Lately, Erik and I have had to make some pretty big decisions. I have had some nice moments of peace with these decisions and now everything seems to be coalescing in a way we could not foresee. For myself, I feel as if prayers for guidance have been answered, though I know Erik would not agree with that analysis. :)
First, Erik realized that the situation at the office is not secure for many, many people. Some job "feelers" have come to him through professional references, so we have had our minds on several different options. I think these kinds of feelers and opportunities are going to continue to come to him and in greater frequency as time goes on, due to his professional network. I hope so! We have been blessed in that Erik has had a job continuously, even though we have moved quite a bit for work opportunities. I am impressed at the way he has navigated through the murky waters of this economy and always provided for us.
The prospect of moving again or traveling more for work opened up the discussion about homeschooling. That was one thing I was not as certain about. Now it seems like part of a complete future for us.
Erik was on the geophysical team on the project out of state this summer. He had told the person in charge that he could do geophysical work about twice a year at most, because he didn't want to be separated from his family more than that. When he came home and discovered how light the work was at the office, he re-contacted the head of the geophysical group to say he was available. Yesterday, Erik was offered a permanent role with the geophysical group, meaning lots of travel. BUT...the times he is not traveling, he can still be based here, where we want to be. His role at his current company is probably solidified now that he has work to fill 100% of his time. He's not worried about traveling a lot because - thanks to our homeschooling decision - we can come with him when it is practical.
Today he was offered his next geophysical job. It's in Panama City. For those who don't know, Panama City is an hour away from where he grew up and where his mom still lives. This is going to be one of the easiest places we could ever travel to and stay for a period of time. The word is that the project is going to be about two months long.
It is amazing the way these pieces are coming together.
Another big decision was to buy a new car rather than spend $500 to get my good old Saturn inspection-ready. (It would cost another $1700 to get the air conditioning working, and believe me, it's a hardship not to have air conditioning here.) I will have to say goodbye to the first and only car I bought on my own and paid off. I was with Erik by the time it was paid off, so he had something to do with the paying-off, but at that time I was still working full-time, so I feel a sense of pride in having fully owned it. It was sad to think of getting rid of the Saturn. Xander was verrrrry sad himself; he has a hard time letting go of things. Example: he still has an old pair of shoes, falling apart, sitting on his closet shelf because he didn't want me to throw them away. They don't fit him and they are raggedy. I could throw them away and maybe I will, but I tend to forget about them sitting way up there. Whenever there is talk of discarding something, he gets teary and says it is his favorite fill-in-the-blank and he loves it. He once saved a cutting from a piece of paper after I had cut flash cards out of it, because it was "so beautiful." It did look remarkably like a sword...
One day I was telling Erik how much Xander liked photography. In the course of talking about it, I realized it may be less about the art or technical science of taking photos and more about saving things. He wants to preserve a moment in time or the details of how something looked at a certain point.
Back to the car. Erik is now driving home a 2003 Lincoln Aviator. Gulp. I think it's going to be beautiful and comfortable. It has built-in DVD player and screens. We got it because all the other good deals we found were being snatched up before we could get to them. This one was a reasonable price because it is so old, but it only has 41,000 miles on it.
Can you picture me driving a luxury SUV? I can't. :) It should be a nice ride to get us to the Panama City area.
Other decisions we've had to make include getting Xander's tonsils out and signing him up for taekwondo. The taekwondo might have to wait because we seem to be on the verge of going out of town for a while. The tonsil procedure is one we have thought about since Xander was two years old, but he never had serious physical problems so we didn't want to do a surgery. Since about two years old, he has snored more than usual, eaten less than usual (which may not have anything to do with tonsils, but I just have a feeling...), mouth-breathed a whole lot, slept restlessly, and gotten strep throat about three times a year. We were reluctant to have him go through surgery, but now that he is in favor of it himself (and has started making this cat-coughing-up-a-hairball noise at the table), we are going to go through with it. I have high hopes for his quality of life afterward.
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