Soonergrunt

Our marriage is troubled.  Some of that is my fault.  It takes two people to make a marriage work, and it takes two people to break a marriage.  I won’t go into details, except to say that in some respects we’re in a better place as a couple, and in others we are not.  I don’t know if or how long we’ll last, but I’ll own my share of the responsibility for that.

After a couple of months it became obvious to me that I needed a new start in my life.  I started applying for positions with the federal government all over the west.  106 applications went out.  63 of them were forwarded to the hiring managers as “highly qualified”.  Four resulted in interviews, and two resulted in job offers, both in the same city, for sub-agencies of the same department.

I have accepted a position with the US Department of Agriculture in Salt Lake City, UT.  I start the day after Labor Day.  The position is managing Enterprise Messaging, which is a glorified way of saying email.  It’s a pay-band jump to GS-12 from GS-11, and it includes the possibility of making GS-13 within 18 months.  The last few days have been about packing my stuff.  My wife and I are driving out there, starting Monday. My daughter will be staying with her aunt, who teaches at her high school here.  Daughter is not thrilled at all about having to change high schools. She just started her Junior year.  She’s doing well on a new medication for her Crohn’s disease, but all the recent stress is not helping her.  We are concerned about her, and are looking at ways to keep her here to go to school with her friends.  I don’t know how that’s going to play out.  I’m taking her this afternoon to practice parallel parking for her driver’s test Monday morning.  The boy is well ensconced at University of Central Oklahoma, in the dorms.  He pledged a frat there.  I like these boys. Requirement to maintain a 2.8 GPA, and no drinking by pledges at Frat events, even if they’re over 21 like he is.  15 hours of community service per semester.

Once I get to SLC, one of the first things I’ll do is go to the VA there to schedule appointments, including more marriage and individual counseling.

My wife will return to OKC after a week, and manage selling the house.  The government is paying for the move, so once the the house is sold, she’ll use one of their qualified movers to pack everything out and move it to SLC.  We’ll be looking for a nice house in the meantime.  Houses there are more expensive than here, but we’re planning on downsizing anyway. We both love our house here in OKC, but it really is too big for two people.  I’ll be living in a corporate hotel for a couple months probably. I’ll be flying around a bit, too. Training in Colorado, meetings in Pennsylvania, and so forth.

The dog had surgery. Removed a bunch of calcium stones the size of dimes and quarters from her bladder. Poor thing only weighs 9 pounds, so you can imagine how small her bladder was in the first place. But she’s back to her normal old self, which means pretty much running the place and making people pet and snuggle with her, which is OK by me, to be completely honest.

So, that’s where I am.  I’m better in many respects than I was, but I still have a lot of work to do.  I hope, as things normalize in my life, to return to blogging here more often.  Also, I’d like to thank John, who kept checking up on me, and letting me know that there were people who cared.