It Was a Very Good Year

I was lying in bed this morning reading some of those silly Year in Review posts online, and it occurred to me that 2013 was not just a remarkable year for Duchess Katherine and for Foxes, it was also pretty incredible for me and for our family. We spent the first half of 2013 in Raleigh digging in to our work and friendships and church family, and the second half back in Illinois doing ridiculous things like buying a house in the suburbs and painting nearly every square inch of it.

If one quote could sum up what I'm feeling as I reflect on the year that's wrapping up, it would be the immortal words of Ferris Bueller:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

That also helps ground me for a focus of some mental energy in 2014 - to be more present in my life as it is happening. To appreciate and communicate and put down the damn phone.

But anyway, here are some highlights from 2013:

2013 started off with a fancy dress New Year's Eve party that turned out to be a surprise wedding. I highly recommend this as a squealing, delightful way to kick off your new year. A co-worker and her fiance threw a vintage-kitch-themed "Engagement/New Year's Eve" party, but just before midnight, their minister tucked away to change into his robes and the party band played "Here Comes the Bride" and they surprised everyone by getting married right then and there. It was magical.

In February Les discovered that the Raleigh IMAX theater had a week-long run of "Top Gun" the week of my birthday, and my big day happened to land on a Friday. The Friday afternoon showing was at like 3:45 or something. Clearly during regular business hours. But somehow, even in an office where over half of the staff members work 10+ hour days on the regular, a group of about 12 of us left the building around 3:30 to go see Top Gun in IMAX 3-D for my birthday. Even one of the VPs came with us. And my boss gave her blessing for my entire team to basically ditch several hours of work to see an 80s movie in all its Great Big Glory. It was an excellent, excellent day.

Les spent most of March travelling around the US for job interviews, which meant that I spent most of March watching "Say Yes to the Dress" on Netflix and making messes in the kitchen. It was a nail-biter of a month. Raleigh friends rallied to help keep me busy and I got to spend a lot of time with Shanna and others as I waited anxiously for news from my job-searching Hubs. Auggie and I made the epic Raleigh-To-Chicago road trip to visit him and our families for Easter.

In April, I went with Les late at night to the local 24-hour FedEx to mail off his 300+ page dissertation to his PhD committee at Yale. We took photos at the counter as he kissed the hulking box and we said a prayer that it would arrive on time and then we went home and had a drink. I finished off the month of April by running the Race of Grace 5K with my coworkers on a drizzly cool day. I remembered for a flash that I actually really enjoy running, and vowed to hit the pavement more often. That didn't happen.

And then in May, glorious May. I yanked tissues out of my Small Elegant Purse (as opposed to the Giant Mega-Purse I carry for every day) as I watched with beaming pride as my brilliant husband graduated with his PhD from Yale. Knowing how hard he worked and how diligently he pursued excellence in his field made it even sweeter. Les's parents and sister were there, it was a beautiful spring weekend, and we stayed in a lovely B&B in Connecticut for the whole weekend. I ate delicious food and got my first views of the lovely Connecticut seashore.

As we celebrated Les's hard-earned graduation, we also wrung our hands about his job prospects. He had been turned down from his only two permanent tenure-track job opportunities. He was the "extremely qualified second choice" in each instance. He had a couple of offers for one-year fellowships; one in rural PA and one in Maine. I agonized over whether I should quit the job I had come to love and do well to move to a new place for 9 months that we would then move away from. Those 1 year gigs are just that: coverage for a sabbatical or maternity leave or other short-term leave of absence. The likelihood of extension is slim to none. We hemmed and hawed. And then, after the sage advice of good friends, I decided to quit my job and to tell our landlord we would be out by August.

Which brings us to early June, when Les got the call that "there had been a mix-up" with the job offer to the original candidate, and would he accept a tenure-track job at College of DuPage afterall?

This is the point when our life cranks a hard left into CrazyTown. In a good way.

Suddenly we were moving not to the unknown wilds of rural Pennsylvania, but back to Illinois! Where our families live! Where our friends live! To the familiar highways and skyways and traffic and winter and suburbs and pizza. We were totally excited, overwhelmed, thankful, and bewildered. We spent most of June and July prepping for our second cross-country move in less than 2 years. I quit my job with many tears and lurches in my stomach. We said goodbye to dear friends who we had known for just a year or so, but who already felt so much like family. We sat outdoors with our dear neighbors and our dogs and drank wine in the courtyard and ordered pizza and stayed up until we were watching the moon rise and the stars slowly brighten above us. And we flew to IL to look at houses. HOUSES! to buy. In the suburbs. I worked hard to psyche myself up for a new life in the burbs and a job search.

We had been planning on a trip to California for about a year, and we finally bit the bullet in July and went to beautiful CA to visit Jessie and Eric and Kristie and Paul and Kerry and Gavin and Nick and Jenna and allllll the kiddos therein. And to drink wine in a hilly vineyard and walk in the sand on the beach and each vegetarian Dim Sum and for me to show Les around Muir Woods, our family woodland sanctuary. That trip was the relaxing, beautiful balm of dear friends and spectacular scenery that we needed to revitalize us for the move and the leaving ahead.

And on my last day at Habitat in early August, after just shy of 2 years, my coworkers threw me a surprise going-away gift: the movie JAWS projected to the conference room wall and we all watched and shouted lines at the screen and ate fancy local gourmet popsicles (a gift from my boss) for the afternoon. I packed up my desk, and left the office with a light heart and a deep sense of gratitude and indebtedness. I was so thankful that Kevin took a chance on me, and that I stuck it out despite a very rough start. It was really satisfying to leave some new programs and progress for my successor.

We packed up our Raleigh life, had dinner and game night with our beloved Small Group, and made preparations to move in with Les's parents for a little while while we got the house buying situation straightened out.

On September 10, 2013, we bought a little split-level house less than one mile from Les's new job. I spent the rest of the month of September overseeing some renovation work and getting our belongings unpacked, while Les dug into his first month teaching full time.

On October 10, we moved in, and we've spent that last couple of months unpacking and I've driven myself to the brink of madness trying to repaint almost all of the rooms myself. I hate painting. If I learned nothing new about myself this year, I learned that. Hate. It. I have no idea how we ever convinced volunteers to paint Habitat houses. It is the WORST. Rant over.

In November, Shanna, my BFF from Raleigh, came to visit. It was so much fun to have her here and to show her around Chicago for the first time. We ran the Hot Chocolate 5K on a brisk but sunny Sunday morning and I tried to sell her on the virtues of moving to Chicago. We ate a lot and laughed a lot and I just wanted to make her STAY. It was great. The next weekend, I traveled to New York with my dear friend Jenny to visit our friend Jeana and meet her boyfriend, to whom we were glad to give a very enthusiastic Thumbs Up. Brunch, musical parodies of  "Saved by the Bell", celebrity sightings, it was everything anyone could ask for out of a NYC vacation.

And now, as we wrap up December, I'm happy to report that we decorated for Christmas this year and I felt pretty darn festive. Christmas has been so hard for me since Mom died, I've sometimes been reluctant to do much for fear of being a Sobbing Pile of Mess for the entire month, but this year, in this new house with such a fresh start and a fresh layer of fluffy snow, it felt right and warm. We are so incredibly blessed, I don't even know what to think about 2014. It feels greedy to wish for anything more.

It was a very good year.