Once we arrived in Texas and settled in, the organizing began. We planned out what we ABSOLUTELY needed for basic and professional "survival" in our new situation--the clothes, the paperwork, the accoutrements of a "life" basically in suspended animation. From a three-bed, two-bath house inhabited by the two of us, three dogs, two cats, and four turtles, we had "downsized" to one bedroom, one shared closet, one bathroom...and no pets. For those of you who have "fur-babies," you know how the removal of your pets adds to or increases your stress level. (We maintained a strict and constant visitation schedule at the kennel throughout our time of separation so that the dogs and cats never 'lost' the imprint they had to us...they, I believe, are the least affected by this past year--they are more socialized, more loving to us, and more bonded to each other than ever they were in Georgia!)
Everything that was not 100% essential to our new lives was placed in storage with the rest of our belongings. It was an awkward time--from being able to "spread out," we were nearly completely intertwined at all times. My shoe "collection" became a point of contention between us... His laptop became my nemesis. We were forced to communicate and open up to each other in ways we had not before imagined necessary--vocally-silent 'chats' online when there was no possibility of privacy, cell phone texting to keep each other grounded in our darkest moments, Skype calls when we traveled independent of the other, whispered conversations at night or in the mornings.
Talking to each other became a lifeline to "normalcy" for us. There were times my hubby would "shut down" and just not talk--those were the times the situation we had fallen into would be hitting him hardest. I quietly cried when the fear of not seeing a way to extract ourselves overtook me. We both turned WAY more serious than we had been previously.
Cooking, which was a connecting point for us, was put figuratively on the "back burner." We were welcomed to share our friend's kitchen (at the house we were invited into when we moved) and did take advantage of the offer, but there was an awkwardness to using someone else's cooking equipment. Further, with money tight, we regressed to our former "collegiate" diet plans from decades past--eggs, spaghetti, chicken-chicken-chicken, and cereal. Oh...and beer and wine.
Life revolved around getting up each morning and checking the sub-finder site online (it's a "lottery" system here--whoever gets to the posted sub job online first 'grabs' it...until you build up a 'following' within the individual schools) and doing the same each evening, interspersed with constantly trolling the ISD job openings and endlessly applying. For me, classes and trainings at the new college took up the "worrying time"--early morning and night classes left me little time to fret about what tomorrow would hold. We became automatons...and clung tighter to each other to keep ourselves feeling.
It was, to paraphrase Dickens, the not-so-great of times.
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