I Wonder What I’ve Been Up To Since March 2009?

This was posted by Wicked M on behalf of G Love due to technical difficulties.

As I type this, I hear four thumping preschooler feet pounding around upstairs, I believe in the course of playing Pirates in their pirate-themed bedroom.  If you have any recollection of my life four years ago, then you will already have twigged that I have added one set of feet during our interlude.  I’ll call my oldest Jake (formerly known as Frog, but he ain’t at all froglike these days – long and lean and nearly FIVE).  And his little brother, who arrived mid-year in 2010 and is already closing in on THREE himself, shall be known as Cubby.  (For those of you – all of you - not in the know, Jake and Cubby are characters from Jake and the Neverland Pirates, which my boys are totally into.  This week.  Next week I’ll probably have to change their pseudonyms again.)

In addition to adding another squawking child to my life, I’ve also since added a degree – a JD.  MSO Rin, humble as she is, insists that she has accomplished little since 2009.  I would characterize it instead as saying that MSO Rin found her career and her home early on and stuck with it.  I, however, have spent some time flitting about, struggling (as so many of our generation do!) to land in the right spot.  I believe this is it, as I love my new job as a lawyer, and although I will always miss Carolina (which I still think of as home), we are enjoying our new home on the Gulf Coast.  Our break squarely bracketed my law school experience, for which, dear readers, you should count yourselves lucky.

I also, as of last week, added a niece.  In beautiful symmetry, I now have two sons and two nieces.  We will one day break up those beautiful numbers by introducing a third to our brood - but not yet!

There was one major subtraction – a recent one.  Nothing bad – Schmitty Cat is still alive and well, she’s just transferred her headquarters to my sister’s home in Carolina.  Schmitty and Schmupp never did really get along, and once my sister took her for the summer (while we were briefly and chaotically homeless), she just . . . kind of . . . stayed there.  She’s much happier without the Schmupperdog to terrorize (herd) her.  And I’m much happier not having to referee their fur-flying fights.

During the Wondering break, the G Love fam also spent a great deal of time living in New Orleans, dear readers, which will almost certainly come up now and again.  (We no longer live there – meaning that since we last spoke, I have packed all of our earthly goods into cardboard boxes and changed my voter registration TWICE.  We have already made plans to die in this house, so I’m hoping I never pack a moving van again.)  Mardi Gras beads, beignets, and carjackings are all phenomena with which I am familiar, and you will no doubt see references to the Crescent City sprinkled throughout my posts here.  We only just recently left.

So, to put it more chronologically – in March 2009, you last heard from me.  In July of that year, we put our house on the market, and it sold in a week.  We moved into an apartment in uptown New Orleans, and in August I began law school.  The school year went well, and in the summer after that first year I had Cubby.  Seven weeks later I went back to law school for my second year, and in a flash Year Two and Year Three of law school flew by.  I graduated in May of 2012, packed us out of an apartment and into a POD a week later, we spent the summer living with our parents while I studied for the bar, I took (and passed the bar), moved into our new house three days before a hurricane blew by, started a new job a couple of days after that . . . and here we are.

So good to see you again.