05-15-2007

I finally have some time to breathe, and some mental space to do a little writing here. Tom's at the county free health clinic, running the lab there, like he does every week, and I've eaten dinner, started some laundry, and have a couple "Deadliest Catch" episodes queued up on the TiVo and some chocolate on the coffee table in front of me. Let's ignore the fact that the house is complete pit at the moment.

The title's a tribute to one of my favorite brit-coms. I thought about titling it "Absolutely Fabulous", but I'm feeling pretty distinctly NOT fabulous, so there. :P

I'm starting to really look at this move as an adventure. I'm realizing that as long as we're willing to throw a lot of money at it, it's not going to be *that* hard. And since I don't have any vacation time, and will be working right up till we move, and Tom's quitting his job 4 weeks before his classes start, *he* is the one that'll be doing the bulk of the work, which is just fine with me.

I'm excited to find a new place to live; once that's settled, a lot of things will fall into place. Two more weeks till we visit to find a place.

I'm aware I'm going to have to make a conscious effort to make friends once we move. Tom will be very busy, and I work from home, and I'm pretty introverted to begin with. I think my first order of business is going to be to find a good community theater to get involved with. They can usually use good lighting designers/techs.

I inquired about joining Cleveland Clinic's House Staff Spouse Assiciation, since I'm likely to be the *only* student spouse in Tom's class, and I'm probably older than most of the HSSA people anyway. Got a reply today saying "Sorry, resident and fellow spouses only. Keep us in mind if your husband stays here for residency". I knew it was likely I wouldn't be welcome, but it still smarts a bit; makes me feel like even more of a freak.

I have some serious anxiety around being "left behind" as Tom goes through this process. We've been such completely equal partners the whole time we've been together, it's scary to contemplate all the shifts in that equality that will be happening over the next decade or so.

And I just realized that the cats haven't been fed dinner. I should wrap this up anyway. Looking foward to having this space to write stuff out.