On the Cusp

Finally, it is October. Do you ever have those months that you can never seem to get out of? For me, getting out of the month of August has always been just tortuous. As a native Georgian, by the time August rolls around, I am so freakin' tired of the triple digit temps and extreme humidity. I am ready for summer to be done and fall to roll in with the pretty colors, the fall festivals, and being able to go outside and not be drenched in sweat two seconds out. Summers are just slow and getting out of August usually marks that whatever I am waiting for to happen will happen so much faster.

This year, life bucked tradition, and August was upstaged by September. As busy as hubs and I were during this month, it is amazing how September seemed to never end! And I know exactly why. Hubs and I are on the cusp of finally being able to figure out the rest of our lives. Okay, well maybe not the rest of our lives, but at least for the foreseeable future. What can I say, I have a flair for the dramatics.

I shall explain.

Hubs is currently in the final stages of his PhD in finance. He has been working towards this for about 5 years. And for those 5 years, we've been forced to dance to the tune of "if this happens, then we'll do this" because we literally had no idea what would happen when it would be time for him to finish. Would it be a bad job market, and he would have to stay for another year? Would we have to move to another continent altogether? Would we be able to stay here with our families and friends close by? The possibilities were endless, and it made planning for ANYTHING impossible.

And because we enjoy having a roof over our heads, and we also really enjoy that pesky habit of eating even more, I've kept myself chained to my alarm clock and cubicle in an endless cycle of Office Space meets Groundhogs' Day. As a result, we've had to put starting a family on hold. His program is so demanding, and that makes his schedule, while flexible, so unstable, that it would have seemed as though I were a single-working mother, and I just plain didn't want to do that. When I have children, I want to be able to devote my full energy and attention on him/her/them with the option of being able to do anything else I want to when I so choose. I won't lie. I don't need to juggle a job and a family to feel fulfilled. I couldn't juggle in gym class at school, not going to attempt it now at the expense of my children. I am probably a disappointment to the women's lib movement, but hey, it's all about choice, right? Fortunately, we will be in a position for us to have this choice that a lot of families don't have. But I digress. Now that we are finally so close to figuring out what our next move is going to be, we can start to plan more concretely for when this baby thing can happen. Thank jeebus, too. With all the pregnancies and newborn babies that I am surrounded with, I was starting to channel Marisa Tomei, in My Cousin Vinny, stomping her foot on the wooden porch trying to explain to Joe Pesci that her biological clock is not just ticking, but pounding.

So hopefully, we should know fo' sho' where we are going by February. If everything works out like we hope it will work out, we might even know by November. For now, we will sit and wait for the phone calls for interviews to come. At least the if-then game has settled down a little bit, and we've had a chance to focus on some specific areas. What was now a chance to move between 50 states and two continents, has now been whittled down to about 20 states and this continent. We will fly out to Denver later this month for the first round of interviews.

Let the games end begin.