Every street lamp seems to beat...a fatalistic warning

First, Thank You for all your responses to our news--awww, you guyses.

Since getting the news and posting that, we've been with friends at their cottage on a gorgeous lake in Michigan--the same friends who live next door to us in our neighborhood, and the same friends who christened it "the enablerhood." The last few days have been sun-drenched, kids galore, and all rather experienced through an alcoholic haze of "what the.....?" and "I can't believe you guys are leaving" and [breaks down sobbing] "You'd really take care of our dog so she doesn't have to go through quarantine, and cost us many many pounds????"

(Yeah. This is the kind of friends we're leaving. The kind who offer, completely unprompted, to take care of the mangy pestilence ridden doggie so she can be chipped and tested for rabies, and then do her time on this side of the Atlantic before being shipped to Blighty in January, and thus avoid doggie prison on the other side.

I know.)

There is so much to do, and so much emotional processing to do spending these few days next to water and a well-stocked fridge has been extremely well-timed. And the nice thing is that now I have a date, a goal, and sense of what to move towards, the last few weeks or months of living in limbo seem to have finally passed, and I can (to echo my mother) get on... And by "get on" I mean, of course, obsessively stalking rightmove.co.uk and drooling over cottages (that we likely could not swing a cat in) and trying to figure out where in the hell our boy will start (not kindergarten) primary school in (motherfudding) September. And I realize he'll wear school uniform and have to learn to say "Zed is for Zebra." It's that small stuff that does me in--not the small matter of selling a house and figuring out how to ship our life's possessions, and then live without them in a strange(ish) land for two months. And then I become anxious about furnished rentals with velour settees and whiffy shag pile carpets.

But it feels right. We suddenly feel that life, for good or for bad (uhm, let's say good, shall we?) will be moving forward, and something that seemed unattainable, a pipe dream, and even frightening, is going to happen. And what is life without some reckless acts of stupidity courage? Though it is bloody nice that one of us has a job squared away before we take the plunge. (thank you karma, fate, or whatever for that one... thank you).

Much water under the bridge still to pass. And yes, I am blogging it. Forget all that shit about this blog not being therapy or a journal, ok? This, my dears, will be my shrink's couch for the next few rollercoaster months. Hold me...