On September 10th, 2006, my wife and I decided to get our Northridge, CA house ready to sell and move to Kansas City.
On Sunday night, August 12th, 2007, I loaded up our Ford F-150 SuperCrew and headed for Kansas with my wife and our two youngest children. We arrived on Tuesday evening.
In the next three days, I found them a place to live, bought furniture, enrolled the children in two different schools and got my son signed up for the football team.
On Saturday, I flew back to Los Angeles because I had to finish getting our house ready to sell while our oldest daughter finished her last semester as an undergrad at California State University at Northridge.
On December 21st, 2007, she and I packed up her stuff, loaded her Nissan Maxima and once again I headed off to Kansas City so that she could spend one last month with her mother and siblings before moving to Texas to enter the Executive Development Program at Neiman-Marcus.
I flew back to Los Angeles on Christmas Day, 2007,
…and found myself all alone.
Now I had been contemplating writing a blog since the late 90’s. I thought that it would be a great way to record and preserve our family’s history and that other families might benefit from reading our stories. But with a wife, four children, a very extensive D-I-Y remodel of our house and a very demanding job, who had time to write?
But now I didn’t have a wife to argue, er, I mean talk with…
and all of the children were gone…
and the house was finished and regularly being shown to prospective buyers…
But…
I still had a very demanding job…
And now I had to do all of the cooking, cleaning and laundry!
…And I had to finally start getting my body back in shape!
On Friday, January 18th, 2008, less than a month later, all of that changed when, for the first time in my life, I was laid off from my job.
After working very hard for the previous 11 years, I suddenly had some free time on my hands. And since I wasn’t quite mentally prepared to update my resume and begin looking for a new job, I decided that I should probably just dive in and start writing about the event.
So I did…on this blog!
Seven years ago today I started this blog!
As I write this I am struck by how similar my circumstances are.
My wife and I took a very brief trip to California to see her parents over the July 4th weekend. By the end of the next week, their situation had changed dramatically enough that it became very obvious that they needed care. So my wife quit her nursing job and, of all days, on August 12th, 2014 moved back to California to take care of her aging parents.
On the same day our youngest child moved out of our home to embark on her career as a manager for the Bonefish Grill. She now lives in Texas with her oldest sister who still work for Neiman-Marcus.
And once again, I am lagging behind getting our house ready for sale.
The more things change…
Does this mean that God has another surprise in store for me? Does it mean that I will resume writing on this blog?
At this time, only He knows…
and He’s not telling.
So stay tuned…
