No wonder my head hurts

I just spent all morning updating my lab notebook, it was only a week's worth of stuff, but somehow I managed to run upwards of seven procedures for 3 different projects, plus supervising students in another project. That's more like a normal 2-3 weeks worth of stuff. Now I don't feel so silly for feeling completely overwhelmed and stressed out for the past 10 days.

Our flat is still in chaos, the purge cleared out a lot of stuff that needed clearing, but we still haven't reorganized what's left behind. Also, I may need to be job hunting soon, or in the next couple of months, or in 6 months, or not at all. I don't know either way, but it's shaken me up, since I have the stable job, Matt has the laid-off-every-3-years job. I will say more when I know more, but I don't know when that will be.

Speaking of which, he's getting laid off. Or would be if he hadn't already been given the heads up by his supervisor and started looking for other positions within his company that he could transfer into. He's already been picked for one and we're now waiting to hear what the salary is supposed to be. The thing is, it's a management position, which is a great career step for him, but it's absolutely shitty hours, and we have heard there's a possibility they will try to get him to do the management job at his current pay scale. Which, frankly, is not worth it. So we are waiting to hear about the salary because that will tell us if it's going to be a 21% raise (you read that right), management track career boost, but we will only see each other on weekends...Or if he's going to turn it down and continue to look for work outside his current company.

I'm torn. The size of the potential raise would make a huge difference to us, we'd be able to travel as well as save for the future, and spend a bit more on home improvementy type stuff, but it's a two year contract during which he'd be working from 3pm to 1am 4 days a week, on call 24 hours, and working every 5th weekend as well. The alternative is a smaller career boost, maybe some time on unemployment while he looks, and a job pretty similar to what he's doing now, with similar hours, so we'd still see each other on weekday evenings. The certainty of more money and more stress, or the uncertainty (and stress) of a longer job hunt, and hopefully a return to close to the status quo, which do I wish for?

Actually I know which I wish for: the management position to offer enough cash for it to be worth it. Because then we'd know what was going to happen. Being able to take more trips, and some intelligent routine-shifting will make the funky work hours much more bearable for both of us. What's weighing on me is the fear that they won't offer the raise they should, which will be a blow in itself, and also mean more uncertainty until another job appears on the horizon.

To counterract some of this stress we went for a short hike in the mountains yesterday, then had a late lunch in Julian, followed by a trip to Witch Creek Winery. This is the winery we got our wedding wine from, the woman who does the tastings is a real character, always remembers us and gives us the cellar club discount even though we're not cellar club members. When I bought the two cases for our wedding she gave me 20% off for buying cases, then made up another 15% discount for the hell of it and threw in some pepper jelly for free. I think she's angling for us to bring back in one of the bottles of '99 port we've got laid down in our closet. It was good spending a day together doing stuff we did when we were first seeing each other.