Life and plans and mice and men...

We've been talking about life goals a bit, about plans for the future and what we want to happen in our lifes. The big stuff, the big picture. I make happy fairy tale plans for the future all the time, with Mistress humouring me and humming along, without making any commitment either way. That's just how we do it, because we have different needs when it comes to planning.

But now Mistress is the one initiating it, and it feels great. When it's just me, it's just dreaming. I can dream all I want, but I can't make anything happen. The wheels doesn't start to turn until she is onboard.

My job contract ends in June 2015. It's very likely I'll be offered another position then, with better pay, at the same place. I could go on doing what I'm doing in the same office with the same colleagues. If I want to.

Mistress has a deal with her employer about working from home for the duration of my job contract, but whether or not she could prolong that is uncertain. It might be okay, it might not, it's hard to say. And I'm not sure she wants to, either, she'll get new assignments at work around that time that might mean she needs to be more on sight anyway.

 And in June I'm going to get my license, provided I keep working like I've been for the last six months, and that means the job offers available to me will increase drastically. There's a lot more job offers out there for licensed psychologists than for those just out of school.

In August 2015, little S starts school. That's absolutely crazy, I have a very hard time wrapping my head around that one. But that means wherever we are at that time will be her first year in school, and if we move after that, she's going to have to change schools, and that's a hassle I'd like to spare her. If we can - it might not be possible.

And... the trickiest part. I'm 34. We've been talking about having another baby since little S was born, five years ago. And if we're going to do that, we need to do it sometime soon. It's not to late, not at all, but it's not something that we're comfortable postponing for say another ten years or so either. We could, but the risks increases, and we can't just have sex without protection and hope for the best. If we want a baby, we need to take active steps to make it happen.

Mistress is ten years my senior, and she says she's starting to feel old (mind you, she threatend to whack me in the head with an iron saucepan when I was complaining about feeling old at 18, and she was 28 and had "about to be 30"-angst. So her feeling to old isn't really a new phenomena.)

All this means that the coming year we have to make some big decisions. Where are we going to live, and how are we going to make a living? Are we going to try to have another baby, or are we happy and content with having an only child? We need seclusion and hate having neighbours, but we want good communications and a well stocked grocery store. I dream about dogs and horses, and we both crave nature - woods and water and a view.

How do we reconcile those dreams with our needs to live in a culture rich environment where we feel safe and don't have to deal with prejudice against same-sex couples? Where will little S thrive the most? How do we balance our needs against the need to be close to our respective parents? And jobs - we need jobs that's stimulating and fun and reasonably well paid, and not to far from wherever we choose to live.

Yesterday we were cuddling on the sofa, hashing all this out, pondering this and that and the other, and circled around the question of another baby. I mentioned that when we were discussing it a time table showed up in my head. That we should keep working on being healthy and losing weight, so that I was in the shape I need to be to safely get pregnant at the end of this year, and that we should start arrangements with the relevant hospital in January 2015. If I got pregnant sometime during the spring of 2015, I would be able to finish my job contract, and be eligible for paid parental leave when the baby arrives.

And do you know what Mistress said? She said "I think that sounds reasonable. I feel the same way."

And that means it's on. It's on! It's the best gift I've gotten for a long time. She said yes!

We're going to have another baby!

(We just need to take care of some things first. Like me losing 10% of my current body weight. And oh, actually get pregnant. But apart from that, it's all settled!)