NASA? We’ve Got a Search On.

In January my husband got word from his company that they were going to shut down their offices in Boston and Los Angeles and consolidate everything in New York City. Naturally the company handled this change with the utmost pre-planning and professionalism. The CEO sent out a hastily worded email a few seconds before he did a live earnings call announcing the decision to the public.

“Some of you will be offered relocation packages. Thank you for all your years of service I wish you much luck in the future. Cryptically yours, The CEO just hired a few months ago.”

We knew this was coming …but just like death, when it actually happens you’re never prepared. So we were thrust into the chaos of a large-scale cross-country and international job search. My husband, still working even harder at his current job (now that they laid everyone off), has now added job search and interview travel to his schedule. And I’m finding that piloting the home front during this search is a lot like being a part of a NASA ground crew…except that the funding has been cut for the mission…so I’m manning the headset solo.

As NASA ground chief, which is in addition to my regular jobs, I’m forwarding calls from headhunters, checking email accounts, monitoring vitals to gauge the candidate’s mental health as well as his clothing and equipment needs. I’m juggling travel plans so they dovetail with his need for sleep and various scout meetings and band concerts that are held in sacred trust by two unsuspecting young staff members, that do not yet know that the precious cargo we’re tracking through space is about to reposition our ground coordinates dramatically.

Thanks to modern technology, minute by minute reports and queries are issued by Blackberry:

“What would premium health care cost us if we paid on our own?”

“Check out the schools in Agoura Hills, Calabasas and Montclair, New Jersey.”

“There's NO good food at the United Gate. SUCKS!!!!!”

“OK, I figured it out. The rooms at this hotel remind me of Twin Peaks. Freaks me out!”

“Seriously - London or Paris ...for a 3 year contract?”

After the first few interviews I gave up picturing myself in these new cities…San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris. Because as soon as I started getting used to the idea, the spotlight would suddenly fall on another part of the world.

It’s a mind warp to spend one moment trying to grok Manhattan and the next a Los Angeles suburb. Especially when you’ve spent the last 15 years happily ensconced in the cultural bubble of Boston…where liberal, educated provincialism is the norm and the city is small enough to still feel like a town. And as much as I despise the clubby, Yankee mentality, I have to wonder if I’m really cut out for the LA suburbs. If they all look alike how do you find your house? And what do you mean there’s no town center? If not, does the center hold? Will the falcon hear the falconer? Will anyone have read Yeats?

All of this feels like juggling multiple juggling acts. And that has got to be what those guys at NASA go through. Go too fast and the candidate will burn out, or burn up. Pick the wrong thing and the cabin may lose pressure and the inhabitants suffocate. Chart the trajectory and time it exact or you may miss the target by a lightyear or so. Is the target inhabitable? Will the life forms be friendly?

We’re stressed. We’re excited. We’re sad. Not just because we’ll miss our friends and our city. But also because our ability to consider relocation, is due in large part to the fact that, sadly, I no longer have my mother to care for. So I’m free to go anywhere, even though saying so doesn’t make me feel all weightless and optimistic. And that’s because for me, my mother has always been my NASA ground crew. So along with everything else I’m busily rewiring myself and patching in coordinates I’ve never used before, so that I can make this new voyage.

I know we’re embarking on a huge enterprise, but it will also be a grand adventure. So while we’re navigating these tricky, harrowing months, we maintain constant radio contact. Like today while I was cooking dinner, and simultaneously advising a client through the phone tucked to my shoulder and making meaningful eye contact with my son to get off his butt and start his homework, my email beeped with an incoming message…from a Blackberry somewhere outside London…

“Couldn't be doing this without you.”

You are now entering the Househunting Zone

So you’re feeling pretty good about yourself. You’ve socked some money away and your house value has skyrocketed. It’s time to buy a better house. Simple? You have no idea.

Let’s just say it’s no more than $500,000. Now to get this number, you and your partner on a Sunday before you’ve had a shower, have made an Excel spreadsheet of your life, argued about priorities and determined what you wanted to spend. So when you say “no more than $500,000,” what you really mean that at $500,000 you could still make the payments with the help of prescription medication. So, with acute stress symptoms aside, let’s say 500,000 is your number.

That number doesn’t matter. Because your realtor will always turn to you and say…”Hmmm…well, can you go into the 6’s?”

So there you are with more money than you ever imagined you’d have and for the life of you, it feels exactly like it did when you had no money. You can’t afford anything. The realtor takes you to these appalling little hovels and with a straight face hands you a sell sheet for a cool half million. You look around the place. You start tallying up all the work that needs to be done to make it feel like half million dollar house. And right there before our very eyes, the house becomes a three quarter million dollar house.

On your way out of this spectacularly expensive house, you have to really work to pull the animal fur off your sweater. You can’t close the door right because it’s falling off the house. On the way to your car you start flapping your arms to work the smell 50 years of cigarette smoke out of your coat.

OK. Some of you reading this may think it’s rather charming, rather quaint to have these problems. You’re the ones that drive around in $100,000 SUVs so it’s possible to make that perilous, rocky, up-mountain climb to Starbucks each morning.

I have a friend – a really sweet person, heart of gold. And she was born into money. A lot of it. One night over drinks we were talking about my latest househunting experiences. At the time I was sweating over an offer I made for a house that from the outside was absolutely the ugliest house I have ever seen.

I talked about how we were amazed at the fact that there are no contingencies anymore. In other words…you cannot make your offer contingent on using the proceeds from the sale of your current overly-inflated-value house. To have a chance at swinging the deal, you just have to have a ton of cash up front, a stomach of iron, and take out a ridiculously large mortgage. Then you fix it later after the sale of your house…which you hope will sell for what you hope it will sell for.

My friend, her Pinot Grigio paused in mid-air, looked at me truly shaken. “You need to have a mortgage?” she said with her eyes widening.

Well, we never got the ugly house, which is probably a blessing. I mean, if you have to have a mortgage, shouldn’t the house not make you want to retch?