Working Hard To Re-establish Roots!
It was easy to up and leave town....coming back is definitely harder to tackle! We are beginning the third week back in San Diego and so far things have been a rollercoaster. The transition has began to smooth this past week, only with a lot of help from a lot of friends. Our close friends here threw us a father's day dinner party and we spent the entire first week with daily visits to all of our their houses. I can't overstate enough that having a solid network of people who love us and want to help us has made all the difference in this really difficult transition. When we came back we told ourselves that we would give through the summer months to reestablish our roots, find a permanent place to live and get back into much needed routines.
As for routines, the kids immediately started camp on the Monday after we arrived. That week was extremely rough on them and they fought the structure all the way through the week. It was a small classroom and the topic of the week was learning to cook. Boyd didn't like the fact that half the time was spent cleaning up. Erica and I loved hearing how bad he had it every night as he complained and then stressed to us that he wouldn't return the following day. Blythe struggled to wake up. The morning commute was over an hour, so 6:15 was wake up. She never likes mornings and the first week was a brutle battle for her but she has adjusted well this past week. The second week they spent at Gateways summer camp in Del Mar, a STEM focused camp, and the kids are now excited every day to go. They are taking rocketry, chemistry, digital photography and engineering. They attend everyday with their friends Ryan and Hajar and we have been carpooling to help with commutes. We found that putting them in full week camps opened our ability to begin our hunt for work. It has also built the much needed routine that will make their transition to their new school in August so much better. I have began interviewing and have so far relied only on my personal and professional network to find opportunities. It was exciting to shop for a new suit in anticipation of these interviews. I donated all my old suits prior to leaving last year so I would have to freshen my look with new stuff this year. Erica has been extremely diligent at re-establishing contact with her client list and has already booked about a dozen clients to date. This has been a big help to our financial situation as we hunt for our permanent living arrangement. She has only just begun and her hard work has given me flexibility and has bought me time to make sure I find the right job for the long term. It has been a unique experience to interview. Like I anticipated, every one so far has led off with asking about our epic adventure. That part has been fun to discuss, but what becomes difficult is the point at which we transition to the job related questions and I find myself out of practice, fumbling for quick answers that show off my true skill and knowledge. I have improved every time I interview, so I imagine that by the tenth interview I should be back into form. I beat myself up about it after the interviews and after a few hours of doing that I tell myself, and Erica reminds me, that all that is supposed to be will be in time, so I move on. We will figure things out in time and until then try to enjoy our summer in beautiful San Diego.
One enjoyable evening, Erica and I dropped the kids off for a night at their friends house and headed out with a group of friends from Alton that Erica and I grew up with. We went to the St. Louis Cardinals game at Petco Park, they were in town for their yearly series. It was great to see people that we haven't seen in decades.
Peace and Love