The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then?  I cannot say.

From The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien

I’ve been living in a state of uncertainty for so long that I’ve gotten rather used to it.  Not knowing what happens next has been the only constant for a long time.  It started with college applications.  Where would I do my undergraduate degree?  Would I get into a good law school?  Where?  What would I do that first summer?  (It took me until April to find out).  What about the second summer?  (Until May.)  What about after law school?  (Until the November after I graduated.)  And that was a clerkship – what would happen after that?  Would I find a good job?  I did, doing just what I wanted.  But even then, the uncertainty continued.

Hubby had been looking for his permanent place ever since he moved to D.C. and still hadn’t found anything that excited him.  He had a job but it was nothing more than a paycheck and he was starting to dread going to work.  We both knew that his situation wasn’t sustainable.  It ultimately motivated us to pull up stakes and move to Buffalo, where he had an opportunity to do what he loves again.  But that meant me leaving my comfortable, familiar job, which I still enjoyed, and embracing uncertainty in my own career again.

I did that, as you know if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, and it meant seven months at home while I searched for just the right opportunity.  That seven months was one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten.  I didn’t worry about what was around the next bend in the road – I just enjoyed every moment I had as a stay-at-home-mom.  I didn’t stress about tomorrow, I just lived today.  And it was magnificent.

Of course, the right opportunity did come along, and I was ready for it when it came, and now I’m back to practicing law.  I was lucky to find a place in a top firm, and to get to practice exactly the type of law I most enjoy.  I was rested and ready to get started again, and it’s been great.  But there are still questions – new questions, which arose when I started working again and have become urgent.  There’s the question of where Peanut will be when she starts preschool in August; we’re touring places and have it narrowed down to two choices, but I just want to get this item crossed off my list already – I’m tired of worrying that by the time we make a decision and register, she’ll have lost her spot.

And then there’s a bigger question: where will we live in September?  Our lease is expiring.  If I was still looking for work, we’d just have renewed for another year.  But since I’m working and we’re in the position to buy a home, we want to do that.  We really didn’t want to live in our rental for another year, for many reasons I won’t go into here.  And we just miss being homeowners, having our own little space.  We’ve engaged a realtor and have been seeing houses.

The problem is that inventory in Buffalo is extremely tight at the moment.  There are very few houses in our price point that also fit our size requirements.  And it’s a seller’s market, so even if we did find “the” house, we’d almost certainly be competing against other offers.  We’ve been getting progressively more stressed out, because we can’t seem to find something that feels like home, and our lease is ticking away.  Our landlord refused (unreasonably and obnoxiously) to allow us to adopt a month-to-month arrangement that would give us the opportunity to continue seeing houses over the summer.  (It’s a good thing that hubby has been dealing with the landlord, because I used some very unladylike language when we got that news.)  That means that we’ve got to be under contract within a matter of weeks, to give us enough time to close and move out before our lease expires.  And we can’t even find something we like, let alone enough to make an offer.

We’re both verging on panic at this point.  Fortunately, our realtor has the patience of a saint and hasn’t made a single comment about being peppered with emails every time our landlord upsets us.  We’re seeing three more houses today and I sincerely hope one of them is “it.”  Not only can we not afford to be cantankerous and picky anymore (okay, that’s mostly me) but I’m just tired of the hunt.  I want to be settled for awhile.

I want to have all these big items checked off of my list, for the first time ever.  Job for hubby?  Check.  Job for me?  Check.  Preschool for Peanut?  Almost check.  House?  C’mon.  I want to look ahead at a road that is stretching straight for miles.  I’m tired of seeing a bend and not knowing what’s around it.  I don’t necessarily need this situation to be “forever.”  I can embrace the idea of a bend in the road somewhere in the future.  But I need a break from the uncertainty, at least for awhile.

Wish us luck today…