In the next eight days, I will:
* Have moved out of my parents house. Not just across town like I did after college, but to an entirely new State. An entirely new home. One that is not yet mine though I have hopes it will, in time, feel like our home.
* Join the remote workforce 100% of the time. Well, except for conferences and the every eight weeks I’ll be back in the office, but still a big change from now where I see people every day. Don’t worry, I’ll go to Starbucks and Caribou Coffee, maybe even with Knight to his office here and there.
* Officially be a Bonus Mom 50% of the time. Probably will be a post or series of posts to come on this in the future.
This means that since this past Monday when I emptied out an entire closet and sent it home with Knight (I highly recommend moving in pieces if at all possible) my brain has been a lot like this: AHHH! OMG!!! I’m moving. Must buy bluetooth phone. Don’t forget to pack X,Y,Z. Why did I send my good movies with Knight? I only have seven more nights of sleeping in my bed. Meal planning, I’ll have to be good at that soon. 6 am wake-ups due to kids? Yikes, not sure that I’ll be very good at that. Wedding. We need to get our wedding planning a bit more situated. Do I have time to have dinner with this friend or that friend before I leave? Engagement photos! This weekend! This is a little scary. Ok, now I’m excited, no more long distance! What if remote working is awful? At least I can run during my lunch hour now. Ahhh. OMG. {photo credit}
It also means that I have had total breakdown moments, complete with *the* ugly cry while hugging my mom telling her that I’m going to miss her so much, that it will be so weird to really move out of the house (I’ve lived on my own countless times, but before it was always an option to return home), not sleep in my bed anymore. That as excited as I am for everything, I’m a little scared and sad at the same time. I’m a fully-fledged adult, going off to share her life with her love. That’s a little intense. Her response? “Sometimes I’ll probably call you and just cry.” At least we are on the same page with that, eh?
There have been other days where I feel totally numb, kind of ignoring the big change that’s coming, not packing a single thing (though there isn’t much left since Knight is taking another huge truckload this weekend. Bonus: I only have to fill the boxes and help load them. He’s a doll and unloads them/unpacks them when he gets home), curling up with a good book or spending far too much time outside of the house at dinners or seeing ridiculously hilarious movies like Bridesmaids.
I have moments of doubting my ability to be a Bonus Mom 50% of the time, or worry if I’ll be good at cooking dinners on a regular basis and keeping a clean house, freak out a little bit about adjusting to life in a new state, in a new house that has some remnants of Knight’s past (all the obvious, physical ones are gone, of course…), wondering if I’ll make a good live-in fiancée and eventually wife, how Jack will handle the move.
Wedding planning has been rather abandoned and up in the air at the moment: we haven’t asked everyone to be in our wedding, there is talk of changing the entire vision for our special day, the guest list for our engagement party in July is far from finished, and I have a huge stack of bridal magazines I’m dying to look through but can’t possibly handle another distraction at this point. The only thing we are doing as it will be insanely fun is taking our engagement photos tomorrow.
And still despite the feelings of freakoutness and overwhelming emotion of every sort, I bound out of bed in the morning (well, ok, not bound, cause I’m so not a morning person) ticking off another day in my head because it means that I no longer have to talk to Knight only on the phone or via text. When something comes up with the girls, ex-wife, work or whatever, we can handle it face-to-face. We can have actual week night dates, go for walks with Jack after dinner. We won’t spend $400 in gas each month traveling to see each other. We can finally start to be a normal couple, go on double dates and shop at the grocery store, make lists and have silly fights over dishes in the sink or socks on the floor.
I know that for our planning and talking this move is still going to be a fabulous, crazy, amazing, intense shock. I know that it’s going to be hard. But I also know it’s going to be great, it’s just what we need and it’s the next, very exciting, very amazing step in my life.
So, if you need me, I’ll be busy attempting to wrap my head around everything that’s coming up in the next week since The Big Moving Day is exactly one week from tomorrow.
(And as always, thank you all so much for the support, encouragement, love and just amazing positivity over the last few months while all of this has unfolded! Much appreciated, more than you could know.)
1. From your childhood, what do you miss most about summer vacation?
