I just wanna celebrate

Good news! Strike up the band! Except... I feel a bit numb rather than ecstatic. Perhaps I've been stressed-out and apprehensive about our finances for so long – it will be two years next month since Michael was laid off – that I will have to learn all over again how to be effortlessly happy.

We got the word yesterday. Michael has a job! It's a good job, in his field, at a high level (vice president). It means we can begin paying down some of the debt we've accrued these past two years just keeping ourselves afloat.

For Facebook, at least, I mustered a yee-haaah expression:



Of course there's a catch. With Rhode Island enjoying just about the worst recession in the recession-plagued country, and one of the highest unemployment rates at the moment, there had to be a qualifier. Which is: The job is two hours away in central Connecticut, southwest of Hartford. Michael will have to live there during the week and commute home on Fridays for the weekends.

We will have been married 34 years this July – I know; it's hard for me to believe, too! During that time we've each traveled a bit on business, and once I spent a week in Indianapolis at a Star Wars convention with some amazing Internet friends, but basically we've been together almost all of the time. I'll be getting a taste of single parenthood now. On the bright side, our youngest child, the only one still at home year-round, is almost 17. Kevin and I get along well despite the nearly 41 years between us.

This will be a new kind of challenge. I've become spoiled with a "house-husband" at home fulltime: the laundry is always done, the kitchen cleaned up, the dishwasher emptied, the errands taken care of. Kevin will have to step up more than he's accustomed to, especially when it snows next winter. That's probably a good thing. I'll miss my husband four nights a week, but I have a feeling we'll get through this next chapter pretty well … and maybe even learn a thing or two.

Two years of worry, fatigue, anxiety, fear. Now: resolution.

Relax. Ahhh!