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As I write this, I am preparing to move to Virginia in six days. Our lease is up on Saturday, and we always knew we needed to find a place to move since we don't want to keep paying an elevated rate and having a huge auto. gas bill every month. But, we had pretty much settled on staying in Michigan until our debt was paid off.

Then, Sunday afternoon, everything changed. We were sitting in a little pizza parlor, where the service was good and the food was above average, talking about our options. Would it be this apartment or that house to rent? Then, at the end of our meal, our nice waiter presented us with our bill. We gave him our debit card, which was....declined. Gave him our credit card, which was....declined. To say it was an eye-opener is an understatement. For the first time, dh realized that something has to be done about this situation NOW. That his salary isn't enough to feed us and put a roof over our heads, not with our debt situation. That we are going to stop going to pizza parlors and make pb&j's at home, instead.

I called my friend, Jenn. Jenn is one of those friends I have been praying for all my life. She doesn't think she's that great, but she's closer to me than most of my family is. She has no limitation on her big heart and I can't tell you the number of times she's driven 20 minutes to take me to the bank a mile away so I could get some money in our account before things bounced. So, this being no exception, Jenn bailed us out by giving the waiter her credit card info. over the phone. I don't know what would've happened if we couldn't have found a way to pay it. Anyway, I owe her again-bigtime.

That night I made a call to my big sister, the doctor, the responsible one, the one who decided to go to medical school at age 40 and who, at age 52, is finally able to clear off her humongeous student loan debts this year. Predictably, she said "come on down" and put my name in at her hospital to get some kind of a job with benefits. Sometimes it sucks being the baby of the family because you can never do for anyone else, it seems. I need them more than they need me, and it's always been that way.

Plans are to fly me and lil pill to Virginia next week, and to stay with big sis and mom (who's there until next summer) until I get a good job. Then big sis will buy a house to write off her taxes, and let me have the one she's in currently. Then, in the meantime dh will be living with our friends or my other sis to save up some money and keep our benefits. Hopefully he will be moved down there no later than Dec. 1st, so everything is moving rapidly at this point.

To top it off, we have a marriage conference to go to this weekend and can't get out of it, so I literally have 2.5 days to pack our house up for storing everything for who knows how long. Exciting, eh?

As always, I love the possibilities of change and really embrace whatever is coming. It just doesn't scare me or bother me. I don't think I'm brave or strong, it's just my personality. I hope I will be able to ship the 'puter down there so I can keep in touch with my Shamrocks, and my friends and my pookie, too.

I won't log on again unless something changes, before I get to VA.

Ciao!

We got back on Saturday night. Thank the Lord I had thoroughly cleaned the house before we left! It is so nice to come home to a nice, clean house. I played hooky from church Sunday, just because I hadn't had so much as 5 minutes to myself since we went to TN. I slept until noon and then took a shower, cleaned up the house a bit from where dh and ds had played leggos and playdoh early in the morning, then got some lunch and vegged out until 1:30 ish when dh came back from church.

Last night ds got a hacking cough from somewhere. I gave him tylenol meltaways, which he chewed up (I guess they taste good) and put some Vicks on his chest. He was up about 3 times last night, but slept pretty well considering. I can definitely hear it in his throat and chest today. Ah, and so it begins. Let's see if we can break our record from last year! Sick 18 times between November and March, but it isn't even October yet so we have a good headstart!

I'll upload some pics from the trip soon.

We've extended our trip to TN by 4 days because dh's job wasn't finished. We are in a really nice hotel with friendly people, clean sheets and towels everyday that I don't have to wash, and free breakfast yet I am still so ready to go home.

That word, home, is so crucial to happiness. They say home is where the heart is, and that saying is about 1/2 right. Home is where love is and where you belong, but it is also a feeling. A spirit. Possibilities. Fitting like a glove and feeling safe and comforted no matter what happens. I haven't felt that way in 15 years or so, ever since I left my childhood home in OK to go to college.

Not that MI is home for me, or for dh either. We checked out Asheville NC the last couple of days and absolutely fell in love with it. Well, at least I did. Dh is not convinced that he will be able to fit in with such a crunchy, organic co-op loving, politically left-leaning town. But, I think I have a good argument when I tell him that NC is the SOUTH. There will always be good ole' boys running things. Asheville is my little haven of crunchiness in a region where the mainstream culture of gun-toting, gay-bashing, please-do-not-sully-my-eyes-by-breastfeeding-in-public attitudes prevail. I saw 3 women slinging their babies in the 45 minutes that we were in downtown Asheville. Heaven.

So, for now we are leaving TN on Saturday morning bright and early, and we'll head back to Michigan, find a place to live, pay off our debts and get our lives back on track, maybe have another baby, maybe not, live there for a couple years total and then try to find our HOME.

Lots of things have happened since I last posted.

We decided that the house we were going to rent was unsafe and too much $$ needed to go into it to make it safe. So, we passed.

We are now trying to find another house, and may buy one or some land. It seems to be the only affordable way. No one wants to lease their house until it's been for sale for at least 2 years...and then they want to lease it for the full mortgage price.

We are packing to go to Lenoir City, TN for the next week.

My sister Rebekah may have leukemia. She is supposed to find out on the 15th. They did a blood panel, because she was passing out at work, and her white blood cells are through the roof while her hemoglobin levels are bottoming out. She's losing weight no matter what she eats, drawn and tired looking, and she sleeps a lot. That is not a good thing. Given that she worked for an oncologist for 12 years, she knows the symptoms. She's scared to death. All I can think of is that her daughter is the same age I was when I lost my dad. It took me years to recover. 22 is much too young to lose a parent. And Rebekah is only 42.

Lil Pill  has been sleeping in his own bed without waking up at all for the last 2 nights. Yippee!

Wow, now I'm depressed. I think I will go clean and pack.