sitting alone on a friday night...

ahhh, reminds me of the good old single days. haha!

Just sitting here watching the boob tube.
I found My Best Friend's Wedding on TBS. Love that movie.
Best part: Julia and what's-his-name on the tour boat.

someday, when I'm awfully low,

I will feel a glow

just thinking of you...

and the way you look tonight

Love that song

Anyway.

Ryan wanted to clean up the kitchen for me and do all the dishes before he left this afternoon.
I told him not to. That I just wanted us all to hang out, that he could just play with the kids, just relax with us before he was gone for four days, and that I could take care of it later.

Now I'm sitting here avoiding that mess in the kitchen. It's bad. I don't know how it gets so bad so quickly, but I'm regretting turning down Ryan's offer to get rid of it for me. Not that I'd wish it on him. I just wish that dishes would clean themselves.

*********

So I guess I should elaborate for some of you where exactly it is that my husband took off to for the weekend.
He has an interview in back home in Beaverton on Monday.
Interview?!?, you say. Maybe I should back up a little.

First let me apologize to any of our friends or family to whom this is new news. Not so exciting to spread bad news, if you know what I mean, so I'm sorry if you were left out of the loop.
A few weeks ago, you may have heard that Pfizer was "restructuring" and ended up cutting about 10,000 jobs; 2400 or so of them here in Michigan. That does include Ryan's job and in fact, his whole lab.
He got the news while the kids and I were gone, while we were in Oregon. Not good. We were just getting settled here after picking up and moving across the country, and were set to be here for at least two years, and most likely longer, before having to make any more decisions in that area of our life. It was such a relief for Ryan to finally have a great job with all these great benefits and to finally be able to have our house and not have to worry about any more of these job or moving decisions that we've dealt with our whole marriage.
Anyway. So it was kind of a shock to say the least. And it was hard that we were apart while he got that news and we had to process it all and figure out what our options were and it wasn't so easy to communicate or be there for each other over the phone and three time zones apart. The good news was that it wasn't an immediate thing... nobody's going anywhere until at least May and probably into the summer. But that still leaves us with a lot of unknowns. Like what the heck are we going to do?
I, for one, didn't want to talk about it much while I was gone both because I was tired of thinking about it and I was tired of trying to answer questions that I had no idea how to answer. What will we do? Will we move back home? Stay? Who knows.

And that's kind of where we still sit now. We love our house and Savannah's school and the few friends we've made and were looking forward to getting more settled here. So Ryan's applied for a couple of other random positions at the part of Pfizer that will remain in Kalamazoo. But there aren't a lot of other options here for him.

There's a possibility he can go to a different Pfizer site- St. Louis is pretty much the only place we're considering. Which in our minds is the easiest solution (after staying put) because of the simple fact that everything would be taken care of. They are offering a nice bonus to any of the employees that move to another facility, plus the great relocation they provide is awesome. We wouldn't have to worry about selling our house or packing or anything. And we already have friends in the St. Louis area.

So back to the interview in Beaverton. It's for a position with ZRT Laboratories, which is a hormone testing facility. I'd have to let Ryan fill you in on the details because obviously I don't have a clue what I'm talking about when it comes to that stuff, but it sounds like a very good opportunity. But we have no clue if they would be able to pay enough for us to move back and be able to afford a home in that area. They seem very excited about Ryan and so who knows...
It would be nice to be back in the area. It's just so depressing to look at house prices there!

Also on the radar (and for those of you who know our history -when has it not been?) is a Shimadzu Field Service postion. They are in desperate need of someone in the Seattle/Tacoma area right now and they've talked Ryan into a interview slated for next week already. Pros and cons for this one: pros- great job, great job security, work from home, company provides car, gas, car insurance, phone, internet and anything else related to his home office, and they also provide a great relocation package. We'd be looking to live in the Tacoma/Olympia area, which would be just over two hours or so from "home". Cons- Ryan would be traveling a lot, not thrilled about moving to Washington (it just seems so gloomy up there to me all the time. I mean, yeah, Portland's known for it's rainyness -is that a word?-, but it's just always so gray and gloomy up in Seattle. Portland gets actually more rainfall per year, but Seattle has more cloudy gray days. Don't know if I'm okay with that.), and that area is almost as expensive as where we would be looking in the Portland area.
Anyway, that interview is set for Thursday. So he gets home from Portland late on Monday and then flies back to California early Thursday. Fun, fun.
Paul (Ryan's "in" with the company and who he'd be working under) says the interview is just a formality, (it should be- how many times has he been through these interviews with them?!) and it's basically up to Ryan whether he's got the job or not.

So we may have a couple of big decisions to make coming up sooner than we thought.
Please keep us in your prayers regarding all of this. I just hate not knowing where God wants us and having to make decisions like this. I just pray it'll be spelled out for us, that He really just obviously points to which job Ryan should take (and when) in the next six months. I feel like the past 10 months have really stretched us in our faith and in trying make sure we're making decisions inline with the Lord's will. I hate to say that I feel really drained from that. I feel like complete faith and a real desire to be open and honest to God's will, while it can be so full of peace and joy and anticipation of the good things to come, it can also take a lot out of you (especially without close friends and a church family to share prayer and encouragement with). And I'm afraid that we haven't found the end of that road yet.
I feel so selfish saying this, but it'd be nice to see a little fruit of that faith before having to start all over again, you know?

And I also hate saying this outloud (well, type outloud), but you know how when you think you just can't be stretched any more, that your faith isn't strong enough, that you are so clueless as to what the heck is really going on... that that's when the Lord says oh yes you can- I'm going to show you how you CAN continue to lean on ME.
Um, yeah.
Kinda scary.
In a good way I guess.

So.
That's what's up with us, and what Ryan's up to this weekend.
Thoughts, anyone?
Comments? *read: easy answers for us?*