Who Would Have Thought?

Our tiny Christmas tree in the corner of the living room

Looking from the kitchen into the dining room

The living room (new futon on the right)

The past couple of days I have been enjoying staying home with the cats and doing lots of cooking (AKA studying for my law school finals...which are tomorrow, Friday, Tuesday, and Thursday). For the time being, we're also enjoying rolling out of bed at a leisurely 8am as opposed to 6; though that will change when I go back to work. But it's nice while it lasts. We're pretty much just luxuriating in both the newfound space and time, which we didn't realize was such a luxury until we lived in the city and both were at such an extremely high premium. Like the things I took for granted about nursing which ultimately ended up being the defining aspects of my career aspirations, the things we took for granted about living in the midwest have become central to what we view as most important now.

On the school front, GWU was characteristically goodwilled and understanding about my decision to withdraw ("we're sorry to see you go, but you seem to know yourself and what you want"), and has left open the option to apply for a 1-year leave of absence rather than fully withdrawing. Despite the fact that I still have nothing negative to say about my professors or my experience or the chocolate fountain (yes, really) they had in the lobby the other day, I'm wondering whether I should. Because my financial aid (irreversibly) walks out the door when I do, and I can't imagine wanting to continue law school at full price when I don't want to now at a discount, I'm debating whether it's worth it to keep the option open when I don't anticipate taking it. Then again, we also didn't anticipate moving to Reston, or leaving law school, or working in accreditation, or anything else we've done this past year, either...!

Another major development which falls into that category: having kids. Which has gone from high on our "never" list to firmly rooted on our "someday" list. Despite the fact that if we'd had any kind of prenup, Matt and I would have both insisted that remaining childless be a prominent feature of our agreement, we have done a complete 180 on this issue in the short six months that we've been married. It's hard to say exactly why. Part of it has to do with the fact that I think I never wanted kids before because I didn't know anybody I'd want to duplicate, whereas let's face it-- the more people out there like Matt, the better :) And oddly enough, he seems to feel the same way about crazy old me. Yet, you'd think we would have seen that coming when we were dating or engaged or something, but we didn't. Anyway, it's nothing that's in the immediate works, but we've scaled back from "never" to "ten years" to "eight years" to where it's now on the "five and under" list.

Who would have thought?!