Staying Put by Moving Out

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The last few weeks have been a little nuts. The presidential election took an unexpected turn; my parents were out of town leaving us in charge of their animals and house; I had to go to Dallas with a coworker for a conference; our small family company was hiring… again; we’ve AirBNB’d our house three times; and my husband and I decided spontaneously to buy a new house.

I’ve been kind of stressed out, to say the least.

When I’m stressed, I can’t write. So I’ve left half a dozen unfinished blog posts sitting in my drafts, and haven’t been able to sit down and form coherent sentences because at the end of the day, after fielding client requests and questions from co-workers, answering phone calls and filling out real estate paperwork, sending every bit of personal financial information to our bank, all I want to do is veg out and binge some Netflix shows. (Galavant, I’m looking at you!)

Over a decade ago, my mom set up a personal domain for our family: alwayschaos.com and it’s still valid today. It takes me hours to get dressed because in between putting on my underwear and a dress, I put out a couple fires, type up a few emails and task some team members with client projects. By the afternoon I’m on my fourth cup of coffee only because I can’t remember where I put the first three. If I’m this off-kilter now, what will I be like when I have offspring?!

We canceled our travel plans for Thanksgiving so we could deal with this whole buying-a-house thing, so we won’t be going anywhere until our Mexican vacation in March giving us several months of staying put.

2016 has not been a year of staying put. It feels like we’ve been been on the go all year: Puerto Rico, Florida (twice!), Sioux Falls, six weeks in Europe, all together, plus a few solo domestic trips, I don’t think there was one month in which we did not go somewhere.

So for the first time all year, we get to stay home. Sort of. Because we actually have to pack up and move out of the place we’ve called home for the last four and a half years, and settle in to a new house, a new place to call home.