Whirlwind Catchup

Hi guys, I have been avoiding the blog. It's been too long, I am sorry. For those of you who haven't been following along on Twitter, I wanted to catch you up on the happenings. It's only just starting to resolve itself, and I can even talk about it without tearing up. So that's something!

Back in October, we decided to make a big change and submitted The Husband's name for a transfer to Portland. We had done quite a bit of researching the area, homes, etc. And really felt like we were ready for a new adventure. It was so exciting to dream about trees, rain, and temperate climates!

In January, we celebrated all the kid's birthdays and took the family for a big trip out to see my in-laws in St. Louis. Mere days before our departure back east, we got The Call that we could be Portland bound. It was a huge stretch, cutting the trip short and having Husband race directly from the airport to his car to make a straight push the 17 hr drive. It was hectic to say the least. We had two days to prepare the house, sell everything we didn't want to move, (which was almost everything- I dreamed of a clean slate in Oregon, not to mention the inevitable short-term downsizing we planned on upon arrival) as I would be lone-wolfing it down here without a Husband.

As soon as he arrived in Portland, there were some serious red-flags about his job stability, and a week after he got up there, he was laid off. It was a huge blow, as I'm hoping you can imagine. Yet, he had to stay up there to be "on-call" to keep our insurance, and to fight for his job back down here in Vegas. We went through two months of hell and agony. He worked maybe a few hours a week at half pay, we drained our rainy-day-Portland fund down to the bone.

Two weeks before we were to take Husband's case to a tribunal to decide our fate, the twins came home with lice from school. They gave lice to me, and I just about lost my marbles. In an effort to quell the invasion, I shaved my head nearly bald.

Take a breath now. I KNOW. Seriously, I KNOW. It was BAD. Everything was BLEAK. I was sobbing myself to sleep every night.

Luckily, the tribunal took pity on our situation, and awarded his job back in Vegas. We didn't get everything we were asking for, and took a hard monetary hit that will take some time to recover. I'm coming out of some stages of grief, mourning the loss of a dream, among other things. (like MY FREAKING HAIR) I'm trying to be patient and make a plan for our life here. We'll be putting down roots in this heaven-forsaken-dust-bowl, and I'm not exactly sure what that is going to look like, but I'm taking it slow. The worst is absolutely behind us.

I only got through those dark days with the help of my lovely community of friends both near and far. I have been so incredibly lucky to have amazing people in my life. (Including online!) Thank you to those (you know who you are) who sent me things to brighten my day; Who offered warm words of encouragement; who were there to listen to me weep. (and yell!) I'm so grateful to be in this place- this time- being able to look back and see the mess BEHIND us.

I share this only because I kept to myself a lot in real life and isolated myself quite a bit as talking about it was often really painful. Now it's out there, and we can all brush ourselves off and move forward. I'm excited to see where this VERY DIFFERENT THAN PLANNED adventure will take us. Hug your paychecks, everyone.