Yes, I Am Alive

Wow, I haven't posted anything for two months! That's a long time. But it doesn't really matter because nobody reads my blog anyway. For my own satisfaction, however, I need to write something to finish up this year. Eventually I intend to have this thing published into a book so I can remember what we did this past year, so it behooves me to play "catch up."

It has been an eventful two months. Crazy things have been taking place--completely self-induced crazy things, so I can't legitimately complain. Let me start at the beginning. . .

Quite some time ago (like a year or so) Mike decided it would be "interesting" to volunteer for a four month temporary duty in Iraq. The government sends agents who do his kind of work over to do whatever they do. I can't tell you, or I'd have to kill you. But anyway, he signed up (against my wishes) and (thankfully) they kept picking other people to go. However, his name stays on the list, and every time a new rotation comes up he could be chosen. The chance arose again in October, but an agent from another office was picked, and I naively breathed a sigh of relief and went back to life-as-usual.

Also quite some time ago we started looking around at homes and land because eventually we wanted to try and move into a different home with a bigger backyard. We have always wanted to try and build, and with the market in the state that it is we thought it was a good time to start getting serious. We found some lots that we have kept our eye on for about a year now, and prices have dropped significantly. So we decided it was time to do something. But we knew we would need to sell our house before we could make any legitimate offers. So, the week after Halloween we decided to put our house on the market just to see what would happen. We figured it would take 6 months or so to sell it based on trends in the local housing market.

Long story short: House listed on MLS on Friday, November 6th. First potential buyer came to look at the house Monday, November 9th. Same buyer comes back Wednesday, November 11th to take another look. This buyer makes an offer that night. We counter the next day, and he accepts. Voila! House is under contract, and we have to be out December 1st.

Rewind to the Iraq deal. The Thursday we signed papers for the house contract, Mike received a call telling him that HE would be going to Iraq, not the other guy. Surprise! Hyperventilate! Mike was excited, I wasn't. The only redeeming thing about the whole deal is that he doesn't need to leave until mid-February. Which leaves me holding the "building-a-house-and-dealing-with-contractors" bag all by myself. Not my idea of fun, as I am not an assertive, take-charge person.

Now mind you, I didn't even have a cardboard box yet. So the next couple of weeks turned into a packing frenzy. I was completely horrified at how much stuff (a.k.a. "crap") I had accumulated! Not to mention the pounds and pounds of food storage that we had squirreled away. Thankfully we have generous friends who turned out to help pack, clean, and move us. What awesome folks!

We had to find a place to rent, pronto. We had a couple of options that didn't work out, so we ended up renting a house 4 doors down from our old house. Right after we got moved in, Mike started a two-week. 7-days-a-week Iraq training, during which he was barely home. He would leave at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. and get home at 8:30 p.m. or later, dead tired. It was a little "baptism by fire" for both of us. Mike was completely beat, and I thought I was going to go totally insane taking care of things at home, working, Young Women's, and shoveling snow (I swear it snowed almost every day!).

But we made it through that crazy time, celebrated Christmas, and currently we are waiting to hear back from a bank about an offer we submitted on a lot. We are getting bids from builders on our floorplan. We are excited about the prospects of getting into a new home, but I have to get through the four months of Mike in Iraq before I can let myself be too giddy. He knows several guys who have gone and come back without incident, but I have to be realistic and tell myself that something could happen to him. That is the bummer in this whole deal. But I can't change it, so I'll just have to deal with it. All I can do is move forward the best I can, and pray Mike comes home and we have a place to move into when he gets back. We still feel very blessed to have been able to have our home sell so quickly, and to have found a place to rent where our kids' lives didn't get disrupted too much. Sometimes it scares me when we get exactly what we wished for. It makes me have "happiness anxiety"--like we wished for the wrong thing, or that something bad is going to happen now because such "good fortune" can't be justified with some kind of suffering. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.