Travel weary and heart aching...

Well, after spending a week on planes and in cars traveling the state of Montana, followed by a day of sleeping 15 hours, I'm packing again. But just for a 3 day drive trip! Thank goodness. Monday morning we leave for OKC. I'll be spending a couple days in Stillwater and Norman while my colleagues are in meetings in the city. Being the workaholics that we are (even though the other two are guys, so I feel like they should have been aware of this), we totally blanked on the fact that since OKC Thunder is in the playoffs or whatever, there are no hotels available in the city, and I'm sure traffic will be horrendous. Yay! But I kind of wish we had tickets...

I thought I was doing well with the move, but it's been increasingly hard lately. My husband, who I haven't seen in 3- count them: THREE- weeks, was supposed to be flying home today, but now won't be here until Wednesday. So I may have had a mini breakdown yesterday in the midst of a travel exhausted craze about missing my family and my husband. My birthday is in two weeks and I don't know anyone here, and because I'm presenting during a week long training conference ON my birthday, I don't get to fly in early to spend time with my family before my wonderful friend's wedding. And did I mention I haven't seen my husband in 3 weeks? It's not that bad when I'm traveling, because we both know we wouldn't have seen each other anyways, and we have a good rhythm down with my new road warrior position, but the weekends are so much harder than I thought they would be. Heartbreaking hard.

Aside from missing my family, I'm struggling to deal with the slightly accusatory judgement that comes from people when they learn that we moved to Texas for my job, and that my job is so travel heavy. We don't have kids yet (and don't plan to have kids for quite a while), we knew the job was going to be travel intensive for the first 6-12 months, and we talked about this possible job offer for 6 months before it came. We made the decision together, as a team, but when people ask about it I can't help but feel like everyone thinks I'm a terrible wife. And I come from an amazing family where the men had the careers before the women, and that's not how it's happening for our family, so I don't know how to handle that. Half of my friends are so supportive of it and excited for both of us, and the other half just don't seem to understand why I'm not the one staying home while Ryan works. I've never considered myself any type of feminist (not that that is bad), and I certainly never pictured myself being a career woman, but I like it. And we're finding our fit in all this. I'm sure I'll learn how to handle everyone's different opinions, and I know I'll learn to be less sensitive because I know most people probably just want to know that our marriage is strong and healthy in the midst of all this change, but right now, rolled up with the struggles of being somewhere new, it's just hard.

I love my new job, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity, but right now I'm so anxious to have my husband back, find my place in this community, and make it home. I know it will come, I'm just being impatient.

Wisdom teeth update: I've come to the conclusion (with my extensive knowledge of dentistry) that my wisdom tooth that came in is in fact impacted, but is only impacted in soft tissue, rather than bone (thank you, Jesus). It still hurts like hell, but I keep reminding myself that it could hurt worse. 3 weeks and counting until I can go get them removed. Until then, Oragel and ibuprofen are my best friends.

So that's my Amarillo update for this week. My heart is aching a little, but I know we'll feel settled eventually.