Thinking outside the job-box

What would you do if money was no concern? I don’t mean take a permanent vacation on a deserted island. (Quite frankly, after awhile I’d get bored anyway) I mean, what job would you do if you didn’t have to worry about insurance, mortgage, family commitments?

I know exactly what I would do. I would do the same thing I’m doing now. And I only know this because after only a few months of what was to be the beginning of my “stay-at-home” mom life, I started messing around online again, playing with HTML/CSS, PHP, and WordPress. I started doing freelance work, then more, then more and more and more. It still can get very stressful and at sometimes downright annoying – but I know I love what I do, and I choose to do it because this is where my passion is.

Sam is a different case. He’s been driven more by the desire to “provide for his family” – and I’m not sure if he even knows where his passion is career-wise. He’s never had the luxury of taking a few months off to see what he would gravitate towards. I find this incredibly sad. Unfortunately, we still don’t have the luxury of allowing him to take that time off. Without his job, our income gets slashed by 3/4 and our insurance premiums more than double for as long as we can stay on COBRA (and then we have NO insurance. …Yes, I will need to find out what options there are for small businesses but from what I’ve heard they’re not great). It’s certainly not an environment conducive to creative personal introspection.

More than just finding another job – I’m hoping he can find something he can be passionate about. (I just hope he can do it quickly)

Life Update

I‘m totally uninspired to write a deep reflective post about anything in particular in my life. We’re just going through the days. So here’s a random scattering of things going on in my life at the moment…

Freelance work has kept me pretty busy – not as busy as it was a few weeks ago (that much busy would have killed me if it kept up!) Still – it’s been hectic enough that eating healthy has taken a back seat. Many dinners have crept up before I could get a handle on things and we’d end up ordering out. Expensive and unhealthy. I finally broke down and signed my saturday morning away to make a bunch of meals through Dream Dinners. I was at first not looking forward to it – but it didn’t take long (about an hour and a half start to finish to prep 12 dinners) and now we have 3 meals a week for the next month ready to go. All relatively healthy (Well at least it’s better and cheaper than the takeout we’ve been getting!)

I’m still waiting on an evaluation to resolve the other issue I discussed. Just a little more info on it: Rachel’s grades have been terrible this year. It’s weird because she’s really very bright, her reading level is well above her grade level – but she has never done as well as I thought she could. But this year is by far the worst. I’m honestly wondering if they’ll let her move to 5th grade. Unfortunately I wasn’t aware of how bad it was until parent teacher conferences a few weeks ago. (Long story – but yeah, I was totally kept out of the loop and I’m REALLY pissed about it. At this point, really how much can we do to get her grades up??!!) Some things in particular that I’ve been seeing have really made me wonder about whether or not she has ADHD. (Not the hyperactivity – but the inattentive type) She’s extremely disorganized. She does really sloppy work and just rushes through it to get it done quick – so she makes a ton of careless mistakes. If you call her on it and make her go back, she’s often able to see her errors. Part of the reason for her bad grades is because she is constantly losing the papers she needs to work on or turn in. When I stand over her shoulder and make her do her homework, she doesn’t really fight me on it – but it is a bit of a struggle to keep her on task. It’s easier when I make lists for her for everything. Including what she needs to do to get ready in the morning – otherwise she’d forget really basic things like brushing her hair or teeth! (And my telling her to go and do it isn’t enough. It’s like if a bird flies by the window, she’s on another track and she won’t do what she was supposed to) Even the religious school teacher said she’ll call on Rachel in class when they’re having a class discussion and it’s like Rachel was checked out the whole time. So now I’m just waiting to see a specialist to have her evaluated. I hesitated to bring it up on the blog because I know there’s all sorts of hype about ADHD – how they’re “diagnosing all kids with it and just dumping drugs on them” or something. Or how people blame TV and video games for the rise in ADHD. (I think they recently proved that to have no effect anyway) I don’t want to hear about how if we change our eating habits and eat all whole foods, etc. how it will cure her. I have started giving her Omega-3 supplements – which I did see some reliable data on how it can improve kids with ADHD, but I’m not convinced that it’s having any kind of a noticeable impact. I’m going to keep it up because I still think it’s probably a good thing for the kids to have – but it’s not a cure for ADHD. All I want right now is a diagnosis. I don’t want to hear how she has to “try harder” and this is all her fault. The level of disorganization, and the level of how much she seems to have trouble with the work that involves a certain level of sustained mental effort – I really don’t think it’s her not trying. And to be honest, I’ve had my suspicions about her since Kindergarten – but of course no one would evalute her for ADHD then! I just want an evaluation, and then we’ll have a plan of action. Whether it be medication or not (I don’t think she’s severe so maybe it’s just a matter of therapy to help her) – I can’t get help until I know and have proof of what the problem is.

=deep breath=

Anyway – moving on… Passover really took a backseat this year. In the past, my parents have come out for some part of it and we’ve had a seder with them – but they couldn’t make it out this year. They do have a big seder at the new Synagogue we’re a part of now, but Zachary is such a spaz that I didn’t want to deal with bringing him. (And it would have had to be me and the kids alone, because Sam wouldn’t have been able to make it out of work in time for the seder).

Sam doesn’t really do the Easter thing with the exception of the candy. LOL! His mom sent the kids a big care package of chocolate and jelly beans – we were able to hold them off until today and now they’re all in a sugar coma.

Speaking of Sam – his job is really unstable right now. I have no idea how this year is going to play out, but it doesn’t look good. Oy.

Anyway – our plans for the day: we’re going to see that new animated movie “How to train a dragon”. (Speaking of movies, we finally got a babysitter and got out to see Avatar last week. Awesome movie!!! I’m so glad we were able to see it before it left the theaters. I’m definitely going to get the blu-ray of that when it comes out too.)

So about the babysitter – after the fiasco with the last babysitter (found out she was lying about a whole bunch of things and had basically “permanently borrowed” someone’s car. That someone showed up on OUR doorstep to collect said car from her… OY!!!) – we hadn’t been able to find anyone and I finally caved in and signed up for a membership with SitterCity.com. SO GLAD I did. We’ve now found this girl, she actually lives really close to us – maybe 2 minutes away, IF that. So far the kids haven’t scared her away yet and as far as we can tell she doesn’t seem to have any serious mental defects like the last one. LOL!

Brand new day

“

These are not the words you want to hear, half-asleep, 5am in the morning. (Not that those words are ok anytime of the day) And thus began my day of balancing taking care of Zach while lugging my laptop around with me and trying to keep up with emails and whatever little projects I could get done. Fact of the matter was that he ended up being fine. I kept him home for the day, because I didn’t know what that was all about and wanted to keep an eye on him to be sure he was ok. But mostly he just wanted to play all day. Chalk it up to another day I’m thankful for my “work-at-home” life – even if I didn’t get that much work done today. heh.

The post that wasn’t

Life is seriously kicking my butt right now. There was the pre-vacation work panic, the vacation “I refuse to turn on the computer except to play facebook games”, and now the post vacation work panic. There’s actually posts floating around in my head.

There’s a post about how I skied last week – Sometimes ok, sometimes not ok. Sam crashed into me once and I fell. And cried. I thought about quitting. Then I didn’t and I went back for more punishment on the slopes. Now I want to go back for another lesson now that I have in my mind what I need to improve on (aside from steering clear away from Sam when he skis!!) FYI – he’s a bit of a daredevil – skiing backwards, through woods, etc. My daughter too. Oy.

There’s a post about some cool iPhone apps. That one I will definitely be making.

There’s another post about some cool products I have – I even have a giveaway to uhm… give away. Yeah. Words aren’t working for me at the moment.

There’s a post about how work is great, I’m not even advertising, but still people are finding me. In fact I think I may have too much work on my plate. (Maybe I need to charge more?? Or will that scare too many people away? LOL)

There’s a post about how despite all the exercising and dieting I’m a bit discouraged with my appearance at the moment and am tentatively investigating… something. Surgery? Tummy tuck? Mini tummy tuck? Laser something? I don’t know. Between kids and weight loss, I have… skin. How do you loose skin? It’s not fun, and it’s not really all that fair. (I know, life isn’t fair. I’m nearly 40. Maybe I should give up my dreams of wearing a bikini. I never have – I guess I never will) The cost is kind of prohibitive from what I’ve been able to gather – and really ANY cost seems so vain. The whole thing is so vain. I have a voice in my head that yells at me for even thinking about spending money on something so selfish. The money should either go towards my kids education or retirement. Anyway… I’m still looking.

That’s all there’s time for now. More to come once I dig out…

Pre-vacation Panic

Why is it that just to take a week off requires several weeks prior of insanity. I’ve easily gone a week without anyone contacting me here and there, or with clients forgetting to get me stuff. But as soon as I say the words “I’m going to be taking a few days off” it’s like I’ve just told them I’ll be gone for several months and they’ll be on their own. My brother and his family are coming into town and he’s rented a townhouse up in the mountains for the week. So this was part of the push for me to learn how to ski this year, because I wanted to to be able to ski with everyone.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing. The Pre-vacation Panic. It sounds like it should be some kind of line-dance. I’ll bet it looks alot like people running around and bumping into each other and getting knocked out. At least, that’s what I’ve felt like I’ve done at the end of each day.