Hindsight #2: January 2015 pt 1

We've kept everything about possibly moving under wraps from the kids. I know that the moment they know, I will no longer be able to control the message, and I want to tell my friends myself. Which became almost impossible the moment my mother-in-law was told.   She was so excited and couldn't remember that we weren't telling them about it yet.

Strong emotions around a topic have staying power in her brain now, almost to the exclusion of anything else.  This creates what we refer to as "loops," in which she will stay super focused, repeating questions and conversation over and over again.  Sometimes the loops are fairly spread apart, an hour or so, and other times they repeat seemingly right on top of one another.  It can be very hard to maneuver her out of a loop and the more emotional it is, the harder to get her to refocus.

Interestingly, I have also noticed, the more physically uncomfortable or 'out of her element' she is, the worse it is, too.  For instance, it gets really bad when my father-in-law (her grounding touch stone) isn't around and even worse when we are not at their house.  She's much better when she's at home.

Coming home from vacation means seeing friends again.  And I couldn't keep it a secret from them for long. Not talking about it, even though nothing was happening besides looking at real estate, I felt like I was lying.  A lie of omission.

It was funny, I also felt like there was an order in which I needed to tell people.  I thought closest friends first, but then I realized I'd get more sympathy from my two friends whom I already knew might be moving later in the year: one to Miami and one to Phoenix.

I started with my dear friend, Lesley, who has moved around a bit with her family and had already started looking at schools for her three kids in the Phoenix area, anticipating a summer move. She is one of the most straight forward and simultaneously positive people I know. We also share the same level of snark and a similar sense of humor.

As anticipated, she was both enthusiastic about coming to visit us and sympathetic to leaving friends, moving with kids and just the general logistics of moving to a place so far away.

And exactly what I really really needed in this first sharing: unemotional.

Rebecca, whose husband got a position in Miami in the late fall, did not feel the same way. Not about her own probable move nor mine. So in my first telling I got to be the emotional one and in my second, I had to be the stable one. It was good practice.

Now I've got those under my belt, I'm ready for some harder ones.

Hindsight: Arrangements and Agreements

One thing that is common knowledge is that real estate prices in California far outstrip the rest of the country. It won't be possible for us to sell our 2/3 paid for house in Raleigh and buy a house near Steve's parents. We might be able to find something for which $200,000 could be a downpayment, but it would be small and badly in need of renovation. (This is Crazy, right? $1,000,000 fixer upper) Even if we did find something livable, we couldn't afford the mortgage on a professor's salary.

And this is the thing that will prevent us from moving. (guilty internal sigh of relief)

When I point this out, Steve replies, "Well, maybe my folks can help us a bit. I'll talk to my dad about it."

And that was the beginning of the end of any discussion. Of course his dad was SO VERY on board that just a day later I caught him searching Zillow for a house for us. My in-laws decided they would buy a house for us to live in as an investment property, and then, eventually, we'll inherit it, instead of cash. Awesome. Amazing. Insanely Generous.

hashtag blessed hashtag firstworldproblems Right?

They are truly fantastic people who deeply care about family and want us all near.

And yet, I'm not so into it. I am a stay at home mom. I haven't held a job in 11 years. I am about to sell off the single thing I have that creates an illusion of something close to financial security. I am about to get rid of all equity. We will have nothing to our name but our cars. This gives me the cold sweats.

So we will drive around their town before we fly back to NC and try to figure out roughly where we'd like to be. We have 7 months or so to find a place.

In the meantime I will practice deep breathing and try to ride the coattails of Steve's excitement about moving. What I really do is dive deep into the Outlander novel series and start drinking a lot more.