Time Flies

This came up on Facebook today. Hard to believe it's already been a year. Life just keeps on going whether we want it to or not, doesn't it?

Leaving Town After All

Here's a detailed write-up of the situation that Rish and I talked about in the That Gets My Goat episode we released the other day, in case you were interested to know a little more.

A few months ago, I wrote this post about my wife getting promoted at work. When it happened, we were hoping that it resolved our issues with the uncertainty of our future location. We were looking at a possible move to another part of the country for a couple of years. It looked like the only way that she could move up at work was to move out of state. But then they promoted her, and it looked like we might actually get to stay.

About a month after getting her promotion, however, the one final hurdle to our permanence came. My wife's job was doing a management restructuring, and her new position just might be going away. We worried about it for weeks, hearing rumors and then reassurances, but in the end, when the announcement was made, it became obvious that in the end, there was going to be no place left for her. 

If she stayed, she would be busted back down to her old position, and looking at the likelihood of several more years starting work at 2:00 or 3:00 AM. It had been a long hard process earning her way out of that situation, and we weren't going to accept a return to it. My wife's mental and physical health were more important. 

Our heats sank, because we were going to have to find something else after all. Our time here was probably coming to an end.

My wife started looking into her options, and it quickly became apparent that the best opportunity we had was in Houston, Texas.

 

 

There were a few outside possibilities, like one in Norfolk, Virginia that we were keeping an eye on, but in the end, the best thing for us turned out to be the job in Houston. She did a couple of interviews over the phone, and impressed everyone that she talked to, and they made an offer to her without even having to meet her face to face. It's a pretty good step up for her, with some good possibilities for further advancement very soon, so we jumped at the chance.

The good thing is that the process took a little longer than we thought it was going to, and therefore she didn't need to report to Houston until the first week of May. That meant that the kids could finish up school here without it being much of an issue. She moved out to Houston ahead of the rest of us, just left a few days ago, but I'll only have to be a single father for a month before I can head out to Houston to join her in June.

I'm pretty nervous about the idea of being on my own with the kids like that. Especially at the very end of the school year. Grades are coming up, and usually my wife is the one who helps the kids stay on top of things and come out with decent grades at the end of each semester. Luckily, there's a lot of digital tools to help us keep up with the kids schoolwork these days, so she can even do it in Houston. I'm sure I'll need the help, so thank you to the school district software developers.

We're all going to miss this place. Over the past few years, we've finally been taking advantage of the great outdoors available here. We've gone to as many of the national parks in the surrounding area as we can, from the Grand Canyon, to Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado, to the Utah parks like Arches, Zion, and Bryce. We also often just drive up the canyon on a Sunday afternoon to enjoy God's green earth. Houston is going to be too far away for us to take simple trips to places like that. They have very few national parks in Texas, so there's not as many opportunities.

There is a lot of other opportunities, we're living right on the ocean, and within driving distance of New Orleans, Dallas, San Antonio and even Florida's only a day's drive. A lot of things that we have no experience with whatsoever. That'll be neat to experience. So, we think it'll be an overall positive thing in the end. But we're going to miss this place, and particularly the people we know here.

I know Rish Outfield and I will continue to be friends as we have for many years. Our friendship developed from being acquaintances to strong friends while we lived in distant cites from each other, so living in distant cities again shouldn't change that any. The Dunesteef podcast has been flagging for years now, so if it continues on that trajectory, we can't blame it on the move...though we probably will anyway. Then we can avoid responsibility.

My oldest son is basically furious with us for taking him away from the friends that he has cultivated through his years of school. And we really feel bad for doing it to him as well. Next year will be his senior year in high school, and because of the move it won't be nearly as triumphant as he once envisioned. 

We have a lot of family that live within close driving distance. We have family dinners with my three sisters who live here once a month. The kids are pretty close with their cousins, and will miss them a lot when they no longer get to see them frequently. Lastly, Grandma and Grandpa live closer to us than anyone else in the family. It's a great opportunity for our kids to know their Grandparents so well, an opportunity that I never got to have growing up, so it makes me really sad to sever that connection. Little especially has built a great relationship with Grandma and Grandpa. Once we go, I don't know how well that connection will withstand the distance.

So, yes, we are going to mourn this move in our family. We've been here since 2004. When we move, it will be exactly thirteen years to the month that we moved in. Hopefully, we'll find even more fun and happiness in Texas. I've found that what really makes all the difference in life is your attitude. If your attitude is positive, any place can bring you joy. So, we're going to have to make sure to keep the right attitude, and have a great time in our adventure to come.

Promoted

In a recent post, I mentioned how my wife became emotional thinking about the possibility that we might move away and our kids wouldn't get to see Santa come by on a firetruck anymore. That possibility was probably news to you. The possibility that Rish and I might soon live in a different state from each other sounds pretty grim. Well, you can put it out of your mind now, because it has been decided, and we're not moving after all.

Where my wife works is going through some changes. Her job was kind of up in the air for the last little bit. She was stuck in the same position for a while, unable to move up, even though she was ready to do so. Her company has been doing a lot of expansion lately, however, and the position she was looking to move into has become available in other cities.

She started looking into the possibilities available to her. It seemed like not a week would go by without her asking me if I was willing to move to another new city. Memphis? Norfolk? Tacoma? London? (The answer to that last one was an emphatic yes). Finally, an opportunity in Houston, Texas surfaced that appeared to be the one we were going to actually take. Conditions were likely to be so favorable that there was going to be no way we would turn it down.

She started preparing the kids to the likelihood of our departure. She spent days worth of her free time browsing real estate listings in the area trying to determine the best neighborhood to live in. She started working out a strategy on how we would go through the process of moving. Would we all go at once? Would I stay to get the house sold? Would we let the kids finish out the year at school before uprooting them?

After months of anticipation, in the last few weeks the dominoes finally began falling. Her boss was hired as a supervisor in Houston and wanted to bring her along to the new location. My wife applied for the Houston job, but her boss's recently vacated job here was also posted. So she applied to that one too.

Houston seemed like it was probably going to be our only choice. My wife worried about our kids, and how they would take the transition. She also worried about what kind of job I could get in Houston once I knew for sure that I needed to start looking. Would she get a big pay raise, only to have me get a big pay cut, and have the whole thing be for no gain whatsoever?

All this stuff kept circling around and around as we waited to see how the various opportunities turned out. Then we finally got some news. She was offered the job right here in town. Despite all her pessimistic views of what would happen here, she bested her competition, and won the position. However, they lowballed her on the salary. She was frankly a little offended by their offer. She asked for some time to discuss it with me, and that night, we went over and over all the possible aspects of the decision.

Eventually, it came to this, she would go through the first phone interview with Houston the next day, and ask them about what they would likely be able to offer. Then she would call back to her present job, and counter offer for a higher salary. No matter what they offered, she would take it, but if they stuck to the lowball figure, she would keep after the job in Houston to see if it would come out better.

When she put our plan in to action, it turned out that Houston didn't look quite as appealing as it could have, and the job here gave her the salary she wanted. It just didn't make sense to go through all the hassle of moving our family out of town--taking the kids away from their friends and schools to start all over again, send me in search of a new job with a possibly worse schedule and lack of equivalent benefits--when there was an equally great opportunity right here.

So, stay we will.

It's not a permanent thing, for sure. It's possible that things could change and we might have to hit the road eventually anyway. But, for the time being, we remain here. Houston...and even Norfolk or Tacoma or (please, please, please) London...may still await us. But for now, I'll be hanging around town with Rish the same as always.