A Giant Fork in the Road

Imagine: You’re traveling down the road, speeding right along, and knowing exactly where you’re heading. Life is good – you’ve got a map, you’ve got a plan, and nothing is going to stop you from reaching your final destination. Nothing.

Then out of nowhere a deer jumps in front of you, forcing you to quickly change directions. Or one of those “Caution: Falling Rocks” that they always warn you about on those cute yellow signs actually does fall, smack on top of your car. Oops. Or maybe aliens come down to Earth, vaporize the highway in front of you, beam you onto their ship, and then perform all sorts of indecent experiments on your rectal area.

You’re stunned. You’re amazed. You feel more than a little bit violated.

But most of all, your trip towards the finish line is interrupted. Oh, you’ll get there eventually – you’ve promised yourself that. But for now, other priorities (taking a detour, picking up rocks, getting away from Elvis and his E.T. buddies) have to come first.

This, in a strange analogy way, is what The Lovely Mrs. G. and I are currently going through.

I don’t want to go into too much detail yet of what happened to throw us off track, but suffice to say it’s enough to keep us from pursuing our plans of moving to Florida for at least another year. Our plan was to pack it in and head to Orlando after I graduate next August, where I’d land a (hopefully) high-paying cushy job and we’d be able to buy a house with a swimming pool, a fenced yard for the dog we’d get, a large room for all my Disney crap, and nice sunsets 360 days a year. (I’ll allow for rain on 5 occasions. Hey, it’s my dream.)

Now it looks like we’ll remain in Iowa (shudder) until somewhere around May 2008. Instead of counting down the remaining 276 days until we can move, our countdown clock is now reset to somewhere around 575.

So here we are, and here we’ll stay for a little bit longer than we hoped. It stinks, but it’ll be okay.

Mrs. G. and I are both a little disappointed about the delay – okay, a lot disappointed – but when life deals you a strange hand, you’ve got to play the cards you’ve got, right? (See? Another strange analogy.) There’s not much we can do about it, so we may as well buck up and keep dreaming for a while more.

On the bright side, it’ll give us time to fix up the house a little bit more before selling it, and moving in May is probably going to be more comfortable than moving in August. And I may be able to wrap up my B.A. in that timeframe, so we can move with two degrees under my belt.

We’re delayed, but we’re not giving up our plans. We’ll just have to travel a little bit longer than expected.

Besides – it’ll give me another 19 months to whine about Iowans.