Stagnation

Well, it finally happened:  I had to unpack some stuff to use in my kitchen last night.

We are officially moving backwards.  

Whaaa-waaaaa.  

Still no word on jobs.  Andrew isn't doing anything to continue checking with the stores he has applied for and whenever I ask him about it he gets tense and stops talking to me.  I realize that I'm nagging him, but his procrastination on this whole thing (like not asking for letters of recommendations from his bosses until the week he wanted to actually apply for things) is driving me freaking BONKERS.  I don't know how to get him motivated again - at the start of the job hunt he was really proactive and calling stores and telling me every day about some manager he talked to... and now it's all stopped.  I'm not sure if he's getting discouraged or apathetic... might be both.  We really need to support each other right now, but it's getting more and more difficult to communicate with him as my frustration levels increase and his "stop talking when you're upset" response takes over. 

At this point I'm just trying not to panic about all the little things. 
Like: I took school off for the Summer, but I can't take the Fall semester off.  If we end up moving past the beginning of August I could be in big trouble school-wise. I can't even start applying for positions anywhere up North because I don't have my degree finished enough to find an actual librarian job, and if I got another stop-gap job it wouldn't earn us enough income to make a move worthwhile (especially if Andrew got an offer in another city shortly after that). 
If we are still here next month, I need to figure out what to do for the kiddo's 3rd birthday party.
How long will we have to wait before we finally give in and move somewhere locally?  And if we do that, how will we find a lease that isn't so long we might end up penalized if we finally get a chance to move? 

Mentally I've had to go from "GO GO GO!" mode to "OK, now sit here and wait" mode.  And without schoolwork to distract me all I've got to do is sit around an try my best not to think about it all.  

So this is my formal plea to the Universe - PLEASE, LET SOMEONE GIVE ANDREW A JOB ALREADY SO WE CAN GET GOING AND I CAN STOP BEING SUCH A TENSE, CRAZY PERSON! 
Thank you for listening, Universe.  Let me know if I need to save a basket of kittens or a marshland somewhere to make the karma even out. 

Stasis

Yesterday, while rocking out to some Jamie Lidell at work, I had a song-based epiphany.

(Click to join me, won't you?  Or just skip the insight stuff and go straight to the bottom where I tell you what's up with our move.)

Now we know where we're going

And who we are

Doesn't seem to get us

Too far

'Cause everything else is still a mystery

And that mystery is

LIFE.

I just want to live.

Life may sometimes be sad,

But it's always beautiful.

In my life I've found ways to be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, for I know that life is short and uncertain and sometimes you have to let things go in order to have a happy existence.  You never truly KNOW what will happen to you on any given day, month, or year - all we know is that the here and now is in our grasp.  And even if that here and now includes your boyfriend's mother living with you and smoking in her room, you just have to make the freaking best of it and try not to let the uncertainty of  "When the heck are we going to get word on a successful job transfer and get the funk out of here?" overtake your brain.

The Pacific Northwest is the mustache here.
I am clearly the monkey.

[Edit: This revelation *may* have happened with a little help from my new friend, Xanax.  But hey, it's better than spewing out all the stressful crap that runs around my head for 95% of my day, right?  After 4 days of sleeplessness and extreme stress-eating I finally realized that my new friend was probably a good idea.]

So Andrew and I are working on a list of things we want to do in Santa Barbara while we are still here.  And I'm taking the kiddo to the zoo, the beach, or one of our million cool parks in the area pretty much daily.  Partially because we want to soak it all up while we can, and partially just because I don't like keeping the kiddo inside when it's being actively smoked in.  (And it varies from day to day how big an issue this is - some days she keeps it outside all day, some days it's inside all day.) 

So, to answer the questions that everyone is asking me daily:

No, no word on when we will actually move yet.  Andrew still hasn't heard back from several of the job sites he asked to transfer to - two told him they were trying to find a spot for him but haven't said anything for sure yet. 

He has applied all over both Oregon and Washington states (near the bigger cities) so we aren't even trying to find a place to live until we know where we'll be ending up. 

Yes, we will have a goodbye BBQ for friends and family, both here and down at my parents' house for my So-Cal peeps.  And that will happen when we have a move date, which we do not.  But, in the meantime, we love to see our friends while we're still here so we are happy to do playdates and hangouts!