Where I shine

We've been living a lie for about a month now. Chris came home a few weeks ago and "popped the question" ... and since I had already agreed to marry him and love him forever and ever like years ago, he decided to mix it up: "What if we moved to Northampton?"

Back up a few more weeks. Chris likes to practice "real estate porn", where he looks at houses for sale in different neighborhoods and sees how big a house we could get for what we paid for our apartment. I find it really depressing ... did you know that for what we paid for a 2BR apartment in Queens, NY, we could have a private compound with a pool and servant quarters in Alvin, TX? For some reason he loves it.
Anyway, he was surfing around, getting turned on by square-footage, and proposed that someday we could move to the Northampton area. I went to school there, it's very green, there are woods nearby. "Sure," I said. "When the time comes I think that's a great option."
Chris went a step further and found an engineering firm that looked promising. "Someday", he said, "that's where I would like to end up. In a place like that."

Fast forward. Imagine some seedy, gross porn music. Picture Chris sitting in his office at work, glancing around to see if anyone is going to walk in on him. He opens up his real estate site, and finds Florence, MA, a little town just outside of NoHo. It has little houses, big back yards, and a diner. Chris starts to flush, he's getting a little too excited. He clicks over to MassLive.com, a local news and classifieds site, and searches his dream company. He almost calls out in ecstasy ... that company has just posted a job for his exact level, his exact job. ... what should he do?

Now, if this were a movie, or last season of "The Office", he would have kept it a secret and gone to interview for the job without telling me. But instead he came home early and asked me what I thought about it. After a minute or two of freaking out, I was actually on board. It was technically part of The Plan, it just jumped up the queue a little.

This was Oct 7. We updated Chris's resume and then spend a week in an anxious tizzy. They called, they loved him, they wanted to set up an interview. On Oct 16 he drove up and interviewed. There was a part of me that hoped he'd come back and report that while they loved him (of course), he didn't like them/the office/the management/whatever, so nothing would have to change. But no, he loved them. It's exactly where he wants to be. We spent another week or so living in two adjacent universes -- one where we would be moving soon, very soon maybe; and one where nothing was going to change. Those two things don't go very well together, especially when you (ehem, me) are a planner by trade.

On Tuesday the 22nd, they called and offered him the job. He took the obligatory day or two to discuss it and tell his own bosses, and accepted. His start date is Dec 2. Friday Oct 25, it was official. We were leaving.

It had been an emotionally exhausting few weeks. That night Chris plopped down in his big chair and said, "I am so tired. I could just go to bed right now and sleep for days!"

"NO!!!" I shouted. "This is where the fun part starts!!!!"

... because now I can start organizing, color-coding, packing, and throwing things out.

This part is where I shine!

... to be continued.