The halfway point

Well, we reached four and a half months.  Frankly, every day that everything seems ok is really a blessing, so in some ways the time has flown by and in some ways I have been anxious about each day that passes.  I could say that we can relax a little more now, but there is a long way to go.  And, I am positive that the stress levels in the Wilburn household have nowhere to go but up.

The mortage papers for our new house were signed on Friday.  We will be moving in a month and that is, by any standard, stressful enough.  At least this time we are only moving about 12 miles away and not 3 hours away.  And, since we are kind of lazy and we didn't ever have a lot of room in this apartment, much of the things we own are still boxed up from a year ago.

I've entered a busy time at work and there is lots to do to prepare for 2010.  I hope to have the vast majority of my scheduling for next year done by the end of the month, but that means some hard-working days in the office while I will be coming home to more hard work in order to move in the second half of November.  Plus, I am hoping to begin work on a study I want to do involving dual diagnosis in individuals with developmental disabilities and, if I get some help, write a federal grant proposal to fund that study.

Still, stress is all relative.  While there is a whole lifetime of stress on the horizon you really have to keep things in perspective.  It is easy sometimes to think of the enormity of all of the things that lie ahead and throw yourself into a panic state.  I choose to focus right now on the fact that my wife and my child are both healthy and as happy as can be expected.  Everything else is just a temporary hurdle.