Expecting It Makes It Easier.... Right?

I have moved enough in the past ten years that I have been able to start seeing a pattern in every one of my moves. The adrenaline kicks in before the move and it becomes a whirlwind of activity and then I drive in to our hotel where we will be staying until we find our new "for now" home. And then the crash happens. I become useless for at least a day or two... I mean I can take care of my kids, etc, but with all the big decisions I become useless. It is like I go into a sort of hibernation. At that point, it all hits me. I have no local friends. I have no one to trade off babysitting with. I need to hunt down different stores just to get the stuff we normally use in day-to-day life. Even taking the dogs out to go the bathroom becomes much more of a process than it was before. (Me and the kids in a hotel room day after day with no repreive from each other doesn't help the atmosphere.) It takes a few days for me to want to really venture beyond my local area.

Then, I remember how much I hate hotel rooms... I have spent well over nine months of my life in them in the past decade (not including vacations). I develop a viceral hatred of fast food, since that is what we have been having to eat for weeks and weeks on end. Someone inevitably gets sick.. and probably a dog too, for good measure (both did, indeed, happen).

After about a week, it gets better and we start to learn a lot of the ins and outs of where we are and start meeting people (thank goodness for church!) and begin to build a life where we are all over again. I know what is going to happen and that is SUPPOSED to make it easier since you know it is normal and is going to end soon, but maybe due to the culture difference and the lack of convenient transportation, it has been much harder here. I know that all this will just take more time to adjust to than I have been used to, and I am grateful that we moved to Germany since I am familiar with the area and a little of the language. That has CERTAINLY made things easier. It is just the adjusting period that stinks and I am right smack dab in the middle of it. We wanted this, I remind myself. BAH!!! Breathe deep and keep moving. Decompression over.