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.

It is Valentine's Day and nothing says Valentine's Day like

LOVE!

I'm all about lists lately, so I'm making a list of things that I love. 

1 - well, of course, my family.  Mr. Simple, Flower, Jelly Bean, Super.  What would I do without all of you? And of course, little Christopher too.  We love and miss you! And my mom and dad, my sister and two brothers.  And my in-laws and other extended family.  Big Hugs!

2 - My friends.  Too many to list here.  But so many of you have helped me in so many ways.  And if you think you've never helped me, trust me, you have. If nothing else, you've helped put a smile on my face, and trust me, some days, that is HUGE.

3 - I'm loving my new kitchen stuff! I've got quality knives for the first time in my adult life.  I always thought that spending money on knives was silly.  And a waste.  I plan on having these knives for the rest of my life and I'm glad that I finally invested in something.  And the stainless steel pots and stoneware.  I've used that stuff daily since I got it.  How did I live without it??

4 - I love Netflix.  I know. It sounds funny.  But I love that I can watch old TV shows, some of which I never watched the first time around, and all without commercials.  And my kids love Netflix too.  And all for less than $10 a month.  Love it!

5 - I love wool.  It helps make winter bearable.  Well, almost.  But it certainly helps.

6 - I love to run.  I'm saying this here to remind myself.  I haven't run in way too long.  Running has helped me so many times.  It has made made me strong. It has given me somewhere safe to go when I had nowhere else but to that place I go when I run.  It has helped me see so many beautiful things in the outdoors. 

7 - I love to cook.  I didn't used to.  In fact, I used to dislike it.  Quite a bit.  But now, I get a big kick out of taking ingredients and putting it together and making something yummy.  I also love that you can make something at home that tastes way better than something that you buy at the store.

8 - I love Swiss Miss hot chocolate.  Sorry, it had to be said.  And York Peppermint patties.  And Diet Pepsi.  I'm all about whole, natural foods, but I love these things in all their processed glory too. :)

9 - I love writing. I love training.  Funny how you love something more when you have been away from it for a long time and all of a sudden, it is back in your life.  But I'm also loving learning how to combine in it my life today.  And that includes working around my family.  And combining with Simply Living In The City.

10 - I love my life.  Today anyway.  LOL.  No, really.  There have been tons of times when I didn't.  Lots of days when I felt like things were unfair for me. And they were. I've had my share (and sometimes more) of bad things happen.  And things are far from perfect too.  Our money situation isn't perfect.  My kids aren't perfect. I'm not perfect. But I'm at a place where I'm happy and grateful and looking towards the future.

Simply Living and Simply Talking?

I was reading this blog lately and I was reading the post about how she doesn't really like to talk that much. 

And it made me think about myself.

I've always loved to write.  And when I was a kid, I strongly preferred writing to talking.  Well, let me clarify that.  I didn't mind talking to grown-ups.  Or people who were older than I was.  But people in my class? No. I didn't love to talk to kids my own age.

Not that I thought that I was better than them.  I just couldn't think of anything to say to them.  And so often, kids were already talking to each other and I didn't want to have to interrupt, especially if I couldn't think of anything to say in the first place.  But I never had the problem with people older than me.  I could always think of something to say to them.  And they (probably) humored me and talked to me and I loved that.  People from my grade school/junior high/high school probably would describe me as nice, but quiet.  (Or weird and quiet.  I'm not sure.)

College and early adulthood was hard for me.  Now, I was around my peers a lot.  And I also had the pressure of wanting to meet someone to go out with/to marry/to have babies with, which was more situations where you know, you had to talk to someone.  I retreated to my studies or my work and would sometimes go days without having a social conversation.

Things got a little better as I muddled through my mid-twenties.  And then, at 28, I met Mr. Simple.  And you are thinking "Oh, and he is really gregarious, etc. and brought you out of your shell." Nope.  He knows LOTS of people and so he is forever running into people he knows, and so he is a friendly person, but in most ways, he is just like me.  He isn't the person who starts a conversation in a group.  He doesn't have long phone conversations. 

But I liked talking to him :) And we fell in love and got married.  But I still wasn't a big talker.  Certainly not in groups.  Certainly not in front of people I didn't know.  Certainly not in groups of people my age.

And then I had kids.  And you are thinking "Oh, and that is when things changed."

And you would be right. 

Somehow, once I became a mom, I talked to other moms.  About all kinds of stuff. Stuff I never imagined that I would talk about with other people.  And that was a great first step.  I finally was talking to my "peers."

And I'd go places and I felt like I fit in more because I had something in common with most people in the room.  I had a child.  (But trust me, I'm not one of those people who would talk ONLY about my kid at say, a Christmas business party or whatever.) But something about becoming a mom just made me more comfortable about being around other people. 

Also, at the same time I had my first child, I become a computer software trainer.  And almost every day for 4 years, I was up in front of people talking.  And I was the expert! I was the person that had answers to their questions (well, I didn't always have the answers, but most of the time I did!) After 4.5 years of that, I had lost any hesitation about talking in front of a group.

So now, 12 years after I had my first child?

Well, my kids, for sure, think I'm a talker.  In fact, they talk about how embarrassing it is that I carry on a 3-4 minute conversation with the clerk at Target or how I'll sit and chat with someone that I just met at Farmers Market. 

And I'd have to say I'm a talker too.  I love, of course, talking to people who live a similar lifestyle to mine, but I love talking to people who don't too.  I just love to hear how people approach life.  How they think. How they get through the day.

Of course, I love to write too.  I've written here for a few years.  I've written in journals off and on over the years.  I've written stories and I've written poems. 

But I think at this point, if I had to choose between writing and talking, I'd choose talking.

Busy, Busy

I've finally got motivated to get started on my "book." It will be a book about Simple Self-Sufficiency (shocker, I know) and so I've been reading, and reading and reading and deciding on the format, etc.

I've also been making dried herbs (from my herb garden) - this year, I've got parsley, basil and oregano. I love making my own. I am probably just kidding myself, but I swear the homemade tastes better.

And I canned some bread and butter pickles last night as well as started making tomato pulp in preparation for making tomato sauce. I run the tomatoes through a food strainer as I pick them, put them in freezer bags until the end of the season, then defrost them, boil them down, and can them. Making the sauce is a couple days of hard work, but it keeps most of the other stuff spread out and manageable.

The girls finished up a great season of Swim Team, and Super finishes his last T-Ball game tonight. The Library Program ended last week.

I'm sad that there is only one month of summer left, but August should be much less busy (well, except for all that gardening LOL)