Freak Out!

And now for an announcement most of you are already aware of.

We are moving very soon.

We are saying goodbye to the Land of Enchantment and heading back to America's Dairyland, where the cows are actually happy and our families await us in clover-filled fields of awesomeness. Well, Spousal Unit's family is in Illinois, but you get the idea.

Spousal Unit's thesis will be complete enough that he can finish most of it from afar. We love the friends we've made here, and I love my job, but it's time for us to move on. We've wanted for many years to end up back in the heart of Wisconsin, so that's where we're going. A couple of our friends are generous enough to host our corporeal ghosts in their basement until we find jobs and are able to stand on our own feet, rather than theirs. I was a cellar waif once before; I shall soon be one again.

Ideally, here's how it will go: we'll both get good jobs within a month or so. Spousal Unit will head off to France for a week and a half, to enjoy the freakin' sweet anthropology gig he just got there. We'll both apply for the next segment of schooling at UW-Madison - he for a PhD, me for an MFA - and we'll both get in. In time, we'll buy a house in the area.

I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen that way. But that doesn't mean we can't try for it.

Spousal Unit's getting really excited about our move. I am too, but he's excited to the point that he packed six boxes of books yesterday, and now our hallway shelves are bereft and naked. The boxes fill the hall, waiting to devour our other beloved items.

We still have about six weeks before we undertake the actual move, which to my mind, at least for right now, still seemed like a fair distance away before I got home last night. But now, this moving thing is totally for real.

I'm nervous. I'm worried. I haven't gone job-hunting for a while. The job market sucks. We'll be getting used to a new place all over again and I'm going to completely weird-out our friends with my adjustment anxiety. And (this is a big one) I'm going to be around people again.

I've more or less lived as a hermit with Spousal Unit for the past several years. I think I've forgotten how to be social. I'm afraid I'm going to be surrounded by my friends again and I'll get so nervous and excited at once that I'll pee on the carpet or something. I'll chew up their shoes and bark uncontrollably, and then get embarrassed and hide in the basement for a few weeks, like a bad dog.

This is going to be pretty bizarre for me. And I am really excited to be back where most of our friends and family are... but this is freakin' scary, too.

*deep breath* I got this. Bring it on.