And so the next chapter begins!

So I stopped doing preschool/daycare last Friday (there will be pictures soon from the surprise alumni Open House that Mr. Simple threw for me on Friday night! I told him not to do anything, but he didn't listen.  It was wonderful to see some parents and children I hadn't seen in awhile!)

I decided that I would stop at the beginning of March because I might have a training gig that started in March. But then I heard that it might not happen until mid-March or so.  I thought maybe I'd have a week or so to just sleep in and have some lunch dates and go to some dr. appts and that sort of thing.

Then on Thursday, Flower's junior high was closed for the rest of the year due to minute amount of asbestos discovered and she would be off for 3 days and she was going to be relocated to a new school along with the other 6th graders from her junior high.  It will be a transition, for certain, but I've been pleasantly surprised with the organization the school district has had during this relocation process and although things won't be perfect (she likely won't have drama or a school play or her special choir group anymore) they really have done as well as possible given the short amount of time that they had to prepare and the fact that the students will be spread out to 3 different schools.

Monday, I had an early morning meeting with someone about Simply Living In The City and then an evening full of taking each child to a total different place on different ends of town in the course of 3 hours. 

Tuesday (yesterday), I was feeling sick (I have allergies/bad cold/sinus infection; I'm not sure.) and I was going to go to PromptCare, but I decided instead to go help Mr. Simple paint.  He is currently on a 2 and half week job painting the whole interior of a large house.  Then I came home in enough time to start the taxi again and drive each child to a different place for a couple hours.  And then I had to do some work on a part-time time writing project, so it was 10 pm before I finished that. 

Then I'm also doing a short-term part-time on-site writing job and I had to be there by 7:30 this morning.  I normally wouldn't have had to be there so early, but I still have to plan for the training gig to start up next week, and that will be here at home, but I'll be doing that M-F from 12:30 to 3:30 pm.  And so I worked from 7:30 to 11:30 am today and then I was off for another Simply Living In The City meeting at noon. 

And now I'm home - blogging, of course, but I have about 25 other things that I probably should be doing instead. 

And ugh, back to that money tree thing, the one thing that is going to be hard to get used to with freelance work/developing a business is that money doesn't come in at regular times.  I won't see money from the morning gig for at least 3 weeks from now, and I won't get paid the first installment on the training gig until a month after we start, and the part-time writing gig, well, not until the project is done.  And I probably won't get any money from anything from Simply Living In The City until the fall.  Of course, when it comes, it should be a pretty good amount. 

Oh, and Mr. Simple gets paid at the end of his jobs, when he has jobs.  Which, thankfully, he has had jobs steadily since he started painting.  But still. 

But I'm used to budgeting on a set monthly amount - that is how we've done our budget since we got married.  Now 17 years later, I've got to figure out a new way to budget.  Or at least I'll have to learn how to deal with the feast/famine money flow. 

It might sound like I'm complaining.  I'm not.  It is just different.  It will be o.k. eventually as we all get used to this new way of life. 

I must say, things are rarely dull anyway, here at the Simple House.