Life changing news

This morning, my husband was offered an extremely good job on a large heavy jet with an airline in the Gulf. Words can't describe how tremendously proud of him I am. We'd got to the point where we thought he would never be able to get another job. Our financial future looked horribly bleak.

Still, this offer brings mixed feelings for us both. It means moving our entire lives to another continent, leaving my job, our home, and our families behind. Everything that we take for granted in our day-to-day lives will have to change. To say I'm nervous would be an understatement.

Still, we're in this together, and I can't think of a man I'd rather move to another continent with than my loving, caring, funny, clever (not to mention gorgeous) husband. We're going to talk about this, but I expect in the end the answer will be yes. It's just too good an opportunity to turn down. So our journey into the big, wide, exciting unknown begins here....

In The Bleak Midwinter

Despite our financial and job worries, I'm getting very excited about Christmas already. Some may say I'm still a child at heart (and perhaps I am!) but I don't think it's just about that, really. I personally believe Christmas is all about love - for our family and our friends and neighbours - and that's something we can all get excited about.

The title of this post is my favourite carol. I have several really, but I love the gorgeous tune and beautiful poem it was composed for, despite the obvious fact of course that Jesus was born in the balmy desert and not in the frosty wind of the wintry British countryside. Still, when I hear it I'm immediately transported back to a small Norman country church stuffed full of well wrapped-up locals each holding a candle, and it being so cold that we could all see our breath.

Perhaps I'm lucky, but when I look back over the years and think of all my Christmases, I have warm memories of all of them, despite the inevitable family tiffs that are part and parcel of what can be quite a stressful time.

I'm lucky too that my husband loves this time of year as much as I do. We have strong Christian beliefs, so it has deep meaning for us, beyond the festival of consumerism that it has become for so many.

One of the only few good things that has come out of him losing his job is that this year at least, he's guaranteed to be around for Christmas - all of it! I can't wait, despite the fact we're going to have to restrain from indulging ourselves on presents this year - we'll still have our good old trusty fake tree (£10.99 from Argos, still going strong!) cards on the walls, a home-made Christmas cake, mince pies and some yummy mulled wine.

And of course that thing that money can't buy - lots and lots of good, old fashioned, unlimited love, wrapped up in our warm house and tied with a decadent (but imaginary and therefore free!) big red bow.

Happy Christmas in advance, everyone.

Keeping my own counsel

I've had quite a few emails and phone calls of late from concerned friends, asking if I'm ok, and saying that they're worried that I've been so quiet recently. They know, you see, that we're having a crap time, and wonder why I'm not behaving like my normal self, and picking up the phone to call them with daily/weekly updates on our tale of woe.

Let me first say that it's not personal. My friends are still my friends, and you mean a great deal to me - it's just that, at the moment, I'm in a slightly altered state.

The thing is that, to be honest, I just don't feel like talking about everything. I feel like I run over the issues we're dealing with - my husband's redundancy, and my infertility - over and over in my mind as it is, and speaking about it out loud doesn't seem to help. No matter how many times I recount the number of airlines which aren't recruiting, or the results of my latest medical test, none of it is going to get any better. Increasingly, I prefer to ignore it in conversation, and chat about other people's problems, and not my own. That way I can pretend for a few minutes that the problems we're dealing with don't exist.

Which is odd behaviour really for a person who usually has so much to say.

Losing my temper

Some people are spectacularly thoughtless.

I've just been to the dentist, and whilst there I asked whether my husband would qualify for free dental treatment, as he's on jobseeker's allowance, which I was told he would. This was the conversation that followed.

Receptionist:"So your husband's lost his job then?"
Me: "Yes, he was a pilot for x airline, which went bust".
Other receptionist, overhearing our conversation: "oh, don't talk to her about x airline, she lost flights she'd booked with them"
Me: "Oh dear. Well, my husband lost his job".
Other receptionist: "If it makes you feel any better, it was her 40th birthday".
Me (unable to contain my infuriation): Well, she can always get another holiday. My husband, on the other hand, is having great difficulty finding another job".

Yes, I know, I know, I could just have shut up and said nothing, and I probably should have, but something about that exchange just really got to me. Actually, the receptionist who had lost her flights didn't actually raise it, and looked mildly embarrassed that her colleague had. I do feel a bit bad for being so rude back - after all, she DID lose money - but then again, nothing like the amount of money we've lost.

It's the first time I've lost my temper about this actually. Luckily not too many people have been tactless enough to tell me about their airfare woes! Just as well, eh.

Tricky path ahead

Sorry I haven't posted in a while - we've just got back from a lovely, and very necessary break. We headed away to the coast and spent a wonderful, relaxing week a long way away from all the obvious stresses, including (mostly) the internet. My husband unfortunately had to check the Net every day to keep up with (the lack of) job opportunities. It does make you long for those halcyon days when recruitment was mostly dealt with via a weekly newspaper and that wonderfully slow medium, snail mail!

I had a very depressing appointment with my consultant before we went away about my fertility problems. It seems it's going to be a tricky path ahead, one I had hoped we'd manage to avoid, but to no avail. It just seems so wrong that something which should be so private and personal should become so clinical and public! I must admit I veer daily between extreme pessimism - it's never going to work, I'm infertile, etc - to being vaguely optimistic. Perhaps it's my hormones. Time will tell, as they say.

Every cloud has a silver lining

Here's a blog entry on an uncharacteristically (for now, at least) happy note.

There's only been one good thing to come out of my husband's airline collapse, but it's a wonderful thing - I finally get to see him properly! Just for this period of our lives (which I'm sure will be short) I'm able to experience the kind of life my colleagues manage to have with their 9-5 partners all the time - but better!

For example: I got home last night after a frazzling day at work. Normally I'd have walked into a messy house to a pile of post on the floor, a dog demanding food and attention and a dinner in front of the TV. Instead, my husband greeted me at the door with a hug, he'd tidied up the entire house, fed the dog and suggested dinner a deux in the conservatory! I love that, for a change, we can say yes to invitations to dinner. We're going off to visit some friends this weekend on the coast, which is something we'd never usually have the chance to do.

I know it's horribly hard on him. He's going slightly crazy being at home all the time, just sending off applications into the ether, but I know we're both trying to just make the most of what we have, and what's most important - being together.

Hopefully he'll find another job soon, and then this brief window of togetherness will be over - so I intend to enjoy this as much as I can, while it lasts!

Google-tastic

Inspired by some posts on other blogs recently, I thought I'd post a few of the search terms people have been using to find my blog of late:

Air hostess and pilots stories
Blogs about women who worry their husband is going to cheat
My gf's an air hostess will she cheat?
Notice a theme here? I think I've written about the whole "pilot cheating on wife" stereotype just a couple of times, but it's one of the primary reasons people find my blog! It's clearly a stereotype that endures.
Should I settle for my best friend
Time on my hands could be time spent with you
Tabatha Calvert Steele
?????!!!
Baby altitude
A very strange hybrid of my blog title and my infertility ramblings... I wonder what they thought they were getting when they arrived at my blog?

Daily life continues here in much the same vein as it has every day since that fateful day when my husband's airline vanished into thin air. I go to work, and try to do my job whilst thinking about what we're going to do next, whilst my husband stays at home, and thinks about what we're going to do next. Neither of us has managed to come up with a solution yet, just lots of questions, and a great number of application forms. We just pray one of them arrives on the desk of someone who, by some miracle, happens to need pilots.

So life is mainly made up of sleep, eat, work, eat, sleep, oh, and apply, apply, apply. I think my husband's brain is pretty much maxed out now. He's so tired and could probably answer "what skills do you have that you can bring to this job?" in his sleep. Surely the answer to that is - "I'm a pilot, that's my skill!"

I just wish I could do something more to help than be a second pair of eyes over application forms. It's horrible feeling like neither of us have any control over this really. Only the bankers and the oil skeikhs can do a thing about it - and I really hope they do, soon.

Losing your identity

Just a little thought in the same vein as this post, from Oh the life of a pilot's wife.

On the day my husband's airline went bust, he went to their crew room to find out any information he could about his rights, what he should do next, etc. But instead of finding any other employees there, he simply found a room stripped bare, a bouncer and somebody from the receivers.

The receiver told him he wouldn't see any of the money the company owed him, but was vaguely sympathetic. The bouncer, however, was another story. He just looked at my husband and said "I'll be needing your airside pass now, sir". He just took it, and pretty much frogmarched my husband off the premises, like he was some sort of security risk, not somebody whose company went bust through no fault of his own.

My husband's very quiet about it, but I'm sure that the loss of his airport ID pass - something he'd worked towards all his training, something that I'm sure he wore with pride - hit him right where it hurts. Add to that the piles of un-ironed work shirts which neither of us know what to do with, his jacket, which we're hidden down the side of the wardrobe, and his old hat which is now gathering dust on the top of the book case, and what do you get? Reminders of something you wanted so badly, and worked so hard for, and had taken away overnight.

Having said that, I truly believe this is just a temporary blip, and it won't be long before he pulls another pass over his head, irons a different-emblemed shirt and bemoans the look of another new hat. I'd just give anything to know when and where this will be, as it's this uncertainty that grates the most. Please, God, just show us the way...

On another topic, dear readers - thanks so much for all the comments you've been leaving. It does make a difference to know people are thinking of us. The online blogging community is really a very lovely thing.