Hesitant, Hopeful

I've been trying to write this post for days...

Okay, so maybe not the last milestone ever, but certainly the last one in Stephenville. Matt graduated today with his MS in Management and Leadership. I could not be more proud of him!

Poor guy was so nervous that he couldn't sleep last night, so he graduated today on one hour of sleep. He was a total wreck, which made no sense to me. He's already done the hard work. This is the reward. This is the moment to celebrate that victory. And, as victory celebrations go, it was really nice.

I did warm him, though, that I was going to take a lot of pictures. Which I totally did. I got pics of him pre-grad...


And post-grad...


He looks so awesome in his regalia. It was raining, so his stole is all messy. I actually love this picture so much!!! He looks great! What am I saying? He always looks great!

He never lets me take his picture of him, so I took total advantage of this opportunity. I got pics of us together...


 Of him with his parents...



Of the stadium...


We had a pretty good vantage point, so we could see everything going on down there. The ceremony was only doctoral and master's candidates, so the ceremony wasn't too terribly long. Just about one hour exactly. Truly and honestly, I could not be more proud of him.

I feel like I'm saying goodbye a lot lately. With only three weeks left before we leave Texas, I have a lot of goodbyes to say. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any easier to say them. It doesn't make it any less painful, either.

I'm having lunch with my best friend, Melanie, tomorrow--and we'll see one another a few more times before it's time to go. Next week, I'm having lunch with my friend Marsha. Today, Matt and I had coffee with my favorite professor.

We went to Waco to see Amanda & Karen one more time. We've had food with my father-in-law, and will again this weekend when Matt graduates with his MS in Management and Leadership from the college we've been attending since 2004. The college where I worked for several years.

We're packing everything away so that we might soon say goodbye to the little house where we've lived for the last 11 years. And though I cannot say with any sincerity that I'll miss this place, I will certainly miss the memories we made here.

We've graduated from college almost four times since we moved here. I've written a thesis and more than one as-yet-unpublished book here. Our precious cat, Chummer, died here. This is where we lived when we adopted both Anakin & Chewbacca. We've gotten jobs, made careers, and lived most of our married lives together here.

Leaving this how, this town, this state, means saying goodbye to almost every memory we have ever made together. It means saying goodbye to the possibility that we will someday live in Waco again--or that we'll even visit there again as easily as we do now. We may never go again to Lover's Leap, where Matt asked me to marry him. Or to Miss Nelly's Pretty Place in Cameron Park, where we stayed up all night just talking. Or to any number of places where we've made lasting memories. It means saying goodbye to all we've known in favor of saying hello to the unknown.

To say we're looking forward to the move would be an understatement. We're so ready for a new adventure, but that doesn't make saying goodbye to our lives in Texas any less difficult.

Soooo... According to Bradbury, I fail. Okay, maybe I hunted that quote down to support how I'm feeling about myself lately. I have a lot of excuses, namely that I'm moving and that means cleaning. And, cleaning means a LOT of work because my house is a disaster. Not an understatement. Almost a literal disaster. Seriously. Yuck


But, I've already gone on and on about that. This is about writing. Or lack there of. No progress this month, which is really hard for me because I really wanted to get this damn book done. A lot. But, that isn't going to happen for a while. Since we're moving at the end of May, it's going to be a while before we're settled again. And, once we get where we're going, I'm going to have to look for a "real job." So yeah, where writing is concerned. Bradbury got it right, at least for the time being.