Housework Lists

Mark is gone on travel this week, so Burgundy, Holden and I are throwing parties and living the high life in the absence of his sobering aspect. Last night, Burgundy and I played Ghost Parcheezi. It's where you put all the colors on the board, and each player gets an extra set of players to manipulate. When we have three players, everyone takes turns manipulating the one ghost player. It can get wicked and quickly.

After Ghost Parcheezi, Hannah and Christi came over, and we engaged in yarny arts while hanging out. Burgundy studied for her Chemistry test. Holden had naked time and refrained from assaulting anyone with his urine.

This morning, I had an appointment with the doctor, and I stopped into the firm where we do our retirement investing. I still need to rollover my Roth 401K from the last job into my Roth IRA. Now Holden is napping, and I'm trying to decide whether to nap myself or do some more housework. I feel as though I will never catch up on the housework; ironically, it makes me even more determined at least to maintain what I've done so far. Happily, with school being out after next week, Burgundy is a little more able to help. A good thing, all in all.

I think that for today, I'll finish the diapers and start another load. I'll clean the Kitchen and do the Half-hour Housework Maintenance (H3M). I'll sort the mail and spend some time, maybe 10 minutes, on my desk. And somewhere in there, I'll take a nap. Oh, and I'll call the exterminators, because the darned fleas are here.

Completed:

• H3M: Both bathrooms cleaned
• H3M: Both bathrooms + kitchen swept
• H3M: Spot cleaned kitchen floor
• Kitchen clean-up: Emptied recycling, cleaned up trash everywhere, moved all dirty dishes to the sink, put away food
• Mail sorted
• Diapers washed
• Change sheets and make bed (Holden barfed on the sheets I had just changed following his decision to pee on my pillow the other day)
• Wash dishes and put away clean dishes

To-do (and here I thought I'd done so much already:

• 10 minutes on desk
• Vacuum carpets
• Sweep living room and hallways
• 2 minutes on crap-magnet
• Grocery shopping

Finally. I Have Returned

Two months. I know; it's a long time without an update. I'd tell you I'm sorry and beg your forgiveness, but honestly, I'm not sure my eight or so readers felt a significant vacuum in their lives for my absence. Just another blogger who didn't stick with it.

The thing is, I actually will stick with it. You just have to put up with the occasional dry spell. I really am sorry. Mostly just because that's not how I want to blog, not because I think my absence did a powerful harm to the Internetz.

So April 23, I posted about depression. Several things have happened since then. Perhaps most significantly, I've carried a pregnancy past the first trimester (officially today). I'm as shocked as the rest of the world, and I'm slowly getting excited.

The difficulties in our marriage have been getting better. Both of us work hard, and while I think we're also both kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, we're also enjoying this anomalous experience of actually liking our spouse.

So much and yet so little has happened in the past two months. Burgundy finished 9th grade with straight As for the second semester. She went to Chicago with our church's youth choir, and they sang in churches, cathedrals, and nursing homes as they toured their way up and back. She saw Blue Man Group on the trip, and I think she's decided to become Catholic just so she can marry in a St. Louis cathedral with which she fell deeply in love. She began a summer school enrichment program at Rice University last week.

That's a post in and of itself. It's a testament to the power of great teachers that young people in their teens, an age glorified for recalcitrance and rebellion, flock to this school in the summer. Burgundy's boyfriend begged his parents to let him go (I'm sure Burgundy's attendance had nothing to do with that), and Burgundy, who is 14 and starting her Sophomore year in August, a musician and an English nerd, comes home chattering gaily about Calculus and Chemistry. I mean, really. Maybe standardized testing isn't so effective after all? Maybe giving teachers the freedom to teach to their students is effective? Pshaw, you don't say.

It turns out that Burgundy's Calculus teacher (who has her gobbling up the limits and derivatives regardless of her lack of pre-Cal and tutoring her classmates) teaches at the Awty International School. I wanted so badly to send her to Awty when she was little. I could go on and on about them. I'm tempted to pull him aside toward the end of the summer school program and ask him about scholarships. The tuition is tens of thousands per year, but if we could put her in an environment where the teachers are free to teach (and she could earn her International Baccalaureate), I know she would thrive.

Oh, once I start writing, it's so easy. I missed, you, little blog!

Mark has been working on his book business, and I've been laying on the couch whining about morning sickness that lasts all day and all night. His business is going pretty well now, and I would guess he's selling an average of two to three books per day. He still needs to take one more class before he can sit for his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, but NASA keeps cancelling or completely overselling its occasional class for PMs. I think we're going to just pay the tuition for him to take this class. It will hurt financially given our impending unemployment, but given the value of a current PMP cert, I think it's completely worth the effort. It could double his salary.

I've continued to work part-time right up until now. I received word last week though that beginning next week, I will begin working full time. This is a blessing in disguise for me. I have been so tired and sick for the last three months that if I had needed to go full time even a week earlier, I don't know if I could have done it. Luckily, the sickness is getting less and less prohibitive, and my energy is coming back now. By next week, I should be ready to go. The real blessing in all this is that we'll be able to almost double our emergency fund if we're very careful. If we can (God willing) find a way to fully fund it and pay for the midwife before my employment ends, I'll be so very grateful.

I think that has to be all for now. I could go on and on, but I think I need to save some words for tomorrow.

Unemployment Armageddon

We found out two days ago that in addition to the end of my current employment on September 30, Mark's contract ends October 1.

I feel angry, paralyzed, motivated, frightened. I am a walking maelstrom of emotions.

The only things we can do are the obvious:

1. Job hunt. My company has said that if we can move, they will help us find positions elsewhere in the company. In addition, Mark's skills transfer easily across industries. If he can find a position in petrochemicals or one of the other industries around here before the rest of NASA is laid off and saturates the market, we can stay in Houston.
2. Cut expenses. This will be the most difficult proposition because we already live pretty close to the bottom of the threshold, and there still are many things we need to buy. Burgundy wants to attend the Rice summer school again, this time for enrichment. Given the trouble she had in Algebra last year, we really want her to take a pre-Calculus enrichment class before she takes it for credit next year. She wants to take a class in writing, a class in Chemistry (she's taking Chem next year), and a class in US photographic history. We will pay for this because her education is important. It's worth it. $775. And that's only one expense. There's my truck, repairs to the house, medical bills . . . you name it.
3. Save money. As much as we can. We're working on that now. Mark is selling his books again over the internet, and I'm thinking of selling all but my most cherished yarn, fiber, and fabric. With all the above expenses, we're going to have to be brutal with each other about saying no.
4. Sell the house. This decision hurts the most. Mark loves our house. His garden is thriving, and we like our neighborhood. We're five minutes from Burgundy's high school, great location, yada yada. However, once NASA "refines" its workforce, housing here will plummet, and we'll lose our meager equity. We need to sell it now. Mark and I disagree on this, so the common ground we reached is that we need to get it ready to sell. I plan to call a realtor friend next week and ask her to help us prioritize what needs to be done. I know we need to get the clutter out of the house; Mark won't want to get rid of anything, so that will represent more expense. As will new carpet, replacing the tub in the guest bathroom, painting rooms and landscaping. We have pine trees.* I hate pine trees, and I have ten of them in my front yard.

I'm not sure exactly how, but I know we'll make it. Even if we end up drawing unemployment, we should be able to make it.

* Good God I hate pine trees. Perhaps it's that I grew up dirt poor in pine country, Mississippi, but they scream, "I AM TRAILER TRASH AND CAN'T AFFORD OAK TREES OR LANDSCAPING, SO I PLANTED UGLY, WEEDY, FAST-GROWING TOOTHPICK TREES INSTEAD! FEAR MY SHOTGUN!"