"What a Change a Few Weeks Makes in the Lives of the Meesters!"

When I posted last, I had not the slightest notion of what was just over my horizon. Not even the tiniest glimmer. In fact, Dave and I had been talking about keeping things stable for the remaining first year of Scarlett's life, since it seemed we had always made some kind of big change within the first year of each previous child's life. I thought Scarlett might be the first one to have a relatively uneventful first year.



Ha!



As it turned out, she's had the biggest and most drastic event by far. Late in October, Dave received a call from the vice president of his company, who wanted to talk to him about a corporate position. When Dave first talked about it with me, we thought it wasn't a very serious prospect, and that even if it was, it might be something he could just do in South Carolina.

But then the company flew him up to the corporate office in Ohio to talk about it, and what they offered him was much better than anything we had imagined. When Dave was talking to me about it over the phone after his interview, my first reaction wasn't, as I would have anticipated, one of rejection or dread, even though the position he was offered would require relocating to Ohio. I couldn't even begin trying to explain why such an enormous move and change seemed like the right thing to do, other than that I feel we received internal confirmation from the very beginning. The responses we got from friends and family seemed to add to that confirmation, and then each of the logistical questions we had were also answered almost immediatly. In short, it seemed like God had the doors wide open and the paths fairly clear, so we decided to walk through them. And five weeks later, here we are in Miamisburg, Ohio! For the most part, I've had only positive feelings about all this, although once or twice I've had a panic moment in which I've second-guessed this decision (such as when we were stuck in rush-hour traffic on the way here Wednesday night, in the dark, freezing cold, and snow). Here are some of the positives and negatives we've encountered so far:

Positive: This is a huge adventure! It's exciting being in a completely new region of the country.

Negative: That region of the country is the dreaded "North."

Positive: Service up here is amazingly fast and efficient. So far it seems that the aim is to please the customer - what a novel idea!

Negative: We haven't encountered much hospitality. There have been some pretty rude and abrupt people.

Positive: Snow!

Negative: It's alway so COLD! No slow acclimation for us. No, we jumped right into a Northern winter!

Positive: The library here is jaw-droppingly amazing. It's library heaven. There are no fines on children's books, the check-out period is three weeks, and you can renew up to five times. The online catalog is incredible, and they have an express checkout.

Negative: There is no corresponding negative to that. I think the library itself might have been worth the move.

Positive: They seem to have EVERYTHING here. You name a store or restaurant, and they've got it. In fact, some grocery stores and convenience stores have...drum roll, please...drive-thru's. I've seen it, but haven't tried it yet, and until I do, I'm not sure I'll be able to wrap my mind the idea.

Negative: There's also a billion people here, so the traffic can be terrible.

Positive: This great house Dave found for us! Four spacious bedrooms (my master suite truly is a suite!), large closets, a school and music room, a great den, a huge basement, and a laundry chute (we can make dirty clothes just disappear! It's fantastic.)...we're enjoying being able to spread out here.

Negative: Leaving the house we own (and still own - we need some renters soon!). It's small, but still, we liked it. And Scarlett was born in that house, in one of the cozy corners of our bedroom, which made it all the more special.

Negative: (one to which there is no positive right now!) Leaving friends, family, and an area we loved. That was just hard in all sorts of ways, not the least of which was leaving the South.

I hate to end on a negative, but I'll post more on the adventure later!

PS The quote that is the title of the post is from my midwife/friend, when I emailed her about the move. It hadn't been long before when I had just updated her about what was going on with our family, and Ohio definitely hadn't been in the picture at that point!