We are down to days before we are ready to list the house for sale. We need one more weekend to wrap up some details - paint touch-ups, cleaning odds and ends - and we’ll be ready. Except I spent yesterday and a good chunk of today trying not to freak out. There is the whole idea of keeping this place clean all day, every day with kids underfoot. Then there is the whole idea of where we might/can/could/hope to go from here. Literally, where are we going?!!!

We have agreed on a possible local solution, Option A, if the local option becomes our only option. The commute would be 30% shorter but still over an hour each way. The housing is decent, we’d be closer to more stuff, the schools are very good. But it’s still New England. It’s still cold. It’s still far, far away. Then there is Option B that we’d dismissed but I am reconsidering. The West Coast. The only reason I am able to reconsider is because house prices in Silicon Valley have dropped enough to be almost within reach. It’s warm, it’s got the western vibe, it’s NOT HERE. And career options abound if Dex’s Whoop-De-Doo Deal doesn’t pan out in the long term. Then there is Dream Place. The place I want to be, the place that makes the most sense for every other reason in our lives. And I just don’t see - barring some interesting arrangements with Dex’s employer - how we can make it work right now. 

????????????????

And I run around cleaning the house and thinking, thinking, thinking. Trying to make it all come out ok in my head. And some moments I think the local option will be ok, not ideal but ok, then I remember how friggin’ hard it is to raise these kids essentially on my own, how most things will still be a 20+ minute drive away, how I will have no local help and Dex will still be working long hours, not as long but still long…….

 I owe a thousand people emails and phone calls. And all I can do is gnaw on this. I can’t take much more of this.

And Dex? I think he missed that part of the conversation when I said Option A would be ok IF — IF! — we have to stay in Massachusetts. But, I said, I have not given up on getting out of here. I can’t speak for him. I think he’s seized on my willingness (begruding, stomach-churning) to do Option A and is simply relieved to have some sort of feasible solution. Huh.

I am going crazy. And now it’s time to go pick up the kids.