Going home.

We have no reason to be here. So why don't we go home? Because we don't know where that is yet. Even if we did we would go broke getting there. The company that brought us here paid for all the gas, food, lodging, moving van costs, car shipment, and work permit fees involved in moving a family of 4 from Seattle to Toronto. We never would have undertaken such a difficult journey otherwise. Still, we ended up draining our savings account to cover the extra costs that added up along the way. We looked at it as an investment in our future.

In October we sold our house. It broke my heart to let it go but we got very close to our asking price and made a profit. We replaced the money we depleted in savings, paid off my car, and had a little left over. Things were looking up!

In November, the company said they didn't need my husband after all. Oops! They overhired and had to let some people go. The ones who did the firing were not the ones who did the hiring so they had no clue they just wasted $30K of the company's money to bring us here. Oops! I guess financial mishaps like this are just part of the job at big companies. It must be fun to throw that much money around willy-nilly.

But I digress. And my bitterness is showing. (I'm trying to get over this.) The point I'm trying to make is that even if we wanted to go back to our old life in Seattle the cost to move back would leave us broke. Plus, someone else owns our house now. And we gave up our jobs.

So where is home?

Is it in West Virginia, where we grew up and went to college? Unfortunately there isn't a booming animation industry there. Maybe we should start one. Lord knows West Virginia could use a better industry than coal and fracking.

Should we return to a city we've lived in before? Savannah? Los Angeles? Seattle? We already have friends and connections in these places and I wouldn't have to learn how to navigate brand new neighborhoods. That's more than we have here.

Should we stay here? All signs are pointing to NO. When we told the kids their dad lost his job their immediate reaction was "Yay! Can we move back to America now?"

Should we go somewhere new and different and start over from scratch? It's not that daunting of a notion anymore. I'm not at liberty to discuss it, but options are arising. With each one I research the city (housing, schools, geography, etc.) and try to envision us there. We are proceeding with a bit more caution than we did last time.

For now, home is wherever the four of us are, with our dog and our cat and our fish and bunny and hamster, and that's enough.