The Nitty Gritty of The Debt

In March of this year I posted that Major Man and I had decided to do a little switcheroo with the money responsibilities. It was a little difficult for me to take, since I've always been the one in control. So it was a matter of letting go and trusting someone else. Something that should be easy with your husband, right?

Actually. Yes, it has been.

We've had a few bumps in the road but I wanted to tell you that we have gotten rid of $18,495 worth of debt. In four months.

I KNOW!

Part of that was selling my truck, which (despite the doom and gloom prognosis) sold for more than I owed on it. I've also had good luck with sales at the Day Job and Major Man has put most of his paycheques towards the debt.

Want to know how we did it? We just followed Gail Vaz-Oxlade's advice to the letter. She's one straight-talking lady!

And then? I'll have your babies.

As part of the regular spring ritual, I signed up the boychild for soccer and t-ball. He likes both. This will be year three of soccer (meaning he can actually run with his head up about half the time) and year two of t-ball. We're not 100% sold on t-ball but we had fun last year.

Every time we sign up there's the "where would you like to volunteer" section. The crafty little buggers don't ask IF you want to volunteer, but WHERE. So I usually choose something like communication or assistant-manager, figuring that I can step in somewhere if needed.

But this year I got an email from both t-ball and soccer mucky-mucks with the "hey, you volunteered to coach" line. Um. No I did not. Not even close. I cannot picture me and a toddler trying to coach anything while Major Man is still working nights.

(Which he won't be doing any more because he got THE JOB!! But I digress...)

So I kind of ignored those emails... and then the t-ball guy contacted me again. He was wondering if I'd could do the division coordinator position. I asked what the duties were.

Let me pause here to say: Never trust anyone who begins an answer with "Oh, it's just..."

The duties sounded simple enough, communicate stuff with coaches. Cool.

Then the email went out to all coaches and it soundes something like "and if you need this, email Heather. And if you need that, email Heather. And if you need a pink orangutan in a tutu with red nail polish, email Heather. And here's every phone number and email address she has. Amen."

Whaaa?

It's day one of 'coordinating' and I have already realized I need to take the t-ball schedule to and from work on a little memory stick so I can reference the games and practices when the coaches email me... sigh.

But the boychild is sure to have fun. I just have to remember that soccer and t-ball are fun, hopefully my head doesn't spin around when we're running ten minutes behind and the baby is tired and hungry and it's a little cold and it's been a long day and I just want to sleep...

Update: They Called....

... to let him know that they couldn't get ahold of one of his references.

They are checking references! This is a good sign!

Woot! Woot!

Thought for the Day

Givers have to set limits because takers rarely do.
-- Irma Kurtz, Cosmopolitan Magazine, September 2003

This struck me as really profound this weekend. It's the weekend of the financial reckoning. The weekend where I hand the reins over to my husband.

Part of me feels very 1950s Housewifeish. I'm not the one in control. But part of me welcomes this change. Major Man isn't shutting me out of the budget decisions, he's just the one doing the footwork. Our budget is posted on the door, as is our current debt load.

It's been eyeopening. For me and for Major Man. I don't think he realized the situation or why I was freaking out two months ago because I knew that the day was coming where we'd run out of credit.

It's not THAT bad, please don't think we're a hundred grand it debt or anything. But we have a credit card, a line of credit, a truck loan and high rent. We're the working poor it seems.

But not for long. Because we are not IN debt, we are climbing out of it.

We may need to downside, we will need to make some tough decisions. I will need to keep my fingers OFF the credit card.

But we shall also be improving living conditions and we will be happier. My outlook has changed this weekend from "oh my gosh, how much longer can I do this" to "I can so do this" because now I'm looking at where I can cut the fat.

I'm even considering biking to work!

Take my kids, please.

Major Man just started a new job. He's waiting to hear about another job and rather than sit around the house contemplating the difference between doing a load of whites, of colours or of not giving a crap and throwing it all in together.... he went out a got a between-the-time job.

Strangely enough he found one at the parent company of the company I work for. It's a few steps below what he's acutally qualified to do (since that was 'being a leader' and now he's 'moving boxes around') but he doesn't care because it's SOMETHING.

It's also a job that starts at 3:00 pm and goes to 11:30 pm. Which means I'm all by my lonesome with the kids in the evenings now. No more "can you put the baby in the tub while I clean up?" or "can you read the stories and I'll rock the baby?"

Just me. Kind of like single motherhood again. Fun.

Tonight my mom took the kids for about an hour and a half and at first I was all "yes, take them, please!" but then after I ran to the drug store and picked up the baby's prescription... I kind of missed them. I wanted them back.

Weird.

Day Care Cam

I can't watch this from work, but because I'm working from home today, I can watch my daughter having fun at day care:

They are playing at the water table, E has her back to the camera and is wearing a white smock to keep dry. The lady sitting next to her is the teacher in charge of the room.

She's the sweetest little lady, only about four-foot-nuthin' and E quite likes her.

E has so much fun at day care that even though I'm home working today, I didn't keep her at home. She saw her dad getting his jacket on and she ran to her jacket saying "on? on? on?" and then as soon as she got her jacket on she grabbed her stuffie and waved at me, saying "bye!", then proceeded to knock on the door so we'd let her out.

Yeah, day care is horrible for children. I'm such a mean parent for subjecting her to institutionalized day care. And even worse, a 'big box' day care like this one.

It's done horrible things to her like send her home singing and dancing and learning to share. What was I thinking?

/sarcasm

You know, if at some point I did find myself working from home, I think I'd still send my daughter to day care in the mornings. I get a lot of work done and she has FUN!!

The View from the Middle of the Road

Have you ever wondered what is the worst affliction in our society today? Is it the evils of terrorists? The stories in the news of infanticide? Famines and war? There is something I feel is much more pervasive in our lives. It has stained us as we look at the world through its lens.

Indifference and mediocrity.

When you watch the news at night, and see the horrors of the war in Afghanistan, or news of fathers and mothers killing their children, what do you do? You hear it, but it doesn’t really affect you. It is only a factoid from TV; just something that happens in this world. How many years now have certain places taken up residence in the vocabulary of newscasters: Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia. What have we as individuals actually done? Is there really anything that we can do?

Yes, of course. I don’t think that we can single-handedly stop violence, or the hunger in the world, but we can drop our feelings of indifference, and sense of mediocrity. We can tune in to this world, see that we are all connected and all the same. Since I have become a mother, this has never seemed clearer. I am not disparaging those of you who are not mothers, but ask any mother you know. You simply cannot look at the world without your child in it.

I made the “mistake” one day of watching one of those World Vision shows. Where the producers seem to have chosen the worst case scenarios and made families look as pitiful as possible. When I realized suddenly, that it was simply a picture of a mother holding her baby son, the same size as my (at the time) 3 month old. Except this boy was 18 months old and dying of hunger.

Looking in her eyes, I saw that she knew he son would die and she knew she could not stop it. I looked immediately into the eyes of my own son and desperately tried to imagine what must be going through her mind. She had carried this child within in her for 9 months, feeling his kicks and hiccups. She had laboured for hours giving birth with no drugs. She had held her wet, screaming child to her breast and perhaps nursed him. She saw his first smile and felt his fingers curl around hers. And now she would watch him die slowly. Creep away from her as his frail little body gave out on him.

I could no longer feel indifference. I felt this mother's pain and knew that we were the same. We had the same hopes and dreams for our sons, and hers would not be realized. I could not continue about my petty business for the day until I, too, had mourned for the loss of her son.

What is the cure?

Compassion.

We have lost our compassion in this global community we live in. We watch TV, as though it is only a picture, when, we should be considering each image as a reflection of life. It is one thing to see the effect of war and famine in our world. It is another to smell the acidic smoke from burning buildings or feel the touch of flies on your face from infested water. We need to regain compassion that we have lost. Reach out to the suffering and not assume that others will. Give until we know the pain that they feel. Go out on limbs to rescue the lost. Not fear to let our voice and our single voice alone be heard.

They came for the Communists, and I
didn't object - For I wasn't a Communist;
They came for the Socialists, and I
didn't object - For I wasn't a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I
didn't object - For I wasn't a labor leader;
They came for the Jews, and I
didn't object - For I wasn't a Jew;
Then they came for me - And there
was no one left to object.

Martin Niemoller, German Protestant
Pastor, 1892-1984

The Big Question

M.: Can I have one more chocolate?

Me: No, you can't. It's bed time. Besides, too much chocolate will make you have bad dreams.

M.: But what about Jesus?

Me: ....

M.: But what about Jesus?

Me: What about him?

M.: Didn't you say that he can make bad dreams go away if we pray?

Me: Well. Yes. But, um,... well, just no more chocolate before bed.

M.: But, mommmyyyyy...

Me: Did you just call me butt-mommy? (distraction! distraction!)

Choosing Happiness

I am watching a program this afternoon about being happy.

Travelling across the country, using surveys to determine the extent of the average Canadian's happiness, Sonja and Jon meet people from all different social-economic levels including a cheery funeral director who loves his work and a disabled single mother who happily spends her free time volunteering. Sonja and Jon find that money and prestige are not a reflection of a person's happiness. In fact, many people who are lower on the social-economic scale rank much higher in terms of happiness than many high-income professionals. Sonja reveals that the life traits adopted by satisfied people are the ones that contribute to a truly happy existence and are lessons that everyone can learn in order to live a more fulfilled life.

They say that 50% of your happiness quotient comes from genetics, 10% from life experiences and 40% from ... ?

Leaving many to think that 40% is choice. Can you imagine? They interivewed one woman who says she wakes up happy every morning. And looking at her, you truly believe that she is happy. She shows us a prime example of the "Duchenne smile". Another woman has used that smile to actually predict the lives of her students. The ones who have that smile are more likely to be married longer, sometimes into the decades, where the others either aren't married or are divorced.

You can find out more at Happy Canadians.

What does this have to do with being a Writing Mother? I'm not always happy. Big surprise there to friends and family ;0).

But starting today I'm going to choose to be happy more. I'm going to say thank you more to my friends rather than complain that no one comes to my parties. I'm going to delete emails that upset me or make me want to react in anger. I'm going to smile and laugh when I am frustrated or tired.

The key is... choosing to be happy isn't about faking it. It's about letting go of anger. Yes, there are deadlines to meet and kids who won't sleep. And there are days I oversleep and rush to work horrible hair. There are piles of laundry and kids who would rather throw spaghetti than eat it.

But there's also the promise of income and children who make the days worthwhile. There are days when I have a wonderful job full of opportunities and hair with it's own personality. We have enough clothes on our back and food in the cupboard.

These are the things I'm going to focus on. These are the choices and opportunities I'm going to seek.

Sunday Date Night

Thank you NFL.

Yes, that's right, thank you to the National Football League.

Because if you didn't have exciting games to watch at the local pub, my husband and I might never have a date night! LOL

However, I now declare that I'll not name any future children Payton. Because... WTH Payton Manning? Tom Brady did not WIN that game, you LOST it.

Dude.

But I still had fun on date night with hubby. A beer, peanuts, a steak sandwich. That's my kinda date!

Balancing

Act as if it were impossible to fail.
-- Dorothea Brande


A co-worker of mine said recently, "I don't know how you do it all, I can hardly figure out how to be a dad and work full time... but you are a mom, you work full time and you have all these other things going on."


I admit, my plate is a little full. And I do have to stop once and a while and make sure that my full plate does not become too much of a source of pride. Because you know what comes after pride... right?


And I don't really want to drop a full plate.


I think that the reason I take on so much, is that I don't believe I will fail at them. I look at a task and think, "can I do this? do I want to do this?" and if my heart says yes both times, then I take it on.


Periodically, and driven by my own stress level, I reassess and sometimes I scoop a little off that full plate. I did that recently when I stepped down off of a committee that I'd spent two years chairing. It meant a lot to me, but at the same time I recognized that I had to let it go so someone else could do a better job.

Other things came in to fill it's spot... but they were different things, I could do them better or they took less energy or they were a better fit with my family.

I've also started trying to multi-task LESS and I'm finding I get MORE done. It used to be that I tried to juggle everything, including being a mom. But I started to realized that at the end of the day while I was here with my kids, I wasn't here for them. Once I started working full time and my son went back to school, I started seeing them even less. It meant that I wanted the time with them to be about them... not about me on the computer.

So now I spend more time playing, talking and attending. And when they are in bed, I sit down here at the computer and write.

I'm Thankful For...

1. My Father, who hears me.
2. My husband who knows me
3. My son who shows me how to live
4. My daughter who teaches me to smile
5. My parents to whom I owe much
6. My in-laws who gave me my husband
7. My ex-in-laws who have left an enduring mark
8. My ex-husband, who taught me the messy, practical side of forgiveness
9. My friends who inspire me
10. My job, it comes with responsibility and teaches me humility
11. The opportunities I have in life
12. My childhood, as dysfunctional as all childhoods are
13. My agent, the quiet little pitbull
14. My publisher, for continuing to have faith in me
15. Soldiers
16. My country (kind of vague... but I'm thankful I was born here)
17. My writing ability, I'm never going to be done learning how to be better at it
18. My husband's financial acumen
19. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
20. This breath. Right now.

Today's sermon at church was all about being thankful. A thankful heart is the gateway for so many blessings, I hope I can remember to be thankful year round.

It is far too easy to complain about things in life. How easy is it to say "I don't like that, or that, or that..." Instead I choose to be thankful for something every day. No, every hour... every minute.

'Scuse me... was I staring?

Like all great and wonderful parents, I signed my son up for Beavers hoping I'd be able to drop him off and escape for an hour a week. After I remembered that I had another child, I also remembered he's probably going to learn fun things like starting fires and how to read a map. Which means I won't be able to say "just a short trip" when we're driving across hell's half acre again. And I should hide the matches.

So it was with considerable trepidation that we made our way to the Beaver Hike so we could schlep around the local green space then congregate with 30 other kids around a little fire pit and try to roast wieners and marshmallows. Frankly I'm surprised no one got a flaming marshmallow in the eye. To make it even more exciting, the campsite was right on the edge of a 20 foot drop off into the creek. Fun!

Guess where the boys all wanted to sit. You guessed it, next to the drop off.

Truthfully (and I say truthfully because of course everything else here is a total lie) it was enjoyable. The fall foliage was beautiful, the air was just crisp enough to be invigorating, and the boys had a blast. A few leaders grumbled about the lack of organization, but I don't think a single boy complained. Funny, that.

The other parents provided great people viewing opportunities for me. Yes, I'm one of those people that thinks she's surreptitiously sneaking glances at others when in fact I'm probably standing there staring at them so hard that I'm starting to mimic their facial expressions. No lie (more lies!) I've caught myself doing that. But the parents are hilarious:

Former Girl Guide: spending her time saying things like "remember when we did this in Girl Guides" I find myself strangely attracted to her. No, not in THAT way but kind of like I wanted desperately to be liked by the cool girls in Girl Guides when I was Looser Mc-Looserton with one earring and a mop of messy red hair. Unfortunately I don't know any of the campfire songs she tries to start singing so I flunk out of the cool girl club. Again.

Skater Dude All Alone In Woodsmanville: With his bleached blond hair and the funky nest of hair JUST on the bottom of his chin (it kind of looks like a big brown cotton ball) he most decidedly does NOT fit in with the rest of the male leaders, most of whom are carrying axes and know how to use them. I half expected him to stand around the fire warming himself, turn to me and say "puff puff give dude".

Grandma and Grandpa Taking Over for Mom and Dad: Of course someone begged off of parental duties this evening and made grandma and grandpa go on the hike with the kids. I felt a little sorry for the kids, especially since grandpa risked a hip injury trying to climb down the bank to retrieve a marshmallow stick while everyone else stared, some checking their cell phone service to see if they could get a line out to 911 if they needed to.

Hitler Mom: overheard telling her son exactly how to play Red Light Green Light and telling him to listen carefully in Chinese Telephone. Missed the point completely I think.

By the end of the hike I was sufficiently plied with hot chocolate, perfectly toasted marshmallows and half a cold weiner and we headed home. Just in time because one second it was dusk and the next it was night time.

The Velveteen House

I came across an article today that really spoke to me. Here's a peek:

I recently took my first trip to Africa. One pre-dawn morning I decided to
stop trying to fight my body clock and got up early. As I sat by our hotel
window, I could see a shacklike house across the street, and its family
stirring. My first feelings were of sadness. The house contained no more than a
couple of rooms. There were piles of junk in every corner of their small ten-by-ten, bare-dirt yard. But as I continued to watch, my perspective changed. There were definite causes for sadness that trip, but this was not one of them.

As I watched the woman of the house, I realized what I was calling "junk" were their useful belongings. In the course of an hour, I saw the woman make good use of most of the tools in her yard—building a fire to prepare a meal for her family and tending to a small garden. The more I watched, the more I saw her care for her home and use her things well. Theirs was a "Velveteen House," where everything was well-used and full of purpose. In contrast, our culture creates "a house to look at" that covers the house in which we really live. For years I had towels that were not to be used, canisters lining shelves that held nothing, books that were purchased for the color of their cover, and most troubling, a guest room with no guests.

Read on...

I have been guilty in the past of wanting too much. I want 'things' for my house to try and make it a better home for my family. I want nicer pictures on the wall and more books for the bookshelf.

In reality, we need nothing more to make our home a warmer, friendlier, happier home. We just need to increase the love. So I've put a buying embargo on our house. We don't buy any more things unless it's something we can't cope without. If it's replacing something broken that can't be fixed, that's ok. But if it's just prettier or nicer than what we already have, I don't buy it. Surprisingly (or maybe not) this has stopped me from buying a lot of 'stuff'.

Notebooks and pens, books and daytimers, new coffee mugs and cutlery. When I'm at the store they seem the perfect things to complete my life... then I come home and see my cupboard bursting with mugs and my pen jar crammed full of pens that work just fine and I'm actually thankful that I have shown restraint.

This also makes my frugal and money-smart husband happy. Always a good thing!

And now... for something controversial...

I have a daughter. Thankfully she's one and not a teenager, or even close to it. (Though she does put on some spectacular teenager-worthy tantrums!) So I currently don't have to worry about the HPV vaccine.

That doesn't stop me from thinking about it though. I worry because it seems to have been pushed through so fast. It went from "available" to "we think it should be compulsory" pretty darn quick.

Like the mother of many girls, I hope my daughter makes good choices when it comes to matters of the heart (or, let's face it, of other body parts too) and I do intend to promote abstinance. But I speak very openly about sex and other topics with my kids because I don't want them to learn stories from their friends. I will also discuss methods of birth control and what they protect against (besides babies).

I don't see the HPV vaccine as something that undermines abstinance. I just see it as a vaccine that we don't know a lot about. I hope that in ten years that we haven't learned that it was really something horrible. I have family members who have been harmed by medications that doctors promoted as safe... until problems cropped up years later.

But reading this article brought something home for me:

Dr. Foley says she'd never fault someone who vetoes the vaccine because of her
trust in her child's lifestyle choices, but she adds, "Given the number of circumstances we cannot control in our children's lives, I think the vaccine is a good idea." Some choose to vaccinate, even if their child has pledged chastity until marriage and monogamy afterwards, because of what they can't guarantee:

That their child won't be forced into a sexual situation.
That their child's marriage will be lifelong and mutually monogamous.
That their daughter won't be sexually active.

Can I guarantee those things? Can I protect my daughter from ever being assaulted? Gosh, I wish I could say yes... but I have to face reality. Can I guarantee that my daughter's marraige will be lifelong and mutually monagamous? I pray for it... but I cannot guarantee it.

What do you think?

Hubba Hubba Hubby

This is a picture of Major Man just a couple of months before I met him in 1996. I think he's hot.

I still think he's hot, proving that it's not just the uniform, lol.

I found this photo at his parents' house and his mom had a couple of copies so she gave me one.

We are coming up to two years of marriage and I am trying to find something special for us to do. Eventually we would like to go back to the place we met - Lido de Jesolo, Italy. But right now that's a little out of our budget. We were going to go in 2006 but I was quite preggo!

I think that I find him even more attractive today. Now he's a dad who can do laundry!!

Back from vacation

Just got back this afternoon from a week-long vacation in the mid-west. Indiana to be exact. Now I'm a Canadian prairie girl so the mid-west feels very homey to me. It's different than home, of course, being that it isn't home... I love the huge trees that seem plucked right off of a romance cover and the humidity that does loverly things to my hair. (I kind of like it curly and unruly!)

One of the highlights of my trip was getting together for lunch with Shirley Jump. We actually didn't talk shop a lot, but she was very helpful with advice on family matters!

Sometimes family matters can really get you down. If perfect strangers were doing the same things our family did, we could let it slide. But because it's family, it's close to the bone.

I learned an important lesson this week. I am the most important advocate for my children. I can stand up firmly and draw the lines around my family so that my children know just how much I value them.

And to my former mother in law: I am SORRY. I had NO IDEA what I had in you. You are a wonderful grandmother, let me never take you for granted, I'm so happy you are in our lives. Granted, I wouldn't have stayed married to your son just for you (because honestly, we're better friends now than we were when we were married) but you are worth your weight in gold not just as a grandma, but as a mother in law. How precious it is to have an ally.

Now. I had so many ideas for articles while I was on vacation! I am just dancing at centre here, waiting to get some queries out the door. I put myself on a writing diet on vacation and did not write a word, didn't even start up my laptop! I wanted to some times, but I didn't... and it feels so good to be back at the keyboard today!

The kids had fun as well... getting to know their cousins. I think their cousins are sweethearts and I really enjoyed getting to know them as well!

Emily took her first steps this past week. Actually the first couple of steps were on a boat and we kind of looked at each other and said "now is that because the boat moved and she rebalanced herself, or did she just take a couple of steps?"She's taken to grinning at people with MY OWN CRINKLY GRIN. This face is identical to about fifty of my baby pictures. Major Man calls it the "who farted grin".

And the almost-six-year-old wouldn't get off the pool steps on day one, but was dog-paddling all over the pool by the last day! I have plenty of smiling pictures of him, but I feel like showing you the "I pout, therefore I am" one that I got when he decided that is cousin wasn't being fair.

I had no idea it was so hard to teach the rules of fairness and sharing. He's a conundrum, my son.

Of Other Mothers

Joshilyn (Joss, never Josh) Jackson has an interview up today on her blog Faster Than Kudzu. If you don't read Joss' blog, then you are missin' out on some funny stuff.

Julie Kenner is back to talk about the latest in her Demon Hunting Soccer Mom series and she talks about how her life as a writer changed after she had a child:

My schedule has changed dramatically over the years. At first, I was practicing law while writing and my husband was in grad school. We would both come home from work/school and write/study. Worked great :)

Then I had a baby, and life got hectic. I wrote in the evenings after she went to sleep until I could afford to quit and write full time. Then I had her in day care and would write during the day.

She has turned 5 and is in school now, but since we homeschool, she’s home with me during the day, and so is her sister, who we adopted at age three last October. So now I have two kids at home with me doing school (or preK play) during what used to be my writing time. So I’m back to writing in the evenings and squeezing it in.

Right now, a day might be:

7:30 — get up and veg in the recliner while the girls watch Curious George.
8:00 – noonish — school with the oldest while the littlest does “play school” and some speech and sign language games.
noon-1 — lunch, and I’ll usually answer emails while they eat
1-2 – any school we haven’t finished
2-5 – they play, sometimes by themselves, sometimes with me. I try to do non-writing writing stuff (emails,mailings, etc.). Or errands.
5-6 – daddy time. I write
Family time until their bedtime.
9-whenever. My writing time.

When I’m on a crazy deadline (like last week) going to bed at 2-3 is common. And I often will beg my mom to come over around lunch time once or twice a week to play with the girls so those afternoon hours can be writing time. During those weeks we squeeze in karate, piano and speech therapy for the little one!

It’s insane, but I’m loving it.

I heartily encourage you to go read it the rest of it. This past month I've also been begging my mother to come over and help with the kids, or I ship them over there for a break. She brings them back bathed, pajama'd, tired and ready for bed. That is a big secret to my success! (Thanks mom!)

The Whys.

If you are a part of my Writing Mother Yahoo Group, then you may have already heard... I'm officially, officially a full time freelancer. But weren't you already? Yes and no. Yes, I freelanced full time. But I had this wonderful thing called Maternity Leave Benefits going on.

And at the end of this month, the benefits run out. So it was time to let my boss know that I wasn't coming back.

So I did.

Then he offered me a raise AND a promotion.

While I told him that I'd think about it... there really isn't anything to think about. I will still be mentally and financially better off staying at home. Truthfully, I might be a bit financially ahead if I went back, but is a couple thousand dollars a year worth the sacrifice mentally?

Today I helped my daughter stand on her own. She's ten months and can only do it for a few seconds before she's over come with giggles and she either starts to topple or she flops down on her butt.

I was here when the neighbor kid came over for the first time to ask if my son could come out to play. My son's face lit up because he's been quite leery of the boys in the neighborhood and now it seems they are buddies.

I was here to stack blocks with my daughter and giggle with my son as she smashed the blocks down with a mighty baby roar.

When my son splashed water all over the bathroom, I had enough energy left to accept it calmly and deal with it rather than get frustrated because it was another job to do before I could go write for the day. I'd been writing all day, I wasn't pressed for time.

I was worried about giving up my RRSPs and DPSP (deferred profit sharing plan) until I realized that I don't have to share my profits with anyone. And yesterday I signed up for a new RRSP with a really hot financial consultant... who happens to be my husband.

A fellow writer cautioned me about leaping into the freelance pool too soon. I understood her concerns, she'd tried to do it before. I did too... as a single mother with hardly any writing credits to my name. I wasn't in a good place emotionally as I'd just come out the "sunny" side (supposedly) of a divorce. I was too stressed to be a good writer or a good mother. Now I have five years experience with both.

And some savings... that's important. I've known this day was coming for over a year... ever since I got pregnant with my daughter I knew that I'd stay home when it was time. And I know WHY I'm staying home, deep in my heart and soul.

Wha? It's Thursday already?

Holy Camoley, it's Thursday already!

June is a crazy month for me. It's my birthay month and I'm turning A Decade Year this time around. Hubby has been planning my birthday party and I'm really trying not to interfere. I can hardly restrain myself. I know it's a little rude to try hone in on someone else's plans, but I am a control freak...

I know that I shouldn't complain. It only took a few hints for him to get that I wanted him to plan my birthday party. I'm still scarred from my 18th birthday party... when no one showed up. Yep, me and my mom, drinking alone. Fun!

Oh I'll just say it. I'm turning 30. About half of you just thought "is that all?"

There's something about the 30 birthday. There are so many things that I said I'd be doing by the time I was 30. Truthfully, I've done quite a few of the things ... but there are those crazy ones: learn to fly a plane, travel around the world, get my scuba license... that I just never got around to doing.

But now that it's almost the summer solstice, I start thinking about how fast time is flying. By the 22nd of June the days will actually be getting shorter, not longer... and here in Calgary the summer has only just begun.

I went to the doctor today. She was investigating a suspicious lump. She doesn't think that it's anything to worry about, but suggests that I make an appointment for a couple weeks from now to poke and prod me again. It just got me thinking about when we realize that our lives are actually getting shorter and not stretching out before us into eternity.