Hi all!
Not that many folks noticed I was gone, because let’s face it, my lot in most aspects of my life is to be a fly on the wall. But either way, I am back!
The past year has been unusually rough! I was feeling a lot of pressure at work to do “better” with the kids than I had been doing. (I’m a high school teacher, and “better” apparently means higher test scores than what they were getting.) Then my husband lost his job and I felt pressure just to bring home a paycheck. I have to admit it was awfully nice to have him home, but as the months dragged by I started to feel just a little panicked. And I felt like I couldn’t really tell my husband because I didn’t want him to feel worse than he already did. The good thing is that we had just started trying to have a baby when he got laid off and, somewhat thankfully, weren’t successful.
So time went on, we depleted his severence pay, his meager 401k, our savings after about four months and by then he had applied for approximately 75 jobs with no luck. There were a few leads and some interviews, but ultimately nothing panned out. His old job helped him arrange for unemployment benefits, but they ran out a couple of months ago. THEN, he got a call from a company about five weeks ago and after a lot of back and forth and phone interviews and background screening, etc, they offered him a job!! Yay!! (He was so nervous!) The first thing they did was send him away on a travel assignment; he is working on equipment at government and military locations. We’re not sure yet when he will get to come home, which sucks, but even though I miss him, he is pretty happy to be back working! He hasn’t gotten his first paycheck quite yet, and as much as he and I are very caught up with “not being all about money,” I have to admit, a little embarrassedly, that I am practically dancing with excitement at the idea of going to the grocery store without a calculator and the sale papers. Not to mention catching up on all of the things we have fallen behind on, which suck because we know the permanent repursussions of that, but there comes a point when you don’t have much choice. But, it is time to put all of these depressing things in the past and move on!! I know it could have been much worse and I am thankful we have made it through this and are moving on to the next stage of life.
Woo-hoo!!!
So how is everyone else doing?
