Holy Crap, it's THURSDAY tomorrow!

As I check e-mail at "home," I look around and realize...holy crap, it's Thursday tomorrow!

What happened to the week I am not sure, but I am really glad this week went by fast...it means I spent less time missing the family. I talk to my husband every night, and get to see video of the lil girl almost every day.  It's not the same as having her here, cause my husband is not big on descriptions...and when I want to know every single detail about EVERYTHING she's been doing...well...I get frustrated my husband still takes the view he had in the Marines.  Information is need to know, and details like what she wore to daycare today or what she's been eating or what new trick she picked up just don't factor into his idea of important.

I love him to pieces, but he's such a MAN about it.  *sigh*

Anyway, I am still out here.  The pain of missing my family has...I won't say lessened, but I'm mostly numb to it.   It's like a paper cut...most of the time it just sort of nags at you, reminding you it's there...and then when you accidentally pour a catalyst on it, it burns like acid.  Most days I am okay with being out here for work...I've reconciled that I have to be out here for the time being, no matter what happens with potential other paths I might take, and that I can't have lil girl out here with me (and her ALL TO MYSELF, mwahahaha!) till the up-in-the-air situation gets worked out.

I am one of those people who tend to go nuts without a plan of some sort.  I don't lose my mind if the plan goes awry, but I must have a plan in mind for the future.  I must have a goal to work towards, a concrete goal.  Right now my goal is finding someplace for my family to settle and be happy...someplace we can ideally stay a long time, with good schools, reasonable housing, and a job and lifestyle that don't require us to spend hours on the road.  Poor J is sick of the long commute, and I am sick of ANY commute.  I live 5 minutes from work now, and it's been absolute bliss.  No stress, just a stop at the Starbuck's on the way in and 5 minutes later I am at work, my coffee still ACTUALLY HOT.

The more I stay out here though, the more I ambivalent I am about potentially staying out here permanently.  The job market is excellent, this area is growing for jobs like no one's business.  That's the one plus on my list of "things I must have in place for the family to be happy" plan.  The only problem is that it's beginning to look like the ONLY advantage to staying out here, and I'm not sure if it outweighs the other things that are important, like being able to afford to live comfortably without sacrificing time commuting, a nice house, or safe neighborhoods.

Daycare is a huge, huge issue.  Every place I've called has a waiting list of 6 months or more...were little girl a few years older, I'd have my pick of places.  It's also, on average, double what we currently pay...in some cases, for the better day cares that have preschools, triple.  I know private schooling is expensive, and I know daycare is expensive, and I'd be willing to pay those prices to have my baby here with me, but no one has ANY open slots for an infant.

I have no family or friends out here close enough who could help me with any of that, and being out here ironically makes it easier but more tiring for family to visit.  Sterling is a nice town, but during the winter it might as well be on the moon.  The driving is so treacherous during the winter, folks don't even make the drive an hour out of town, much less to Denver, or from anywhere outside the state.  My husband and I drove to Seattle for one Xmas, and the weather almost made us turn back...were it not for his superior driving skills, we would have wound up in the ditch a number of times.  I, being a nervous driver and prone to motion-sickness, spent the whole trip either terrified (I was 13 weeks pregnant) or sicker than a dog.

I'm not sure which was worse.  I think I'm going to have to go with the motion-sickness.

How things wind up working out greatly depends on events poised to happen in the next few weeks.  It promises to make things interesting, no matter what happens.