Oh June. What a month. Coming at this in hind-sight, June 2013 was one of the more tumultuous months of our marriage.
Early one morning back in May, Aaron came upstairs after waking up absurdly early to get some work done, and found me getting ready to take kids to school. He had a sort of giddy leer on his face (or maybe that was just my interpretation) and said "guess what I just found?" Knowing him as I do, I rolled my eyes and said "a job." Because he is kind of a serial job-hunter--always on the lookout for the next big thing on the horizon. I, on the other hand, have been very contented (for the first time, I might add) here in Fort Wayne and had not been looking for any major change. That said, I'm hardly one to stand in the way of ambition.
Still wearing the expression of a clown about to pounce on small children, Aaron grinned and nodded, so I waited for the perfunctory description of the fabulous university with a post just open.
"The San Diego Children's Choir is looking for a part-time artistic director."
I'm not sure if I acknowledged this with a nod or not. Pretty sure another eye-roll was the only pre-requisite to getting on with my day. He'd been getting quite annoyed with random flak he'd been getting from his university between a series of administrative changes, a falling department budget, and a group of complaining students, so it wasn't entirely unexpected that the grass would be looking greener elsewhere. But really? Part-time? In the state with the highest cost of living in the country? Surely that didn't beg a serious response.
Because I'd hardly bother mounting a defense against something so ludicrous, he filled out the application materials and sent them in. Days later, he was getting enthusiastic responses. "Well obviously," was my response, "you're grossly overqualified."
Then he pointed out that the part-time salary was nearly equal to his current university salary. Wanting to nip this in the bud, I wrote out a rough list of expected cost-of-living increases that would be in effect in southern California, along with a base salary that I felt we would need just to survive there (one decidedly in excess of what the part-time position offered) and presented it to him. I did not, however, forbid him to interview.
Fast-forward another few days and a successful Skype interview, and rather than fading into our memories as another fanciful fantasy, Aaron now has in invitation to audition for the position in person, along with two more possibilities; a part time teaching position (only one class every other day) and a church choir director position that offers benefits in addition to a generous salary. Following the last day with his university classes, he hops a plane out to San Diego for an audition as well as brief meetings with musicians in various organizations in the city.
Well, to cut to the chase, we ended the month with not three but four job offers, including a small gig with the San Diego Master Chorale, and the position with the San Diego Children's Choir, which had morphed first to a 3/4-time position, then to a full-time position just because they loved him so much.
Sadly, even all this enthusiasm for my brilliant husband has failed to rally me to the cause. Though I haven't been particularly thrilled about it, I have reluctantly begun to consider this as a legitimate possibility. Almost everything about it makes me sad--I love the life we've built here, I hate the thought of uprooting our kids just as they're on the cusp of adolescence, I'm happy in my work here and feel like this is a good place for continued growth, and I worry about a work schedule for Aaron that would have him gone during many of our family-time hours. On the other hand, living closer to family could certainly have some benefits, and given the various health issues that Aaron has faced here, many of them due to environmental factors, I have a hard time ruling it out completely. At the end of the day, I'm just a girl who wants to make all the plans herself, and when something hits me out of the blue--even something good--my instinct is to push back.
Anyway, with summer settling over us, it's hard not to be in love with our little paradise here in Fort Wayne. The birds are in the air, the tomatoes and peas we planted are finding their way out of the ground, pond is alive with fish and frogs, and the kids are spending all their waking hours playing outside. Which brings us to our #1 Best Story of the Month.
While Aaron was away doing his audition thing, I had the kids all at home, freshly released from school with nothing but time and trouble on their hands. Emerson and Sera in particular were spending most of their waking hours catching frogs with their friends Payton and Gillian, who live across the pond. Some days they would come to the door with no less than 15 or 20 frogs in an ice cream bucket to show me. Although I'd let them keep one or two in a little habitat that Addy had gotten for her birthday, they had to release the rest of them, and even the ones in the habitat had to be released after a day or two (particularly after one or two of them died after being left in the sun). For the most part, they had been pretty good about letting their frogs go, although a time or two I caught them trying to smuggle an extra into the house.
One day after they had spent most of the morning and afternoon outside, I let everyone come inside for an hour or so of television. I curled up on the couch for a little facebooking, only just resisting making an online comment to a friend who was complaining about how challenging it was to entertain children over the summer holidays--I thought maybe I should let her in on how cleverly I had worn my kids out in the sun and then let them collapse in front of the television for a while. Despite resisting the temptation to flaunt my superior mothering skills, I couldn't help tiptoeing down the stairs to admire my work. When the kids caught sight of me peeking in on them, however, they moved as one to shield my view from something. "What," I asked, "are you doing?"
Before they could answer, I suddenly caught site of a large wet mark on the side of the sofa.
Then something jumped over in the corner.
Screeching like an angry pterodactyl, I moved them all out of the way to discover not one, not two, not five, but about 12 frogs making themselves at home in our family room. Some had set up camp in the dollhouse where the girls had made up beds for them, others seemed perfectly content paddling around in the water Emerson had put in the bottom of one of the toy bins, and still others were out and about for a bit of exploring.
Ha! And I thought mothering older kids was going to be easier! I screeched and screeched until every last frog (except for the one that surprised me in the middle of the kitchen floor late that night) was out of the house and my kids had been threatened within an inch of their lives.
But that night, once they were all in bed, I could not stop laughing. I suppose that's what I get for not letting them have a puppy!
