Why

For a very long time, my husband has been working too hard.  He travels every week.  He schedules vacations and then works right through them.  He doesn’t get to see his kids during the week.  He has no set schedule and no set location, so he cannot get on an exercise routine, sleep regular hours, or eat right.

Oh, sure, there was always a reason – he needed to sell work or he had sold work and now he needed to deliver on it.  I staged an intervention in March.  “Look,” I said, “if the job really requires this kind of life, then the job sucks.”  That’s the supportive wife in me talking there.

From that conversation came the realization that, hey, he could actually look for a new job.  One that would allow him to work, say, sixty hours a week and travel only 25% of the time.  It’s not like we were asking for a sinecure; we just thought that perhaps his body deserved a chance to figure out which time zone it is in.

He began looking for a job.  Two weeks ago he was offered a very good one.  So, we are moving.

This job will allow us to live someplace with a lower cost of living that is closer to family.  We will be leaving Los Angeles, which has been a completely unpleasant place to live.  And J will be home three weeks out of the month.  The children will *gasp* see their father on a daily basis.  The funny thing about it is that we had lived the other way for so long, we just didn’t realize how untenable the situation was until another way of doing things presented itself.

The truck comes on Monday to take our stuff away, and then I will spend a few lovely days in an empty house with the kids.  On Saturday, we’ll all fly east to stay with family until our stuff catches up with us around Thanksgiving.  The move is happening very quickly in part because the company would like my husband to start but also because Zachary has been quite unhappy in school this year.  We’re not sure what the problem is, but if we’re transitioning him out anyway, we may as well do it quickly.

There are a few really sad byproducts.  Zachary will need to start over as a white belt in a new karate studio.  Lilah will leave behind all that fresh fruit she so adores.  And poor Benjamin will leave the teachers who rock his world.  But there will be teachers in the next place, too.  And we will leave W, who is a remarkably good friend.  Leaving her is very sad, but I am grateful we got a chance to reconnect.

So, if you don’t hear from me over the next couple of weeks, do not worry.  I am on my way to a better place.