I get up again, over and over

So here we go again; the interviews, the real estate tours, the lists of pros and cons about each city, the endless debates, blah blah blah. All the stuff I thought (or hoped) we were done with, all the things I felt such relief last year that we'd NEVER HAVE TO DO AGAIN...yes. We're doing them again.

Tomorrow we drive up to Valhalla for KB to interview (all I can think is, "Valhalla? Isn't that where Thor and Freja and Wotan and all those crazy Norse gods hang out?" and so that Led Zeppelin song that has the lyric, "Hammer of the gods" is stuck in my head. I don't even know which song it is; it's the one that goes "We come from the land of the ice and snow..." et cetera.) at the hospital there; Nolan and I will be heading down to Manhattan to Fort Tryon park to hang out.

Then Wednesday KB has another interview at another place right near where my grandparents used to live, and then Thursday he has ANOTHER one at a hospital in New Brunswick. He has a week of vacation this week, thankfully, so we have time to do all these interviews.

I know if I were a more optimistic person I might be excited about the possibility of seeing new places, meeting new people, blah blah blah, but I'm just not. I'm terrified at the thought of having to move again and start all over again.

I think I thought that if I just wanted this (this being Princeton) to work out badly enough, it would. Or rather, it didn't even occur to me that it might now work out - that's how much I wanted it to. My brain refused to even entertain the possibility that things might not work out here. And we see how well that turned out. Wanting something to be true does not make it true.

It's weird how I vacillate. Some days I'm like, "Ah, what's the big deal? We still have each other, we're all healthy, we're (relatively) young, KB's a friggin doctor, it's not like we're going to starve. What am I whining about? We'll land on our feet." and other days I just freak myself out hyperventilating about moving and selling the house and finding new doctors, dentists, dry cleaners, grocery stores, preschools, violin teachers, FRIENDS, et cetera. I guess I need to get better at this process, because who knows? It could happen again.

So anyway. Whine, moan, complain.

What else? Nolan is potty learning (that's right, kids, they don't call it potty "training" anymore) and doing surprisingly well. We started trying to motivate him with a calendar on the wall that he got to put stars on. One star for peeing in the potty, two stars for pooping. That lasted about four days, until he realized that he wasn't really GETTING anything. So now he gets candy. We just cut straight to the bribery. If he produces anything in the potty, he gets to pick either six M&Ms or one Hershey's kiss. He wears either Lightning McQueen or Elmo big-boy underpants (Ha! I initially typed "big-goy" underpants - I guess they're that, too!) and those seem to be an additional motivation for him. We have to bring the potty with us EVERYWHERE, and for long car trips and quiet time we wear pull-ups.

So that's exciting. For us. And pretty much no one else in the known universe.

And his birthday is coming up fast! Three years old, believe it or not. (By the way, if any of y'all sent us a gift for Nolan off his Amazon wish list, could you let me know? We got a couple things in the mail with no sender listed (other than Amazon) and no invoice included in the box, so we have no idea who they're from.) We're having a par-tay on Sunday, so I will be sure to put up some new photos from that shindig next week.

All right, that's all I got. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Thanks for reading.