Things to think about at 4 a.m.

Two nights in a row I've ended up in the recliner in the middle of the night. No clue why. Last night--this morning--was just stupid, made more annoying by the track my train of thought chose to travel: what if? For the first time in at least 11 years, I was reliving our decision to pick up our lives and replant ourselves in another state in 1994.

What if we hadn't done that?

• Would life have been completely different? Emphatically, yes.
• Would I still be working at the same library? gack...I certainly hope not!
• How many other library jobs would I have had to date? At least two others.
• Would I be cataloging? Probably not.
• Would I even still be a librarian? Other options would have been harder to manage. We'd be too far for me to do coursework at MTS, and I'm not sure what else I'm qualified to do (or interested in pursuing) anyway.
• Would we have moved to a new house in the metro area? Probably. No way Sparky would go to NHS! And we probably would have done it much sooner than we built our house here. Everything costs less there, and we wouldn't have had to deal with the financial and emotional costs of moving out of state.
• Would we have had more kids? Doubtful.
• Would my bro-in-law have spiraled into complete alcohol dependency so quickly? Probably. Some things are not my responsibility.
• Would we have a closer relationship with his kids? God, I hope so!
• Would we have stayed members of IPC? Depends on where we ended up living. Maybe. Probably.
• Would Beast still have finished his MBA? Yes.
• Would he actually be using it? Who knows, but you'd think so, in that marketplace at least.
• Would Sparky have had an easier/better time in elementary school? Who knows. I suppose it could have been even worse. Somehow.
• Would Dad still have died that year? Yes. That had more to do with Ellen than with me.

And then I smacked myself, metaphorically, between the eyes. What a waste of time. I should be SLEEPING! Huh.