Why, Blog, Why?

Dear Blog,

There's so much I have wanted to tell you over the last few months, but couldn't because things were still so uncertain and I didn't want to alarm you or any family, friends or colleagues. I think now is a good time to clear the air.

Sarah and I are very indecisive, we know this. It's not really that we can't decide out of a given set of choices, it's that we can't stop adding new choices to the pile. We suffer from a habit of trying to discover every possible outcome to a problem.

Follow up:

This inevitably leads to a life that appears to be discombobulated and without any plan. It really bugs my Dad, not having a plan, and I know this. It bugs us too, but we can't help it. I mean, shouldn't we analyze every possible scenario on order to be able to pick the "right" choice? But oh does it ever muddy up the water. So what are we doing, and where are we going? Well, we know that we have two long term goals:

1. Buy a sailboat and take the kids cruising for a few years. Perhaps be a liveabord family.
2. Send the girls to a Waldorf school at least through the middle school grades.

Both goals are 1 - 3 years out, so we have some time to get there. But what is the best path there? We've hashed and rehashed this discussion almost every day for the last 6 months. We have so many different choices in front of us, and they all have their apparent benefits and drawbacks. Not to mention the utter chaos of the last 11 months, it's no wonder we can't figure out which way to go. Let's recap for a moment.

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Jan - May '07: Sarah's mom is diagnosed with esophageal cancer. She begins radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Sarah considers taking a 1-year residency at UMass Memorial Hospital. The pay would be about 70% 30% of what she would make in a retail setting, but the experience is worth 5-years of retail practice. She could go right into teaching after the residency is over, which she is really interested in. But the hours and the pay of the residency make it unrealistic and she passes on the offer, but not without a degree of regret.

April 07': I travel to San Francisco for a conference. While I'm there I visit the SF Waldorf school. It is beautiful, which I dutifully report back. Perhaps we'll move to the Bay Area? Probably not, but it's nice to think about.

June '07: Sarah graduates from MCPHS with her PharmD after 5 long years (including 1 year off for good baby-haviour). Her mom is weak after surgery earlier in the month, but is well enough to attend the ceremony. The sky is the limit.

July '07: Sarah and I begin discussing moving to Ohio. Word has it that it's cheaper living with comparable salaries, thus a 6-10% bump in net income. We visit my Dad, who lives in a suburb of Dayton, and find that our research is pretty much dead on. Nice houses, too. Very family oriented neighborhoods. Sarah manages to set up 3 interviews while we are there and is immediately offered a job at all three, plus sign-on bonuses and/or relocation packages. We even manage to find a house that we like that is close to my Dad and would probably turn into a good investment. A move seemed inevitable. On paper, the numbers looked wonderful and we could be in a very good position financially in under two years. We started telling family and friends of our intentions. (Sidebar: We do this often, and if you know us and see us doing this, take it with a grain of salt - we are very indecisive.) We set a tentative move date of Nov 1, three months away. Towards mid-month Sarah's mom's health takes a turn for the worse; more tumors are found and she's too weak for further treatment any time soon. She passes away at home on August July 26th. All plans are sidelined.

August '07: A hectic month. Lots of loose ends to tie up and new routines to figure out. We begin thinking about what we need to do to sell our condo. It's in relatively good shape, but needs some touching up plus there are some small projects that remain unfinished. This is about the time that the unconventional mortgage market starts to show signs of being in trouble - we have an unconventional mortgage.

September '07: Ohio suddenly seems too far away, especially with Sarah's family still grieving. We receive word that our close friends Bill and Mel are looking at property in Southern New Hampshire, very close to one of the Waldorf schools that we are looking at sending the girls to. We spend the next few weeks frantically pouring over realty sites and visiting open houses. We may have told some family and friends our new intentions... We find some interesting property, but none that we fall in love with. We soon realize that the NH housing market is just as bad as it is in Central MA., plus Sarah's job prospects there aren't nearly as enticing as the offers from Ohio. Because we have the unfortunate habit of considering every possible solution, we add more complexity to the relocation issue by discussing moving directly to a sailboat - it's cheap and we want to end up there in a few years anyways. There's a Waldorf school in RI near the coast, and doesn't it seem odd to consider going from point A to point C just to get to point B a few years later? We are stumped and frustrated by our own indecision.

October 07': Sarah's licensing exams are nearing, and we have to decide where we want her scores sent. Pharmacy has a very complicated licensing system: You have to send your scores to any state that you want to initially get licensed in, but then you also have to pay an annual fee to maintain each of those licenses. If we send them to Ohio, we're pretty much locked into going to Ohio. If we keep them only in MA., Sarah will have to work for a full year before she can transfer her license to any other state. Why close all those doors? What will it cost to send them to all 50 states??? We are still mulling over the move to Ohio, but we also begin to realize that selling the condo will be harder than we thought. Home sales are down over all, and there are already 3 or 4 other units in our complex that have been an the market with no movement, all priced cheaper than what we can sell for without coming out upside down. We consider a scenario in which she moves to Ohio with the girls while I stay at the condo until it sells. Neither of us really like that idea, but it has merit and we continue to think it over. Ultimately, there's not enough of a support system in Ohio to make that work between Sarah's work schedule and consistent childcare. We discuss another option - we all move to Ohio whether the condo is sold or not, list it with a realtor and have her sell it at whatever price it will sell at, accepting that we will take a loss but suspecting that we can make it up in the long run. In the meantime, I become ever more disenfranchised with my current projects at work. I need to make a change before I go crazy. Sarah has started to work weeknights for CVS as an unlicensed Pharmacist, which means she makes 1/2 her salary until she passes her licensing exams. She takes her legal exam on the 18th of the month, the first of two, and passes. The other exam is scheduled for November. Shortly before Halloween I get into a car accident in the Altima. I'm fine, but the car is totaled, and though we carry collision on our insurance policy it's not nearly enough to cover the cost of a new car. We also discover that my license had expired over the summer, so I'm cited for that. Neither of us remember getting the reminder notice, but given the events of the past few months we wouldn't be surprised if we completely overlooked it. I decide to appeal and await a hearing date. Sarah's dad still has her mom's car, so he lends us his truck to use temporarily. We alternate between borrowing the truck and her brother's car.

November 07': Friends Bill and Mel have abandoned their home search in NH for the same reasons that we did. They find a home in Western MA., near another Waldorf school that we have looked at. We settle into the fact that the condo isn't going to sell anytime soon, possibly not until after the next presidential election in 12 months. We also settle into the fact that we still have at least a year before Maelin could start in any Waldorf kindergarten program, or even two years if need be. Sarah is cramming for her exam, I'm falling behind on my freelance work. Life is crizazy. I give my work a 4-week notice of my intention to resign. I'll be a stay-at-home dad come December, and hope to continue to freelance on the side. Sarah takes her second licensing exam the day before Thanksgiving, but is not confident about the results. We continue to discuss the Ohio option, but it seems to be out of our grasp at this point. We are disappointed, we imagine my Dad and Step-mom will be disappointed as well. Shortly after Thanksgiving, Sarah tells me that if she takes a job with CVS in Alaska she can make up to $180,000 per year. I initially laugh it off, but she gets through to me after pointing out my hypocritical position (she didn't laugh off my idea of moving to a boat, which sounds just as crazy) and we start looking at houses. We are not announcing this as our intention, but we are continuing to look at it.

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So, where does that leave us in December '07? Well, we're still waiting to hear if Sarah passed her second exam. If she didn't, then she has to wait 90-days to retake it, and I guarantee she'll be cramming every minute between now and when the test starts. I have my appeal hearing scheduled for theSo 5th, hopefully they'll see it as an oversight and let me off the hook. I'm still leaving my job on the 7th and I'll be a stay-at-home dad come the 10th. Sarah still hasn't actually signed with a company yet, but we suspect she'll go to work for CVS in Massachusetts. Ohio is out, for now. Western MA is in, but still pending sale of the condo. Alaska is enticing, but at this point just another talking point.

So after all of that, what's the plan? Stay the course, for now, I guess...

Updated @ 10:30 pm: Some of my time tables were a bit skewed. I'm still not sure it's 100% accurate, but it will do for a montage.