I had lunch with a friend today, and he was asking me about my blog. Which, of course, made me realize how long it has been since I actually posted anything on it. Looking back, a LOT has happened since I last posted... for a long time, the only writing I felt I could justify was work that contributed to my dissertation. Then, when that was completed, and I graduated in August of 2013 (yay!!), I couldn't bring myself to write anything else for a while. The next thing I knew, I was swamped with too many administrative responsibilities at work, some difficulties in my personal life, and no time, energy or inclination to write anything other than in social-media bite-sized chunks.
In the meantime, my family's lives are about to change dramatically. We are moving back to England!! My brilliant husband was offered a brand-spanking-new full professorship at the University of Cambridge, which is not something you really turn down. I just read something this weekend by the wonderful Caitlin Moran about how jokes are often dreams in disguise, so when I tell you that when I met my husband, he used to joke about being a professor at Cambridge one day, you may understand how deep that dream ran in his psyche. He also used to say, over the years we have lived here in the US, how the only way he could imagine moving back to England would be for a full professorship at Cambridge. But despite all those signs from the universe that this was "MEANT TO BE," there seemed to be an awful lot of obstacles to actually making it a reality when the idea was first aired last Autumn. Some of those obstacles were eliminated by the university meeting most of husband's most significant demands for the position itself, some more was cleared when we found a great school for our oldest son ("The Scholar"), and he aced the entrance exam, and yet another chunk was cleared away when we found some connections to the lacrosse community in England for our youngest son ("The Athlete"). Well, today, another very big piece of the detritus littering the path ahead was cleared with a job offer for me as a Senior Teaching Associate at the university. Very exciting stuff. Let's hope I can live up to the opportunity.
