Living in Limbo!

We are in a sort of limbo place right now. After four long years of full time school, two of which my husband worked full time and kept a full time school schedule, he is looking for work. He is a fully licenced RN, which as most people know is a job with an incredibly high demand. But given our present economy,most of your hospital bean counter types have decided that hiring new graduates is not in their best interest right now. This of course leaves thousands of new grads out looking for jobs. Bob was told the entire time he was in school, "You'll never be out of work! You'll have places begging to hire you." Well, so far things are not going as presented in the recruitment brochure.

The one local job he did have a good shot at getting went to a person with experience. This is understandable to a point, but you can't get experience if no one hires you... kind of a vicious circle here! This leaves us now looking for jobs all over the country. There are several possibilities forming all of which take us some distance from home, Some further than others. The difficult part really comes in with the waiting. With each new possibility, we are diligently researching the hospital, the city it is located in. Is this place livable?, if not, is some where close a reasonable option. What are the housing prices and overall cost of living like there? What are the schools like? Would we want to raise a teenage daughter there? Do they have the kind of things that we would want in a community? So many questions to answer quickly so we can say whether we want to proceed with the interview process. Once you have gone through all that, you can't help but be some what invested in the idea of living there. You've imagined it, thought it through. You've looked at houses, do they have a Starbucks! Yes this is important! Then the next day, if not later that same day another call comes in with the possibility of another place... and the process starts all over again!

We find pro's and con's to all the places we have looked at. Some are more desirable than others, but ultimately it comes down to the job. We are willing to move just about anywhere that will provide a job with a good wage, benefits, etc, in an area that has a reasonable cost of living. There are some places I am a little less than thrilled to be considering, but if the job is good and it makes my honey happy, then life will be OK. As long as we are all together I am sure we can work out the details of where we end up. It's just not knowing where that is going to be and the ever changing range of possibilities. Some days my head is just swimming! Some nights I lay awake pondering all that is on the table right now. In a lot of ways this has all left me a bit undone. I haven't been out torching for almost a week now. I have been reading a bit, trying to get a mental handle on some concepts, but I haven't actually melted glass for days. I haven't made any jewelry for quite a while even though I have a nice selection of new beads just sitting on the table waiting to be played with. I have several pieces of jewelry I finished a while ago, but haven't taken photos of yet. I guess I am just in a bit of a creative slump!

I have been working on things around the house and getting back into a routine now that I am not working anymore. It feels good to make dinner each night again, have things be more organized and get to spend time with my honey. After all the years in school we have a lot of catching up to do. I am confident that something will become a sure thing eventually, it's the waiting and not knowing that is going to send me over the edge! I can only explore living so many more places, imagine what it would be like to live there, be willing to move there, etc... before I go completely bonkers!

Snow Day!!!

I woke up this morning to snow! It wasn't totally unexpected ,the weather reports said it might snow, but they just usually tease us. I know that in many parts of the world this is a normal winter occurrence. Here, unless you live in the higher elevations, we only get it once or twice a year. Which means everyone freaks out when it snows! Schools shut down, people don't go to work etc. Now for me, since I work for the school district, if there is no school, then I don't have to go to work. I just stay home drink hot cocoa, look at the pretty snow and still get paid for the day. I really like snow days!

Quinn, my golden retriever really likes them as well, but for different reasons. I think he just really likes the snow! Tomorrow morning I think we'll go for a snow walk, since, yes, they have already said the schools will be closed on Monday!!!! yeah for me. According to the weather I may get an extended vacation out of this. It's supposed to stay below freezing and keep snowing for several days.. I better make sure I have enough cocoa.