Round and round we go, chant the voices in my head...

As the day I head home gets closer and closer I can hardly WAIT...even though I know that it is very likely lil girl will cling to Dada instead of me...when she and I came home from a vacation together in CA, she freaked out when she woke up to Dada changing her instead of Mama.

I have tried to prepare myself for the hurt that I will feel if M rejects me in favor of other, lately more stable figures in her life.  I hope she won't forget me, or resent me for being away for so long...I still haven't decided if this job is for me permanently.  It will be a few months yet, and having seen the cost of daycare out here first hand, I'm not eager to move M until we know for absolutely, positively SURE we're making a transition out here. 

Still the little voice in the back of my head, that selfish little voice, whispers every so often, "Oh, you could afford to bring her out with you, and wouldn't you both be happier??"  But then the doubts begin to circle around the little voice, chanting, "But how do you feel about the job? Is it definitely for you or not? You shouldn't drag her out of her nice, safe, relatively cheap daycare that she loves for out here amongst strangers!  What about the neighborhood, what if something HAPPENS and she's with you?!"

*sigh*  So the voices argue back and forth in my head all day long while I try to concentrate on doing my job.  The job I'm not sure I like enough to stay past the initial contract.  It's nice being "just an admin" again, on the one hand...it's nice not having to be on-call for once in my career, it's not not being expected to work extra hours for no extra pay.

But the cost of living out here is sky-high, in more ways than just rent, even though that too is ridiculous.  I can deal with the weather (I'm forever freezing) but my husband, poor dear, would melt.  On the other hand, the job market out here is excellent in comparison to pretty much everywhere else, but along with that comes the realization that I have no friends or family out here to lean on. 

I just don't know...and I hate not-knowing.  The average decent daycare out here is double what we pay for the one in Sidney.  And it's hard to justify pulling little girl out of a daycare who's willing to go the extra mile...for instance, they give her extra helpings of food if she's still hungry (and invariably we hear from the incredulous daycare lady at the end of the day, 'Do you know your daughter ate THREE SERVINGS of ?!`) as well as helping her with walking and other such things.

So...I dunno.  Nights out here are hardest, when I lie alone on my air mattress and wish I had a nice warm husband to cuddle, or that I could wander down the hall to my daughter's room to listen to her breathing.  I try not to think too hard on those things, because it always puts me in tears.  I miss my old life so much, even though I know there's no going back.  I know that going home will make me happier than I've been since this all started...and that leaving again will likely result in me crying the whole way back.

Why can't this country be like other countries in the world and give me the first two years of my kid's life off work?

I get to go home for the lil girl's b-day!

Oh happy, happy day!  I get to go home for the little one's b-day!  Thanks to my new employers being absolutely AWESOME, I will have funds for plane tickets to go home for the weekend of July 4th!

I am so happy, I can hardly believe it...!  Only one more week and I'll be home again for a precious few days with my husband and daughter and tons of extended family! (Cause my daughter is totally more popular than me!)

First Day of Work...YAY WORK!

So today was my first day at actual work.  Yay for work.  I can't say anything about what I do or where I do it.  I'm sure there will be more lectures and forms to sign later on that reinforce that fact.  But I can talk about impressions of the place, which is really all I'm blogging about.

The work I do is really immaterial to the whole of the "wow, moving to a huge new city" experience.  It's like any other job...just located somewhere far, far away from home.

Which sucks.  On the upside, I might be able to work out a way to be home for the lil girl's first birthday...providing stuff isn't too expensive.  I hope I hope things work out...I really hope.  It'll be doubly hard to leave her, but at least I'll get one long weekend to spend at home again...and maybe that will be enough to keep me sane.  I guess it will have to be.

What I wouldn't give to have a job like this out where my house is though...anyway.

I've noticed a lot of my co-workers complain about the weather...it is VERY hot...and VERY humid.  A lot of them are envious of my living in Colorado, since dry heat is much better...I tried to explain.  Yes, out here it feels like you're walking into a shower.  In Colorado, you feel like you're walking out into a BLAST FURNACE, and the instant you open your mouth to talk, the dry heat sucks all the moisture out of you like some great cosmic kiln.

Seriously...hot is hot people.  The weather here seems to stay hot a lot more, and their winters are, with the exception of a few freak storms, extremely mild.  I also learned, to my sadness, that many of my co-workers fear for my life living where I am.  Apparently I picked the roughest of the rough side of town to live.  They advised me to break my lease and move.  They even offered to take me apartment shopping.

I explained as delicately as I could about the plethora of housing we own back in Denver, and why preserving as much moula as I could while living out here is the main reason I am living somewhere deemed "not safe."  It is the ONLY reason.  So far, I've been here a week and things have been relatively quiet.

I hope it stays that way. 

Delays....

More delays in the paperwork front, but I remain optimistic.

I drove up to Silver Spring today, to take my car in for a once-over and an oil change.  I'm not sure whether the prior owner or the dealer took decent care of the car, but it drives noticeably better than it did before the oil change.  My husband suggested that my car being oil-thirsty, having a bad oil filter probably hurt it's performance a lot. 

Now the problem is, it's zoomy and happy and wants to GO...and I can't let it on any but a few select roads that are curvy with shoulders.  So my mission is to take it out at least once a day and drive it around...it needs to be driven, and the engine revved, for it to be a happy, non-clogged car.

So say the rotary engine message boards, at any rate.  And who am I to argue about the car NEEDING to be driven to be happy?  I mean...well.  Let's face it...it IS fun to drive!

I have some hilarious video of The Little Bit pouncing on our big fluffy black cat...sadly, I don't know why the 3gp videos won't play on a Windows machine...I suppose I can download VNC and see if that works.  If it does, I'll see if there's any sane way to post video...and if not, it'll land in my FB queue.

Anyway...back to more episodes of Jumong.  I'm glad it's a long series, since I've had plenty of time to kill lately.

It's been a long time since I've lived alone...

And the more I settle into the new apartment, the more it becomes apparent.  I don't remember being quite this paranoid the last time I lived alone, for one thing, and I don't remember spending so many hours wishing time would just PASS, already, so I can get one day closer to maybe seeing my husband and daughter in person again.

Maybe this is what J meant when he said I needed to find myself again...though, I do wish I'd done it via the new sports car versus new job, new apartment, new neighborhood, and all of it ... totally alone in a strange new city PLUS the new sports car that I now worry about because the neighborhood is, as the local security officers put it, "about a mile from a really bad area."

Part of it probably has to do with the fact my apartment is, for all intents and purposes, empty.  I've got essentials...an air mattress to sleep on, bedclothes, a suitcase of clothes, shoes, a couple lamps.  I have a little laptop stand my MIL bought me at IKEA, a folding lawn chair and one of my favorite TV shows on DVD.  I have basic groceries, basic pots and pans and dishes and cups and silverware.

I use my Droid as a tether to have Internet access since Comcast is arguing with me about the prior tenant not having canceled their service...and judging from the sheer number of unpaid bills in the mailbox, I gather she didn't pay any bills for a month or more.

Since I don't know when I'll have actual Internet access, the Droid works to provide me enough access to prevent going insane. 

The water pressure from my washer hose (the apartment style that attaches to a sink) is causing the faucet on my sink to leak like a sieve.  It's an old faucet, and it looks like it goes on my list of things for someone go spend $60 at Home Depot and replace.  Luckily, the leak seems to be confined to the faucet assembly only, which is thankfully draining into the sink above and not dripping down below, so it should be an easy fix. 

I seem to have gotten relatively lucky anyway, since my apartment looks like it got all new appliances and such installed, and all without me having to pay the premium price for an "upgraded" apartment (cause the appliances are all I care about, I could care less about granite countertops at this point!)

All for $828 a month (due to a yearly special) is about the cheapest I can get in the D.C. metro area...for all that its in a clearly neglected neighborhood...there's a grocery store and K-Mart within walking distance, and work is about 15 minutes drive (we'll see how it is for traffic on Tuesday.)

Due to the neighborhood not being the best, I don't go out at night...try not to come home late if I can avoid it, and make sure to park my car visible from a window of my apartment if I can.  My car is currently parked in the perfect spot, under a street lamp clearly visible from my bedroom window. 

Some additional culture shock notes...people are shocked, totally shocked, by politeness.  I gave up my grocery cart to an elderly woman who was having trouble wrestling one free, and she was just floored I offered mine to her.  My being polite also got me some weird looks.

People are frequently surprised when I say, "Thank your sir," or "Do you need help, ma'am?"  Damn that cultural imperative to be formal when talking to strangers or folks older than myself.  For those who don't know, I was raised in an Asian household.  My mom is very strict about that sort of thing, and most customs are relatively unconscious.  

I realize respect and politeness aren't the norm around here, nor is friendliness and saying, "Good morning!" but people are, after they get over their moment of shock, very polite to me in return...one of the people most frank and polite about his opinion was a young man dressed like a gangster...whether he was or not, I didn't really speculate. 

The education level out here is poor, and it shows.  Not that people are willfully ignorant...they're just ignorant and don't even know it!  I'm not one to correct folks to their faces, because I am at my core non-confrontational unless I am forced to be, so I smile and nod.  But it amazes and depresses me there are so many people here who have tons of potential and no ambition. 

I don't dress nice when I am home or out and about.  I dress in old jeans, boots or sandals and a t-shirt.  You may wonder to yourself why I don't dress nicer, seeing as I drive a nice car and make good money...and it's because it draws attention to me.

People take a lot off a first impression based on how you are dressed...and if you're dressed like you ought to be stuck up, people will treat you from the first moment as if you are, regardless of what you're really like.  Out here, not being from the area and not wanting to advertise that, I don't tell people what I do for a living...I don't tell them what car I drive, and when asked about my family I talk mostly about my Daddy, who used repair office equipment.

Most folks out here just nod, having heard the same old story...hard working parents, not much money, etc.

I did grow up poor.  Until today, I thought I'd had it hard...but talking to the man who maintains the apartments, I had it easy...our house had indoor plumbing when I was growing up.  The maintenance man didn't...and he considers himself lucky to live in an apartment only a little bigger than this, with a heating system he designed himself.  He's happy, he tells me, and he can be happy and proud of his situation with far, far less than I have or my daughter will have.

I think it's a valuable lesson to have learned...and I'm grateful to that man for teaching it to me, even though he didn't know he did. 

Musings on sacrificing family for job...

I've worked in IT a long time.  I've sacrificed a lot, and my family has too, for my career to go the way it has been...pretty much every time I've had a major job change, I've had to move to take the job.  This job is no different.  My family may yet move for me to take a permanent job here, or my new permanent employer may decide to send me someplace else after my initial contract here is done. 

It's the reality of being a consultant-for-hire, regardless of the field.  I liken what I and my family are dealing with akin to serving in the military in terms of the time away from family.  I go out someplace for work, and eventually my family follows me...but I sincerely hope that this won't be the norm for our lives as my little girl grows up...that by the time she is school-age we can pick a place to settle.

I really hate contract work.  And I don't hate it because of the work itself...I actually greatly enjoy the work aspect of contracting.  I hate the travel...I hate the time away from family.  I hate how temporary life feels, when it seems like your real life is going on without you back home and you're stuck in exile. 

When I told folks where I was going and why I wasn't taking little bit with me immediately, the reaction was typically, "Oh I could NEVER do that..."

Now I will ask:  Why?

Yes, it hurts...yes it is painful and difficult being away from everything you know, your friends and family.  Yes, money doesn't make up for everything.  But an opportunity is an opportunity.  And the thing I keep telling myself over and over is that this is temporary.  If we didn't need the money this will bring is so badly, I wouldn't have even considered the job.

I got much the same reaction when I moved for my prior job.  We lived there three years and made many friends who remain close.  It wasn't easy, and I questioned when I first started whether or not I'd done the right thing...those three years were some of the happiest in my life. 

I have to give this the chance it deserves...despite my reservations.  Who knows?  In a few months I may be writing that my family is moving out here...or that my employer decided to send me back West, where all our family is.

Pics from home!

I would post the videos (my husband sent one of little bit terrorizing the cat that's hilarious) but I can't figure out how...so here's pictures!

She hates her car seat.  But she's basically accepted that's what she has to deal with.

The hungriest lil girl ever is hungry!  She's always had a huge appetite.

Whatcha pointin that camera at me for Daddy?

Proof that life goes on...my lilies on the front porch are doing fantastic! (I planted em last year.)

On the waiting for news on my clearance front, I am supposed to hear something today...so here's hoping!  I need out of this hotel room and into an apartment and a job to go to daily to distract me from the fact I'm not AT HOME with my family.  *sigh*

The saddest part about this whole thing is that I was happy with my life out there, everything except work.  My husband convinced me it was time for a change, and while I agree I needed the job change, I am sad that my skillset basically restricts me to the East or West Coast...both places where it is very hard to live, even making a good wage.

We have a beautiful old farmhouse, huge with two yards and a big old concrete porch.  It's on the edge of town, so my backyard is open farmland as far as the eye can see.  At night sometimes you can hear the cows moo as they come into pasture.  And the sky is so clear and vast...you can see all the constellations easily, without a telescope.  Its so quiet there you can hear things a few miles off, and watching a storm roll across the prarie is a wonder you only see out where there are no buildings.

It's a beautiful place, for all there are no trees except down by the riverbank.  It's so safe, we can leave our doors unlocked, and delivered packages are often left on the porch near the door.  The only real crime we have in town is drunk college students being drunk college students, and the occasional meth lab. 

There's drawbacks too, though living in a small town...in the winter, driving is downright dangerous.  There's no public transportation outside the immediate town, and since we don't work in town it means we are forced to commute to work in Sidney, where there is no public transportation either.  There's no cuisene to speak of, seafood is an unknown substance out there except battered and fried, the nearest place to go shopping for anything but clothes is in Denver, 130 miles away. 

Daycare is a lot cheaper out there, and the daycares are in general better run.  One of the advantages of a small town is that if you're a bad daycare, you're out of business.  That pretty much goes for any restaurant and retail store, too.

There's good things and bad things about everywhere...I happen to like small town living, but the job opportunities not being there are what kills us.  It ties you into one job to stay in that one area, which sucks, and I knew after the way my prior employer started treating me they had reached the point of taking me for granted because I'd never leave.

Well, I left...and I am a little bitter about it, because I left too the life I loved so much, for a life out here I can't love in any way shape or form until my family is with me again.  Here's hoping I hear about the clearance today so I can start work tomorrow...please oh please oh please God, let me get that phone call today.