. . . .

Oh, hey there

Hi again, my names Patrick, I used to write more about things here, but it’s been a while.
This thing called life threw some twists our way, it’s been joyous, painful, and life changing.

This post is an attempt to recount my happenings, and lay it out there for those wondering. It may be a bit rambling, but it’s hard to recount over a year in some detail without rambling.

Left coast to right coast

First up, a big move.

On August 3, 2017 my wife and I packed up our apartment, caged our 2 animals, and moved from always sunny San Diego, to North Carolina.
Neither she nor me expected to move here, yet this was the destination.

The home, packed in a PODS like box, and sent off to NC without a destination address was setup to stay stored until we identified the landing spot.

This lead to…

A new gig

Pretty much after landing (not really, maybe 2 weeks after, but it sounded cool), I ended up switching jobs. I left a position where I worked at over 9 years that was at a established company for a start up with some old coworkers.

We’re shaking up the scene, why not shake up the workplace right?

La casita

Oh and we bought a home.

Another non-expected thing. Living in San Diego, we knew we could never own a home, costs were way too high.
Staying for a month in an airbnb, we got pretty familiar with our city’s market, and realized renting was pretty much the same monthly as a mortgage.

Considering it’s a college town, most rentals were multi unit, and we’re old, so we were not down with that noise. GET OFF MY LAWN.

We hit the market hard, and fast. And after less than a month, we got place. #lifechanging

Closing at the end of September was a rush, and scary. Really scary moving down payment money around, and seeing it disappear from the bank account.

Loss

After close to a month in our new place, unboxed with our measly furniture and clothing, Thanksgiving was had, we got news that my mother in law was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Cancer is no picnic or great thing. Pancreatic cancer is like the picnic where birds poop on everything and it rains while ants bite you. It is very deadly.

Life takes a real downturn here. One good thing is we’re closer to our folks now. Flights are ~2 hours in the same timezone, vs ~7 with 3 hour differences.

The months of November 2017 until March 2018, my wife and I were fortunate (aka able to fund) and had enough job flexibility to help out our mom and pops. Most of the times, one of us would fly out for a week or so, while the other stayed at the house and took care of the animals.

We both still worked full time and from a professional point of view, nothing changed.

Internally, this was a wreck.

A darklight (opposite of highlight?) for me in particular was handling the housework for my in laws, cooking, cleaning, meal prep, groceries which made it hard to sit down for more than an hour before something came up, then around 11pm start working on feature work for the super fast moving startup.

I’d stay up until 3-4am, trying get features out, or bugs fixed, then sleep until 8am, and repeat the next day.

I am grateful I was able to help, comfort, and mostly BE there for my in laws when they needed it. I come to tears still thinking of that time, and as I type this.

But in the end, the cancer won, and in mid-March we lost an strong, stable, rock in our lives.

I still don’t know how we managed, but we did somehow.

With her death, we continued the back and forth travel arrangement, to help out, to comfort, to just be there, and it was 100% worth all the money, time, stress spent doing it.

Life

In February 2018, while we were hopping back and forth between Florida and NC, we got pregnant. I still think this is amazing considering the stress and grief we were dealing with, but life finds a way.

Somehow my in-laws, with my mother in law getting weaker by the day, made the trip up to NC during the first week of March to visit for my wife’s birthday. During their short trip here, we were able to share the first audible heartbeat of our son with my mom. I’ll remember her reaction forever.

In October 2018, our son was born. #life
Needless to say, our life has changed drastically with the new addition.

Sleep - Nope.
Normal meal times - Naw
Worry - Absolutely
Stress - Aww yeah
Cuteness - You betcha
Endless time to blog/game - What is that?
Have watched X series or Y movie - It’s on the list

Since

How things pan out is funky. The startup I was at collapsed around the time my son was born, so workloads dropped to a non-existent level, coupled with 2 weeks paternity leave, 2 weeks vacation use, and getting laid off. I had a lot of time in the initial days with our boy home. It was HIGHLY beneficial. I cannot fathom how the hell the house or schedule would have looked without that time to figure out the new lay of the land.

We’re still figuring out how this growing boy’s life changes fit into ours, but it’s gotten better.

I started in January at another startup, again with some old co-workers from the 9 year position, and it’s been great so far.

I’ve been mostly active on Twitter for better or worse, but have neglected this amazing empty blog.

No more I say. NO MORE.

I hope to bring sexy something back.

Thanks again,
Patrick