Finally

You all know about my struggles with my kids lately. I've been very open about that. But there's something that I haven't been at liberty to discuss until today. I can finally open up about it and let out a sigh of relief.

On September 23, my husband was laid off from his job. In the midst of trying to get my kids on the right track with therapy, medications, school, etc, our entire world changed with one phone call. For the past 15 years my husband has worked for the same company and has been happy and successful there, with the past 7 years out of our home office in Austin although company headquarters is in Silicon Valley. Back in August they announced they would be laying off a very big chunk of the worldwide workforce, and although we've weathered the past layoffs unscathed, my husband knew this time around his time was probably up. As a preemptive strike he started looking for another job. As the big layoff week loomed closer, it got a little more stressful as he just knew he was on the chopping block. He was the only worker on his team that was not based in San Jose.

September 23 brought with it the news and our world completely changed. He is our breadwinner and without him working there is no income. With a mortgage and two children we needed an income. Thankfully because he had already been looking he had a lot of contacts at other companies and quickly had interviews lined up. But it was stressful just not knowing what was going to happen.

In all honesty, we've gotten very comfortable with his work schedule. Working from home on mostly San Jose time was a true blessing. If I needed him to be home or to run an errand he was almost always available. We got to spend a lot of time together during the day, which is something we probably started to take for granted. He's also our main household chef.

This was all going to change and in the midst of all the other stressors we were dealing with, the thought of it just drained us. We quickly adjusted our spending and our usual way of life. Yes, there's a severance as with most layoffs and over the years we've saved our money but we weren't dumb enough to rely on that for long.

His official last day of work was October 10. On October 16, he got a job offer from another tech company.

Talk about a huge weight off our shoulders.

Today he started that new job. It's quiet in my house. I'm used to hearing him on conference calls all day long. I'm used to eating lunch with him most days. I'm used to him starting dinner around 5pm. Now it's all on my shoulders again. I get to be the kid chauffeur, the errand runner, the chef. But really, talk about first world problems, right?

So there you go. I could finally get that completely off my chest. The world threw us a huge curveball but we navigated it, have started a new journey, and because he got a new job so quickly he bought me a new bike. Pretty kickass.