This has been a difficult week. I’m not going to lie. While the past three months have been more of an emotional roller coaster, I feel like I’m settling into a constant, mildly bummed-out state. There was something about this last time my husband packed up the car and headed down south that really nailed home the separation. Partly, it was the nervousness around the storm, but also that we didn’t have any more trips planned to see each other.

I’m probably giving her way too much credit, but Soba (our cat –>) has been strangely needy lately. For what I’d magnanimously call a bristly cat, she can’t seem to get enough chin scratches. Yesterday, she even worked out with me – running around and having crazy time while I was doing squats and crunches. While I’m sure I’m projecting – we love to anthropomorphize our fur babies, don’t we? – it does seem like she’s trying to either distract me or cheer me up.

On the house front, we have re-adjusted the build costs based on the costs for the site prep, and figured out we should revisit our financial model. Of course, the costs for the build are higher than we initially projected, which is by no means surprising, but yet another adjustment in the trajectory. I’m hoping I’ll feel better once we actually break ground and start the retaining wall. Since my last post, we’ve decided to compromise and build the retaining wall for the pool, but wait until the house is more finished before we start on filling it in. No doubt, living space is more important than extravagances, so this is my preferred route. Likely, this will result in me working longer than expected (meh). I’ll give an update on how the model adjustments worked out next week.

We have now booked a good amount of time together for the holidays – pretty much all of December – so I’m feeling a bit better. Maybe when we actually start clearing and laying bricks, the light at the end of the tunnel will begin to get brighter.