My least favorite airport....Miami.
When we first moved to Portugal we were idealistic. Set off with cats (who had some objections) but definitely idealistic. The first dose of reality we got was that our SEF appointments had been moved because of covid the offices were closed which we were totally fine with. However, that didn’t end up lining up with J’s leave of absence from his airline and his sef appointment couldn’t be rescheduled until after he went back to work, so reality check one.
About 6 months after my sef appointment my dad had a series of bad strokes which left him in a wheel chair. He was in the hospital for about a month and walked out using a cane it’s been a long road for both my parents and while he has made huge improvements and can even drive now, I have been in the US far more than I had planned (besides what I had planned for my job). On top of my dad having a stroke J’s dad got diagnosed with lung cancer so we spent a few weeks up at Mayo this February and J spent time there in May?June? as well.
But we have been making it work until the last few months. Our lease was up in May so we had a few options: renew at the higher price, find a new place, or give up on PT entirely. I have to say I was camp “give up.” I had done 2 “death turns” in May to Portugal, where I flew in on a redeye overnight flight, arrived in the morning checked the apartment, paid a few bills and left on an evening flight back to the US. Doing these caused me to question my sanity and life multiple times as I ran through airports trying to make connections. My record best was a Chicago-Boston-Lisbon flight that got in about 6am. I went to the apartment did laundry took a nap and took the Lisbon-Washington DC-Chicago flight at 5pm. Needless to say May was blur for me. June was a little better I spent about 2 weeks in Lisbon and two weeks in the US.
Now for July and August it won’t be much. We had planned to take my parents on my moms bucket list trip to Alaska driving the Alcan highway in our RV which is the one thing we didn't sell when we sold our house. About 3 weeks before we are leaving she decided she’d like to do a bucket list cruise to Iceland instead, totally understandable as it will likely be much easier for my dad. But it left us with yet another decision. Do we scrap the Alaska trip and do the Iceland trip? Do we do no trips? Too many decisions. And we had yet to make a decision on what to do with Portugal as well. Our landlords were slow to respond with their new lease proposal which added to what seemed like a bottomless pit of decisions. After much back and forth we decided to continue with the Alaska trip as we had already planned it and we both had set our vacations and schedules for it to work in August so we are going forward with that trip.
Now back to Portugal. We seriously tossed up the idea of renting somewhere cheaper but those places were far less convenient. Our current apartment is about a 15min uber ride from the Lisbon airport, with going back and forth as much as I have been it’s been invaluable to be that close. Needless to say that knocked out moving further away for at least the next year. I had finally (after about a year!) managed to get my drivers license and had just renewed my 2 year residency card and honestly that was a consideration as well. In this time our landlords had gotten back to us and planned to raise the rent 100 euros. Even with all this I was still on team “give up” however J was all for trying it for another year and re-evaluating. So that’s what I (we) are going to do. With the caveat that I’m not going to renew the lease at the same place next year, so we either need to find a newer (cheaper) place, or look to buy which we had vaguely been doing this spring.
I don’t know what the future brings (bedsides our Alaska trip which I will write on here about) but having older parents with health issues certainly has made this different than we planned. In the words of my favorite band BNL “It’s not what your sure of, it’s what you don’t know.”
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