but the interior ones turned out nice:
https://www.zillow.com/b/Bar-Nunn-WY/42.929015,-106.347055_ll/
Jared's home!!!!! He got home late last night. Jack is very happy about it. I am even more happy about it. I figured it would be enough excitement with Jack waking up to Jared being here, so we held off on the egg hunt for an hour or two, and then we watched general conference.
Jack's been obsessed with letter sounds for the past month, and he's starting to take a big interesting in spelling. I've been pitching him 2- and 3-letter words that are phonetically simple, and he's really starting to get it. He's also very curious about punctuation when we read his bedtime books. He demands that I yell all the sentences that end in exclamation points haha. I can't believe we're at this point when he's only just turned 3, but as an English language major I'm kind of loving it. And that's about all we've got to report this week! I'll keep you posted on the home selling process. I might push to have the process start next week instead to give me more time to physically and emotionally prepare.