Hello from the other side…
July 2022: Exploring our new city
Hi! It’s been quite awhile since my last post (eight whole months 🤯) and oh so much has happened since then!
The short story is… we moved back across the country, I am officially no longer a tenure track professor, and I’m now full time stay at home parenting while Mike works. If you want a few more details, here’s what we’ve been up to since February.
At the suggestion of our realtor, we bumped up our cross country move by a month, from June/July to May. This advice was incredibly helpful for selling our house, but in reality the experience was really chaotic, especially with 2 kids and both of us working full time (see next point).
Mike started working full time while I finished up my job. For our last few months in Oregon, we were either working or prepping for the move while also attempting to take care of our kids and just do normal life stuff like get groceries. Because of the flexibility of my job, I switched most of my work to early mornings, lunch time (during Mike’s lunch break), and evenings/weekends so that we didn’t have to pay for child care. Because I mainly taught working students, this schedule worked well for them. For my sanity, not so much! I kept reminding myself that it was temporary.
We packed up all of our belongings and either put them in a shipping container that traveled from OR to VA, donated them, or tossed/recycled them.
We shipped our car to the east coast, which also turned out to be a pretty stressful process.
We pulled Ellie out of school a few weeks early so that we could be out of our house before it went on the market. Our last walk home from school was brutal… lots of tears and questioning whether we were doing the right thing (happy to report that Ellie loves her new school).
We left our keys with our realtors and had them stage and sell our house after we flew back to the east coast (see next point). Though stressful, this was probably one of the best decisions we made during this process. Not having to coordinate our already ridiculous schedule with house showings or keep our house looking clean/tidy (impossible to do with children and moving and pets…) was well worth it.
We took a red-eye from OR to VA with 2 kids and a cat. Hannah unfortunately did not want to sleep on the plane and there was lots of crying/nursing/walking up and down the aisle during our flight. We purposefully booked a direct flight so we didn’t have to switch planes, which was a good move on our part. Not sure I’d do a red-eye again until Hannah is older. Ellie, on the other hand, slept pretty much the entire time. Our cat seemed to do okay too. Mike, Hannah, and I were pretty exhausted from the trip though.
We moved in with my in-laws for a month while I finished up work. They helped with the kids while Mike and I worked. Another stressful, but necessary decision for us. We also got to see and spend quality time with family and friends we had not seen in years.
I had my last day on the tenure track from 3000 miles away and immediately moved into my new role… full time stay at home parent!
We moved into an apartment in VA and discovered some new roommates… German cockroaches, ugh.
Ellie got settled into her new school. They did a great job of addressing new school/first day jitters (for parents too) and the transition has been incredibly smooth.
I sold my childhood home. My sister and I had been holding on to the home we inherited when my dad passed away. With me back on the east coast, the housing market shifting, and the house needing a significant amount of work, it felt like the right time to pass it along to new owners.
We bought a house in VA. We were turned down on 3 offers but the 4th stuck, so overall not too terrible of an experience compared to some. The house we bought happened to be the only one that didn’t require another school change for Ellie, so it worked out for the best. We’ll be moving yet again next month, but this time it’ll be a much shorter move.
In all our spare time😅 we’ve been using hiking (complete with a bad case of poison ivy for me and Lyme disease for Ellie), playgrounds, and Ellie’s school, as a way to meet people. We even had dinner with one of my “internet friends” (i.e., someone I've met in the online business world, who happens to live just a few minutes from us, 👋 Kim!). Though I’m from VA, we’re about 1.5+ hours away from where I grew up so we’re not familiar with our new city. It is proving to be exactly what we were looking for in terms of a place to settle down while the girls are in school. Though I wouldn’t expect anything less since I did about a years worth of research on where to move to, ha!
So… that’s why I’ve been quiet these past few months. Because there have been SO. MANY. CHANGES. in a short span of time. I’m not sure anything has really hit me yet. Though I will say that I have been reveling in the fact that I do not ever have to go back into the classroom (unless I choose to). However, I do miss all the time I had to myself while I was working. As a hardcore introvert, I didn’t realize how much that solitude fueled me.
What’s next for me? I’m loosening my grip on making any definite plans and focusing on settling into life in VA and adjusting to stay at home parent life. I do have plenty of blog posts brewing in my mind given all that’s happened (with quitting, moving again, etc.) that I’d love to write about. I do plan on picking back up with 1:1 work (focused on planning/productivity systems and leaving academia) and I’d also like to give some thought to what I’m doing with plan(it)*. However, most of that will have to wait until we are settled into our house and on some sort of regular routine. There’s very little downtime during the day and by the time the girls are in bed I’m wiped. For now I’m just going to adjust to this new rhythm of life!