Time is Running Out

Noey, Photographer to the Congers
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Years ago we started this journey. So long ago that I fear that had I not blogged every minute of it, I might have long since forgotten why we're going. Years ago we started making the changes, selling the story, purging the crap, committing the resources, devoting the energy, caching the cliches. Yet, to date we haven't actually left. Try to imagine planning a trip downtown, getting dressed, brushing your hair, and then taking about 2 years to get to the bus stop. We've left everything behind, but we haven't actually gone anywhere.

For the longest time we've referred to our departure date as some years in the future. Then we started not long ago to refer to it as a few months in the future. Now it's just weeks. Nine of them. Which just isn't enough time to get everything done that must be done before we leave. Nine weeks is a whole lot less than 63 days, people. And even if it were a real 63 days it appears that every single damn one of those days is committed to something more important than getting our asses outta dodge. It's like there is a grand universal conspiracy to fill our time with all kinds of other drivel.

There are first aid courses and boater tests. I'm wiling to concede those might be relevant to our departure. But an Irish Dance competition? Two plays and an opera? A family school festival, a trip to California, another to northern Washington, and two birthday parties? For Gods Sake people, STOP INVITING US OUT.

However, I think that the most raw part of the entire deal is that now that we're leaving, we finally have a few really good reasons not to go. One of the most significant is the girls' adoption of Noey as their honorary uncle. I've known Noey for years as a professional colleague and a friend. Then last summer he started joining us every Thursday to sail in the Elliott Bay race series. This morphed as winter set in to a comfortable and regular every Sunday night dinner at either our boat or his house. We'd go over there more, but the girls leave fingerprints on his doorknobs and that gives him the heebie jeebies.

Then there are the many, many friendships we cemented during the last two years with the staff, parents, and students participating in the Seattle Homeschool Resource Center. Far from homeschooling proving the socialization wasteland prophesied by devotees of Real Schools, we have instead found a warm, generous, and eclectic community of truly fascinating people. Our relationships with these people bear no comparison to the casual, passing nod acquaintance we had with folks associated with our daughters' old school.

Dean is taking guitar classes with a teacher he really enjoys, I'm getting together regularly with friends. The girls are forever out on play dates or having people other. Our social calendar is full. FULL. I do not remember even having a social calendar in our old life. I remember working. Eating. Sleeping. Doing things my eldest pretends parents don't do despite the self-evident sobriquet "parent" which implies otherwise. That's it. We didn't have friends. In retrospect, that sounds so pathetic. Except the practicing to make more kids part.

Leaving in nine weeks is just an ugly thought at many levels: emotionally, functionally, organizationally. Nevertheless, we're going to do it anyway. We accidentally let the girls get a plant -- never a good sign in the cruising world for your odds on actually cutting the lines. But don't let that fool you. We are not going to back out.

And that is not the sound of chickens you hear.