Burdens – Part 2 of a 3 Part Series

Maybe this whole “Series” thing was kind of silly, but I really just wanted to stretch out the telling of today’s announcement.  I wasn’t sure how to do it.  I wanted to do some kind of dramatic reveal.  I thought about starting with a description of how our lives have sort of sucked a little since 2008, sometimes sucked a lot, and how we’re about to be free from a burden that we’ve carried since then.  But that sounds a little bit like we’re getting rid of our children (plaintive aside – Jack’s about to turn 3!  Oh, my heart!  Where’s my little baby gone?), and while that is an occasionally tempting proposition, especially when they wake me up at 5:00 on a Saturday morning, that is not what I’m talking about.

So I thought if I did a series and then set you up with a little foil about my health, then I could hit you with this second – a one two punch! – and you’d be bowled over by the absolutely fabulous news that my husband, The Professor, has at long last been offered a tenure track job!

Right now I have a standing ovation screaming in my brain!  I can’t stop the internal pep rally that’s been going on for about a week!  This long journey is mothertrucking OVER, bitches!  I be married to a full out tenure track professor, yo!  We got some dolla billz, we got some retirement savings, we got some permanence happening here, ya’ll!  Let’s just throw in some more exclamation points for emphasis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I put Jack to bed most nights, right?  He sleeps in a double bed, and after stories and milk and teeth brushing, then he turns out the light (“I do it, Mama, the wight!”) and I snuggle down next to him for a couple minutes and we sing songs (Santa Claus is Coming to Town, usually), we pretend to walk up the stairs with our legs in the air (???), and then I say night night and slip out of the room.  This one night, though, I just fell asleep in there, and when The Professor came in and shook me awake, I was like – dude.  I will cut you.  I was actually soundly sleeping for once and you wake me UP?  What is your deal?

And he wordlessly hands me his iPhone, which is displaying an email, which is offering him this job.  And we both blinked at each other for a minute.  And I said – Wow.  And he said – Wow.  And we were unable to say much more than that for the rest of the night.  Neither of us acted at all excited.  It was very anticlimactic.

It wasn’t til the next day, and the day after that, and every day since, that it finally sunk in and we started doing mental cartwheels.  And even though it’s been chilly and rainy and I’ve been sickish and Liam has had ear infection upon ear infection and Jack has narrowed down what he will eat to peanut butter on crackers or peanut butter on bread and the flipping dog and cat are making me nuts and I have tons of reading to catch up on for school – I just can’t shake this goofy grin.  I knew it was a stressor, this endless job search, but I wasn’t fully aware of how it colored absolutely everything with this dark brush.  It’s been a heavy burden, a huge drain on our family’s energy and resources, and it’s taken more than a week to process that that burden has lifted.

Congratulations to my wonderful husband, for getting rewarded, at last, for his hard work and careful job search strategy.  This is a really great job, the caliber of job he deserves, and I’m so proud of him!

I feel like I’m flying these days.