A letter from September 17th, 2011

Dear FutureMe, As I write this, I am sitting at your desk in the green room, mildly annoyed by all the clutter but mostly ignoring it. Same goes for the pile of dishes beside me. I really should empty the dishwasher, load, and run it. Mika is jingling in one of the other rooms, probably the bathroom. She seems to particularly love sleeping on those red rugs. I need to check the litter box to see if she's used it, so I can collect a sample for the vet. Gross, I know. Hopefully we won't have to do this ever again. I'm chatting with Mattie on facebook at the moment, too. He just got married this summer. I still need to send a present. If you get this in 2015 and you STILL haven't sent a present, shame on you! Send one and make it a good one! You slept most of the day today. It's a Saturday, btw. Got up to help Sonya with the "bark for life" thing, came home and napped, got up to help her take down, came home and napped, then spent the evening on the computer. Tomorrow you'll be making up for the enforced "laziness" by grading ALL DAY. And bringing chicken sausage to game night. But Jeremy's in West Virginia for some reason, so it'll be board games again. We only have four weeks of grad school left. That doesn't seem like enough time to get this ARP done, especially with all the school work to do too. I don't want to get behind again. I haven't mentioned the hubby much. It hardly seems like we're married. He spends most of every week up in Fenton at his parents' house, working on his machines. Sometimes I resent this. Other times I'm grateful for the space. I worry about what will happen when we finally get the garage fixed up and he moves his things down here. Will I feel like he's smothering me? Or will we be comfortable with him "living" in the shop during the day and out of my hair? He's still unemployed. I try not to let that bother me, but there are jobs he's qualified for that he isn't applying for because he doesn't like the automotive industry. I wish he were willing to just suck it up and take the engineering job even if its only for a few years. That would triple our family income, and if we don't change our lifestyle, we could get our debts paid off and a huge chunk of savings put away. And then if he still hated the job after a few years, we could afford for him to give notice and go full time on the machining hobby. We don't have kids yet. Hubby isn't pressuring me about it, but he's made it clear he wants to start soon. I'm ambivalent. Officially, once October comes and I'm done with my Masters' degree, that was the landmark we set that said "Ok, now I can take time off work to have babies" - but if he isn't working, then I can't afford to quit my job. It's starting to look like either he's going to have to take a corporate job he doesn't want (see above), or I won't be able to be a stay-at-home mom. While I've talked about the possibility of putting the kids in the daycare at my building, I feel like that would be taking a service away from my students. Has any of this mess been figured out yet? Or are you still in a holding pattern 4 years from now? It's ok if you are; God will continue to provide. But you may want to consider whether you're in a holding pattern because you're trying to land at the wrong field? Just a thought. I should get to sleep. It's 11:16, and despite sleeping all day I'm still tired. Must get lots of sleep to be able to function with all the work tomorrow. I wish we had time to just enjoy Autumn. That's something I'll look forward to with kids. Leaves and cider and frost will be meaningful again.