Big Changes

Sunday morning, April 22...beautiful day here in Northern California. Feeling grateful for the weekend and catching up on sleep after a hectic week, including a tech rehearsal for the Variety Show I'm producing for our program as drama club advisor, and the show is coming together, though I have felt like I am herding cats for much of the process. After next Thursday evening, the show will be complete, and I will have a lighter load.

I've been spending some time this weekend planning and thinking through action steps to prepare for moving in with RC at the end of May. We came up with this new plan after he had a mini-breakdown thinking of moving up here right now. He has lived in his place much longer than I have and will be getting rid of lots of stuff in the move. Also, he has a strong support system down there, and he just started an intensive 12-week online program to become a fitness trainer.

As we talked through it more fully, it does make sense that I put my stuff in storage and move down there. I have no work up here - he can work some part-time concert event hours down there at a winery - and I can get unemployment wherever I am located. Also, I am seeing it as an opportunity to really focus on creating my online introvert/professional career transition program.

The negatives include: his place is not very nice, as I mentioned earlier; I have pack up all my stuff again after doing that just a year ago; and we will be living on the Central Coast in a location that is less desirable than my current neighborhood.

I think the positives outweigh the negatives, though, and include: saving money through paying less rent and his additional income; simplifying my life so I can really focus on creating this online program; he and I spending quality time together this summer in-between both of us focusing on completing online programs - he from the student side and me from the counseling/coaching side; and giving him more time to sort through his stuff and decide what to get rid of, keep, or store.

The negatives are mediated by the fact that it will be time limited - two or three months at the most - after which we plan to move closer to family in Eugene or Austin! We have been talking about this since we met and will likely be taking a short trip in June to visit his family and check out Austin. At this point, Eugene is looking much more likely because he really liked it there and my family has the athletic club business where he could work part-time, to supplement his retirement income. But I'm open to falling in love with Austin and switching gears if both of us feel that way and see a positive future there. As a side note, I have applied for a job at the university in Eugene, which could definitely be a factor, as well.

Spending some time on the Central Coast also has perks in that I have a couple of friends to spend time with down there from when I lived in the area (where we met), and it really does have some beautiful hikes and state parks, some along the ocean. His friend has a winery, as well, which might be a benefit and a fun place to visit.

I guess overall it makes sense, but it's a huge pain in the immediate time frame of May when I will be packing up! He's coming down to help in a couple of weeks. I'm going to get a pod so that we don't have to unload the stuff into storage and can just move it up the coast to Oregon, if that's where we decide to settle, or to Austin if the ship turns in that direction.

Of course, my priority remains having a child through the California ivf donor egg program, and a big reason to save money is so that we can go forward with that in late July or August. It makes sense that we stay in California through August so that we can drive to complete the treatments there, versus having to fly. In the meanwhile, I have started working out and taking supplements and will continue to work towards being as healthy as possible before the transfer. Our next steps are my getting all the fertility tests done again, and he doing some tests then going through sperm extraction and freezing, probably at the end of June or beginning of July.

How's that for some big changes?