Nutshell

Hello there, lovelies!  It's been a whirlwind few weeks around here.  There have been so many things I've wanted to blog about lately but just not enough hours in the day to get it all done!  So I'll start here:

I told my principal I was resigning.  And it.  Was.  Awful.

Ever since we started talking about moving, and especially since we started looking at houses, I knew the conversation would be horrible.  And it definitely was!  It's hard to explain because I'm pretty sure most people don't work in the kind of place I work in.  My co-workers are more like a family than just co-workers.  I've never worked with a bunch of women who get along better than these women do, and I've worked in a lot of schools.  So, first of all, people outside don't really understand quite how hard it is to leave.  I told my principal that I had to leave because of my husband's job, that we had to move closer, and that I was doing it for him.  She told me to do it for myself, too.  Which of course, I am, but it's more like, I'm doing it for myself by way of him.  It will be wonderful to be closer to my family again (only 40 minutes away!), but my teacher friends here have become some of the best friends I could ask for.  I feel like everyone I was friends with before getting married and moving out here is so...busy.  I call and email and try to keep in touch, and it takes weeks before I hear back, if ever.  It's like I moved away and everyone moved on and forgot about me!  Which happens, I get it, but I just thought I would be coming back and feel like nothing had changed.  That's unrealistic, I know, but it took me time to make such good friends here, and as soon as I have them, I'm leaving again.

Anyway, that was a tangent, so where was I?  Not only do people outside my school life not understand why it was so hard to leave, but people IN my school life, my co-workers and friends, don't understand why I need to leave.  I told one of my best school friends that we were officially moving, and we had this tearful, heartfelt conversation about why we're making this move, how hard the last year has been, how we just need to make a change because we were not doing well with the schedule we keep where Hubby Blue and I are like two ships passing in the night...and she asked if there was any chance that he could change careers.  WHAT?  When I tried to explain how much he loves this and that this is really his calling, blah blah blah, she asked if our life would always be like this, in terms of schedules.  Like would he have to miss our future kids' baseball games and school events?  And of course, I said, yeah, probably.  She just couldn't understand why I'd put up with that.

And then there have been the other people who I've tried to explain why we're moving.  My husband works in ******** and we live in ******** and the commute is just too far because he's making the drive in the middle of the night half the time.  And then there's the nights he has to work late and be in court at 10:00 am the next day.  And we never see each other.  And there's this, and that, and this...  I never feel like it's an acceptable explanation, but it bothers me that I can't make people understand.

Our school district made a last minute decision to close the school I work in next year anyway, though. YIKES!  It totally came out of nowhere, and it's been devastating.  It's made my leaving a little easier, as I'm leaving a school that won't even exist next year.  When I think about it that way, it would have been crazy for me to insist to Hubby Blue that we stay here when I wouldn't even know what or where I'd be teaching.

Speaking of teaching, I feel so conflicted every day about what to do next year.  I'm applying for teaching jobs that are within a 30-minute drive of our new house, but I'm so unsure if that's the right decision.  I mean, Hubby Blue is always complaining about how we don't have a normal life anymore and that he just wants to see each other like we used to.  And no matter which shift he's on, we're not going to have a "normal life," or anything resembling our old "normal" if I have to be at work at 8:00 am.  There's part of me that really mourns the idea of leaving teaching because it's been so much a part of how I identify myself.  But there's another part of me that fears that my life and our marriage will continue to degrade if I put us through another year of this.  Life's too short to be unhappy, and I fear that our opposite schedules is what makes us unhappy.  I already feel like we've lost a year of happiness and contentment this year...I don't want to do it again.

Anyway, the new house is keeping us busier than EVER!  We did in fact get pretty much everything ripped out  the first weekend.  My parents, my brother, and my future sister-in-law all came to help us that first day, and we got a ton accomplished...no more disgusting carpeting, no more filthy kitchen cabinets, no more doors, no more trim (on the first floor anyway), no more kitchen/foyer flooring, no more light fixtures!  It was amazing how just taking all that stuff out actually made the house feel cleaner.  We also met a bunch of neighbors, who were so excited that someone is finally going to be living there again.  The second weekend, we went to look at new kitchen cabinets...and let me tell you how excited I am!  I can't WAIT to get them in!  We are going to have so much cabinet and counter space, I can hardly stand it.  Coming out of the teeny tiny kitchen we have right now, I'm not sure I'll know what to do with all the extra room!  The other day, I scrubbed the dining room walls...for about 6 hours.  And we're not talking about a huge room, either.  I don't know what these previous owners ate or did in this house, but these walls were GROSS.  I think it was grease, but who knows.  All I know is it involved massive amounts of TSP and several brillo pads.  I'll have to tell you all about it another day...

I've been so excited about the house stuff that I've actually brought some little projects home with me so I can work on them during the week!  I took all the shiny gold doorknobs off the doors we ripped out and spray painted them!  I'm not sure how they'll hold up, but they're a beautiful oil-rubbed bronze color now, and I'm loving them.  I'll have to tell you about that later too.  I'm currently scrubbing the old light switch and outlet covers because, guess what, they were disgusting too.

Yesterday was the first day of May, and I've decided to really concentrate on being healthier this month.  (I may or may not have consumed an entire row of Oreos on the day of my wall-washing fiasco.  And more than one donut on the day they made our school-closing official.  And several bottles of wine leading up to my resignation-conversation.)  So, yesterday, I decided to start this 100-push-up plan (I could do 8 good ones, so I'm in "level 2"...that made me feel a little better about myself, ha), start consistently running again (I started out with a route in mind, but then I started wondering how far I could go before I couldn't go anymore...I figured I could do an hour.  Well, I ran for 38 minutes before I felt like I really couldn't go anymore), and work on abs again (I did 51 crunches in a minute).  My goal is to just really focus on one week at a time for the month of May.  I hope this makes me a little more accountable. :)

So I guess that's my police wife life in a nutshell!  I know this was super long.  I hope to have some house updates and pictures next week.  'Til then!