All the Stressors, All at Once

For a while I was writing a blog post twice a month. Then it was once a month (still, not bad for me.) Then life happened. This is my first blog post in close to four months.

So, here’s what’s been happening:

1. We had a baby! Daughter number three was born on April 24th.
2. Of course, having three daughters in a two-bedroom house proved challenging, so we sold our house. There was a lot of effort on this front. We had to complete several repairs, declutter, and get new landscaping. Then there was the packing. Oh, the packing. It was left mostly to me, since my wife was busy sustaining the life of our new baby, and the older girls were pretty much useless (for them, packing meant stopping to play with every toy.) The good news was that our house sold in two days, which meant that we didn’t have to deal with taking a newborn out at random times as showings were scheduled.
3. We bought a new house! It’s a great old Tudor, built in 1930, and it has enough rooms for everybody. Of course, there was the process of getting a loan. My favorite was that we had to keep providing documentation that we had already provided. It was also fun when the mortgage broker didn’t confirm receipt of documents, and then called at random times to say he needed something RIGHT THIS MINUTE. Then there was the underwriter who couldn’t understand that 35 + 35 =70.
4. Then we had to move! We moved out of our house the day before the close so that we could get it professionally cleaned (unfortunately, the sellers of the house we bought did not extend the same courtesy with the cleaning.) So the idea was that the movers would keep our stuff on the truck for one night, and move it in the next day after our two closings had completed. But of course, due to underwriters being dumb, we didn’t get to close on the house we were purchasing until a couple days later. So, our stuff stayed on the truck for three days, at a huge cost. We moved across town (about a 5-7 min drive) and it cost as much as our last two moves combined.
5. Then we began unpacking! So many boxes! So many, in fact, that they needed a second truck (and the first truck was absolutely enormous. I have no idea how we fit all that stuff into a two bedroom ranch.) This, of course, was AFTER several trips to the Goodwill and throwing tons of stuff out in the decluttering phase.
6. With boxes everywhere, Bromleigh began a new job! We were in our house for approximately three days when maternity leave ended and the stress of a brand new job began.
7. A couple days after that, I went to St. Paul, Minnesota for my MFA residency. I was a little ambivalent to leave my family with a crazy unpacked house, but I hadn’t been doing any writing or even thinking about writing during all of the house purchasing stuff. It was kind of good that I was able to get away to a different state and a whole different frame of mind. I tend to compartmentalize my writing and my “regular” life. I have to be away from one to do the other. The residency was just the thing I needed to get me excited about writing again. Although I will say that it was the busiest residency I’ve had. I had to present my critical thesis paper, so I worked a lot on the presentation. There was a lot of homework as well, and since I took Gary Schmidt’s awesome workshop, there were three extra books to read. The residency was bittersweet, because I’m entering my fourth and final semester. In January I’ll have my MFA in writing for children, but I’ll be sad to see my program end. I’ve started to do a little research into writing communities where I live so that I might keep the momentum going.
8. Now that I’m home again, there’s STILL unpacking to do. Also, I have these kids around who DEMAND ATTENTION. I have to go back to teaching in just a couple of weeks, and once that begins I’ll be back in the whirlwind. WILL I HAVE NO PEACE IN MY LIFE? These are all good things, of course, but we didn’t take a vacation this year on account of the new baby and the new house. So I haven’t had the chance to unwind.

At any rate, I was feeling itchy. I needed to write something. Opening up my WIP seemed a little daunting, so I decided to start easy with a blog post. It’s also the easiest to do with these children hanging around asking me for things.

Now, I believe there are some more boxes to unpack.