Oh, yeah. That thing.

So, yes, Susan is home now.

She wasn’t gone for quite three years; I drove her to California at the beginning of July 2016, and flew back at the beginning of May 2019 to drive her home again.

And we weren’t entirely apart all that time. There were weekly phone calls, which were eventually supplanted by weekly Skype calls, and I saw her for a weekend in Texas (April 2017), two weeks in California (February 2018), and two weeks in China (Jan/Feb 2019).

But we weren’t quite together, either. Now we are.

She’s been back just over three weeks now. We’re still adjusting, but all indications are that both of used those three years for growth that’s working to our advantage. (We had a huge fight the day after she got back, spent maybe two days getting over it, and haven’t had any real snags since. Nice to see we can learn, even at our advanced age.)

She’s still trying to decide whether she can get away with retiring. She’ll have enough income from various retirements funds and pensions that she could simply never work again. There are things she wants to do with our house, though, that would require extra money, and it’s been a long time since she did teaching (which she used to enjoy quite a bit) … we’re still assessing possibilities.

We’re in a new phase of our life together now, and it appears — it very strongly appears — that we properly prepared for it.

So here goes.