December 19, 2014: Interview Day in Houston

Thank goodness that I thought ahead and made Dominica set an alarm in addition to my own alarm because my phone, while plugged in, did not turn on and its alarm did not go off this morning!  But Dominica’s went off not that long after mine was supposed to have woken me up so not an issue.  I have a major interview this morning on the early side and then another one later in the afternoon.  So I had to be up pretty early to make sure that I was all set up and ready before the morning interview began.

Dominica got up with the girls and hung out with them upstairs to keep them quiet while I did the interview.  The one this morning felt like it went very well.  But, as always, you can never really tell with these things.

Right after my interview, Dominica and the girls came downstairs and were hanging out in the kitchen.  It was not long before something happened and Liesl fell from a tall bar stool and face planted onto the hard tile kitchen floor.  It was horrible.  I did not really get to see her fall but saw her seconds later when there was some serious screaming.  She had not managed to even get her hands out in front of her and she apparently impacted the tile floor with her teeth hitting it first.  She was in an incredible amount of pain.  Some of the worst pain that I have ever seen her in.  It was just awful.  She was screaming and screaming about how much her teeth hurt.

It took probably twenty minutes before we were really able to get to the bottom of Liesl’s situation as there was a bit of blood and she was in so much pain that she could not communicate.  Eventually she was able to tell us how scared she was because she could feel that a tooth or two were out of place!  Dominica was rapidly getting herself dressed and I worked to get Liesl ready so that they could run to a dentist to get her X-rayed as soon as possible to see what the teeth situation is.  The two teeth that she appears to have hit on the floor are her two adult teeth so this is a really big deal.

I had to stay behind because my second interview was coming up soon and there was not time to reschedule and there was nothing that I would be able to add to the situation.  Liesl was okay and just needed to see a dentist and Dominica was on top of that already.  So I stayed back with Luciana.

Before leaving Liesl actually said through her streaming tears “At least it wasn’t Luciana who fell and got hurt.”  Such a sweet girl our Liesl is!

The trip to the dentist went well. The X-rays appeared to show that Liesl’s adult teeth are okay although a follow up appointment was recommended in a few weeks to ensure that things were still okay.  There were definitely some teeth out of place and the dentist filed down at least one baby tooth to allow Liesl to be able to close her mouth properly again.  But everything will be fine.  No solid food for Liesl for a while now, though.  That is going to be really tough.  What a poor girl.  She was quite the trooper, though.

Dominica dropped Liesl off at Francesca’s house on the way back.  She came back and took her morning shower which she had had to skip because of the emergency.  While she was in the shower I had the start of my second interview.  While I was still in the Skype session Dominica got Luciana and they both went over to Francesca’s so that they could hang out with their cousins all day.

My second interview seemed to go really well.  I spoke to the recruiter and told him that I would really like to move things along and make a decision today.  He said that if my goal was to have a decision today that he would make sure that that happened.  So we spent the day awaiting news on an offer from them.  But we feel really good about the chances that there will be an offer and we are excited to be looking at the possibility of having some closure about things.

It has been more than four months at this point that our lives have been in complete and utter upheaval without knowing what is going on.  We have had absolutely no stability for so long now that even though everything has been financially okay.  Financially great, in fact, we have been struggling with the stress with having no way to make any plans at all.  And it is not just Dominica and I.  Everyone in the family has been eagerly awaiting some news.

Joe and Bennie came back over the house and we hung out for most of the afternoon.  We had originally thought that I was going to get an offer closer to two or three in the afternoon.  We spent the day waiting for information to come in about that.  That was stressful but I kept getting good reports about the situation, so we all remained hopeful.

It was late in the evening when I finally got the call and the initial offer.  We were pretty confident that one was going to come in today but it was getting so late, about a quarter till five Pacific time making it nearly seven o’clock here in Houston, that we were worried that things were going to run over the weekend and then hit all of the issues that you always have with the holiday week.  But finally the call came.

We spoke for a while but the money that they were offering was just not enough for us to really take it.  So they went back to talk about options.  While I was waiting for them to come back to me, the rest of the family came over to Joe’s house to have dinner.  They brought pizza.  So I was still waiting on pins and needles when they got there.

It was about an hour before they called back and offered the money that we needed to accept.  Much lower than we were hoping but pretty much what we were expecting.  This one is really about the job and the lifestyle changes and what it means for the family and much less about the money.  The benefits are outstanding and I think that our family is going to be much, much happier with this.

So the evening was mostly spent dealing with the realization that more than four months of stress are now over and that our decision is made.  There is a lot of stuff to do before I can start.  Paperwork with the non-compete, ugh.  But thankfully there is zero competition and the state of California does not recognize non-competes so it is null and void anyway.  But we want to go through the procedures.  No need to rock the boat at this stage.  And we need to arrange moving out to California and figure out exactly what the “being in California” situation will be like.

I have a lot of details but it is too late and we are too warn out to discuss them now.  I will do my best to fill everyone in as much as I can tomorrow.  This is a really awesome opportunity but it is extremely complicated to explain and there is a lot that we do not know ourselves yet.  Needless to say it is going to be some extreme upheaval.

Officially, we are now Texans again.  We are living here in Houston as our American base.  The only trip back to Peekskill is going to be Dominica and I making a trip just to pack everything up, get it cleaned out and to hand over the keys to the renters so that they can get into it as soon as we are done shipping everything out.  We have no idea when we will be doing that, though.