"And so it begins..."

Actually, it's been underway for about a month - preparations to relocate to a new address have been going for a while, now.

Chris's job has been what one generous soul would call "a hot mess" for more than a year. It has been degenerating for at least a year, and he's been developing a case of "homesick" that's been getting more and more obvious over that same year. We had been looking at relocating someplace further south - Charlotte, NC was a prime candidate - but the "homesick" part started to grow, fueled in part by something not far from a miracle.

Chris and his parents have not had the best of relationships - a combination of old hurts and their resistance to his orientation. When he left his hometown to come to Toledo to be with me, the phone lines were silent from New Years' to Mothers Day, and even after that, there wasn't a lot of phone traffic between Mothers' Day and Christmas.

But things started to change last July when we went down to visit for his birthday, and the turnaround since then has been really miraculous. And when it was time to decide our new destination, Chris finally admitted that where he would like to go was back to his hometown of Springfield, MO.

So, after spending a bunch of time on Craigslist and surfing the property management sites in Springfield, we went down and found a great two-bedroom duplex with a two-car garage and a little deck on the south side of the city. A quiet neighborhood, but one pretty accessible to almost anything, about 25% bigger than the place we're in now, and about $50 a month cheaper. We got the approval on Monday, and the process has begun.

The word has been out before this...I let people in the recovery community know a month or so ago, and Chris had his notice given for him about the same time. He  made the mistake of telling one of his supposedly-trustworthy co-workers (on that person's last day at work) that he planned to be leaving also - which meant that in a flash, his whole department, including his manager, had the word also. Chris's co-workers are bumming, big-time - he's been a key-player there for more than a little while - but he's put the "going to be with my parents" spin on it, so they can hardly fault him. I would guess that if anyone else could come up with a half-way-decent job, they'd be out-de-door too...

It's harder for me...I've lived in Toledo for 17 years, and in Chicago for three, so the lack of scenery is hardly a new or difficult thing for me, as it is for Chris. Where I've been has largely been a function of the people, especially in the recovery community - so this is a kind of tearing-apart for me that Chris isn't experiencing, so much. I've just been here long enough to put down the kind of roots that hurt when they're pulled-up, so this is a different experience for me.

And yet, it's not so very different...I left a loving church and recovery community in KC when I went to seminary, and had some pretty solid roots in the Chicago recovery community when I left for Toledo. Looking from that standpoint, I was in KC for 12 years, Chicago for 3, Toledo for 2, and Champaign/Urbana for 2 (almost to the day). It feels like I've been saying "goodbye" and "hello" for quite a while. Not to mention that with Chris's move to Toledo, my move in with Chris, our joint move to C-U, and now the move to Springfield, we will have made four moves in 3-1/2 years...so I'm ready to be shut of moving-boxes, bubble-wrap and Penske trucks for a while.

The plan is to be 95-98% packed by Easter Sunday, April 24th, and to wrap up on Thursday, 4/28, have folks from "Two Men and A Truck" load the truck on Friday, drive down there by Friday night, have the "Two Men" folks unload us Saturday afternoon, and be residents of Springfield on May 1st. We'll see how it all works out. But for now, back to packing...

Something fun...

Is it me, or do you see the resemblance?

Left, Assembly Hall at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Right, the Jupiter 2, from the original Lost In Space.

I keep expecting to see Zachary Harris and The Robot rolling out of Assembly Hall each time I drive by....

Restart/renew/reboot...

Starting over, nearly five years in...

It's been 65 days since I went into St Luke's Hospital in Toledo, complaining of chest pains. In that 50 days, a lot has happened, and blogging has simply been pushed near the back of the pack, so to speak. So now, as the holiday weekend ends and a new week begins, it's time to catch up, and reboot my blog.

A scant 38 days ago, Chris got the phone call he'd come to believe wouldn't come - a call from his dream employer with an offer for his dream job: doing product support for the second-biggest remote-control hobby distributor in the country, in Champaign, IL . The call came April 3rd, as we were leaving the Weak Signals RC trade show in Toledo - it turns out one of the biggest RC product gatherings in the country happens in Toledo the first week in April every year (and I never, ever knew that - even after living in Toledo for 30 years - until I met Chris).

His phone rang, he looked at the caller ID, and just registered this "NOW what?" look. As I watched his face, I could tell - like he'd been throwing himself against a door for a year, and when he turned his back on it, it swung open all by itself. The challenge, of course, was the timing: it was after the first of the month, our landlord required 30 days notice - and the New Job wanted him there by the 27th.

Twenty one days later, on April 24th, the 26-foot Penske truck, the Camry and the F-150 were loaded to the gills and we were on our way. A couple of retired AA friends were driving the Penske truck, so we could make the trip once. We had a late start - it is a moving truism that "90% of the stuff takes 90% of the time - and the last 10% of the stuff ALSO takes 90% of the time. " And we tossed some stuff that was marginal, that we ended up replacing when we got here - just because there was simply no more room anywhere to put it.

Six hour later, we landed in Champaign-Urbana, and checked into the motel for the night (the water wouldn't be on in the duplex until the following morning!...). We had a great meal together, and then my AA buddies and I went to my first meeting in "the new world." The next morning, we sent them home in a one-way rental car, and we started the task of unpacking and settling-in to our new world.

We've had 4 weeks here. The boxes are either put away or neatly organized in garage storage. Pictures are on the wall, Chris' workshop is in perfect order, and I am trying to keep my office chaos to a minimum in my new world. It looks, and feels, like home. One of Chris' employment benefits is cheap membership for himself and one other at The Fitness Center in Champaign - so he's become "a regular" and I'm working on getting to be a "periodic." And the insanity has come way, way down.

And we've found a church home - which will be a post in itself. Suffice it to say that McKinley Presbyterian seems, at first blush, to be everything we could hope: a friendly, welcoming and accepting "More Light" congregation.

We spent the Memorial Day weekend in Chicago - Chris flew his float-plane off the water for the first time, and I showed him around some of Chicago (you can't do much in one day, obviously). That trip will be yet another post.

Whatever happens - with my health, with my job, with the two of us - it seems we are in the best place for it. My prayer is that this will be a time of restoration and renewal for both of us. So far, it seems to be just that.