The Move Update - "M minus 16 days"

That's right. There's a teeny tiny sixteen days between now and moving day.

A lifetime, and no time at all.

The Move we have been dreaming of, sacrificing for and working towards for the last couple of years is here, right on our doorstep.

I'm up to my eyeballs in packing boxes, and every one I fill is a light in my heart.

I will be leaving work at 5:30 tomorrow afternoon and settling myself in for the four hour drive to Wine Country. 

I'll be touring around rentals, including one that looks as if it could have been made for us. I hope it is.

Chance, or fate, or blind good luck (given a push by some damn hard work) has let a job interview fall into my trip. For some reason I hesitated over applying for this one, but it suits me, and our family, just right. I know the job inside out. There's no steep learning curve, no convincing someone I've never met before that I'm a fast learner, that I do my job well, that this unknown will be a good bet.

I've been refusing to hang my hopes on anything much - I've been burned too many times before. I keep looking for the kick in the arse I know should be around the corner but so far, so good.

There's this feeling that is so hard to describe to anyone. When they say "Are you excited? Will you miss home? Are you nervous?" I can't explain. I am reduced to stammered half sentences, and fall back on "Yeah, we're excited, looking forward to it, yeah."

I feel like I'm sitting on my board in front of the rising swell... energised by the sun... calmed by the sparkling waters around me... but alert, ready to act, to paddle like hell through the waves to ride the perfect tube... the one I can feel building.

The one I know is there because I have built it.

That's it - right there.

WE BUILT THIS.

We've paddle through oceans of shit, stabbed all the sharks in their godamned piggy eyes, and CLAIMED THIS WAVE.

I hope you will be there when we come pounding in through the surf, grinning like madmen and waving you in to join us for another ride.