Thirty three hundred miles home

Life often takes a circuitous route that only makes any sense in retrospect. A year ago, we were feeling pretty confident that we would be in Texas for the long haul, or, at the very least, the next 5-10 years. We bought a house, we settled in, and we made it our own. We unpacked all our boxes for the first time in three years. And then we received a call that we never, ever expected.

My husband was being recruited for a job back at Delta. In Atlanta. We agreed it was worth him going through the process but remained unconvinced that anything would come of it. It did though and here we are. We're moving home. We're also leaving home.

It's been a whirlwind of feelings more than activity so far because, in the short term, only my husband is moving. I'm searching for a job but will stay behind at least until we sell the house and probably until I'm gainfully employed in Georgia. So right now, I'm holding my breath, standing on the edge of something big, without anything to distract me from the distinct sensation of holy cow, what are we thinking?

We're going back to people and a place that we both know and love. We're going back to favorite neighborhoods and restaurants and activities. We're leaving all those things too though. It's a feeling that is sometimes joyous and exciting and other times quite the reverse. (It is 100% exhausting, no matter how else I feel about it.) Looming large over all of it though is the worry that things won't be the same. Often, when I leave a place, it becomes frozen in time. I remember it as it was because how else can I remember it? Even now, when we go back to the area of NJ that I grew up in, everything looks achingly familiar and somehow, strangely, alien.

People come and go and we know that, when we move back to Atlanta, we will face the sad reality that some of our close friends have moved away. Places change too and I have to hope that our frequent trips back in the years since we left will prepare me. Most of all though, places change us. It's one of my favorite things about living in new and different places. I always get to come away changed, sometimes in big ways and sometimes in small ones. So a different me will be going back to a different place with some different people. It's the next great adventure and I think it will be pretty cool.

And whatever else may come, I'm really looking forward to night flights over the city again!

Uninvited Persepctive

On the official Coffee Commuting scale, today's commute was at the bottom of the list. (If you're not sure what I'm talking about: http://fifteenhundredmilessouth.blogspot.com/2016/03/coffee-and-commuting.html) I commute on a four lane highway. Three of them were shut down. I left home in the dark and watched the sun rise sitting parked on the highway.

It's incredibly easy for me to get angry when this happens. I'm not a morning person but I drag myself out of bed as close to 5 am as I can manage just to try to get to work before the worst of the traffic. So, when I hit bad traffic anyway, I'm usually tired, frustrated, and mad. It would appear that everyone else is too. It's not a situation that brings out the best in most of us. Let someone in? No way man, this lane is moving very slightly faster! Too frequently, I have been desperate to switch lanes and annoyed that no one wants to let me but recognize that, not even 10 minutes later (or earlier), I am the person who doesn't want to let someone in in front of me. Needless to say, it's a deeply irritating thing to recognize in yourself.

Apart from all that though, there's something even more important going on. (At least, I believe there is.) Three closed lanes on a four lane highway means there's been a major accident. People have gotten hurt. So while I'm sitting there getting angry that my 20 mile commute is going to take over an hour, I have to forcibly remind myself that someone else's morning has gone far, far worse than mine. I choose then to pray, for the people involved, for the first responders, for the hospital staff that will treat them. (Maybe someday I'll manage to skip the anger and frustration and pray first.) It doesn't make me less frustrated, but it does put my day in perspective. It's just not always perspective that I'm thrilled to have.

Double Trouble

Sometimes you make a knee jerk decision to run an extra errand and it has long lasting repercussions. Once I did this and got rear ended. More recently, we ended up with an extra cat out of the deal. Maybe I should stop running errands. I'm pretty sure that's the moral of this story.

Okay, now that you're wondering what I'm rambling about... We adopted a kitten! We'd actually been considering it for months and had been looking through pictures of available kittens. None had quite seemed right though. Then, two weeks before Christmas, I decided to run by the pet store to pick up some extra supplies. It was a shelter adoption day but I wasn't worried because we had gone to tons of those and never found an animal we wanted to take home. (I mean, they're always adorable, but none seemed just right.) I bypassed the adoption event and picked up what I needed. Feeling very on top of my schedule for the day, I decided to swing by for a quick look. And there she was, laying on her back in a cage, frantically trying to bat at the Christmas decorations on the table below the kennels. It was probably all over for me in a heartbeat.

It couldn't have been worse timing with me leaving two days later for a conference and a Christmas trip to FL only days after I returned from the work trip but we decided to take the plunge anyway. A few hours (and no more errands) later, we were home with a new kitten and a very, very pissed off MT (our four year old cat). And thus started a trial run for parenthood that we didn't know we had signed up for.

There are the sleepless nights as the two cats chase each other onto the bed, off the bed, and back onto the bed again. There are the early mornings when Kaylee decides to find her loudest toy and start chasing it around the house. There are the sibling fights (we've given up on breaking most of them up). There are the late night trips to the emergency vet. There are the temper tantrums (because, in cat-speak, throwing up on your bed is the equivalent to a full out toddler melt down).

The phrases No! Don't eat that! and What's in your mouth? Spit it out right now! have become as common in our house as they are in my sister's, which is home to three toddlers. It certainly hasn't been anything like we expected and I'm not sure we'd sign up to do it again but the sweet moments are pretty endearing and the cats are slowly (glacially) warming up to each other. We even got them to hold still for one whole photo...