Monday, February 11, 2008

Real life intrudes

Big things are possibly in the works here at the Motel. My husband received a job offer in the Bay Area, where I lived for seven years. Since then, we've lived in a charming small city with a large university in it. I have grown attached to college-town life, especially with a baby, and that's not even mentioning my affection for my extensive team of medical experts and fantastic health insurance. So it is not surprising that I feel reluctance about moving. I also grew a bit tired of the SF area towards the end of my tenure there, and those feelings have only grown, perhaps unfairly since I do have many friends there, I like hiking, you can get great Vietnamese food, etc. But it is clearly expensive, prone to emanating a sense of self-satisfaction, and poorly positioned atop more than one fault. And yet it would be a great step, career-wise, for my husband, who changed careers in his mid-thirties and wants the seal of approval from a brand-name firm on his resume. I understand this, as I have been trading for years on one good firm I worked for from 22 to 25. That stamp of approval comes in handy.

The main thing, however, is that this offer would mean that my husband would move in mid-March, while So.ren and I would have to stay here until June 1 at the earliest. I won't go into why, but trust me that I am not aggrandizing my own qualifications - it's just a complicated situation for several boring, unique reasons. So I'd be a single mom for about three months, and I'd also be trying to swing an FET in April, despite the fact that my favorite RE will be on maternity leave. And I'd be selling the house, working on a consulting project outside my real job, selling my worldly possessions on eBay, and so forth.

So what we decided was that my husband would ask the new place whether they could let him do a four-day-a-week schedule (ie, four long days) and commute back here every Thursday night on the redeye. We are waiting to find out what they say about that. The company is supposedly pretty family-friendly, although I quickly determined that there's no IVF coverage. If we need to do another fresh cycle (if we even wanted to, assuming an FET failure), therefore, I should go COBRA on my own insurance and try to squeeze in another fresh cycle before we move. So complicated.

But not that bad, really. So.ren is maximum fun these days, and I recognize how lucky we are to have him. There's been so much loss out there in the blogosphere lately that it makes me ultra-conscious of how lucky we are. We should feel that lucky anyway and shouldn't have to be reminded of it by all the losses out there, but we are imperfect, to put it mildly.

4 comments:

TLB said...

AAaaaahggggh! You can't leave!

Seriously, that is good news for him, bad news for all of us. Was it the place he really wanted?

statia said...

Oh sure NOW you move back. Said quaint town is mega expensive, which is understandable given the university. We lived pretty close, but yeah, the air of self importance there is disgusting. I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. I do miss certain things. There's restaurants galore there. Not that there isn't here, but you have so many cultures (which is one of the things I actually really hated, but I liked the food).

We're supposed to be going in April. A big industry conference that my husband needs to attend, because a. I'm not down with single parenthood, and I miss my friends. And Fry's. Among other things.

Brando said...

I am sad to hear that Expensive Meadows will become No Trespassing Estates. But it is good news for that man of yours.

queen said...

I'm not sure where your quaint town is, but have you considered him commuting on Amtrak? It might be out of the question, but just a thought.