What’s New?

I haven’t been very good about keeping up with my blogging. (That said, the husband and I have semi-resurrected our former online magazine, The Green Room, recently!) I’ve been too busy living (and restructuring!) my life, to sit down and blog about it.

• After 10 months of unemployment, O started a new job in May! Just over a month into it, he’s still very much enjoying what he’s doing.
• When my temporary assignment with the Census ended, I began taking on new projects, and honing my skills toward what I really want to do with my professional life. This has included volunteering in the office of the local Unitarian Universalist church once a week, editing the monthly and weekly newsletters for the same, and recently starting some work with a local group dedicated to environmentalism and peace.
• L started attending a Montessori preschool, where he spends 5 mornings each week, and he is happy as a clam there!
• We bought a new-to-us car. *
• Next month, we’re headed to NY to unload the storage unit we’ve been renting since August (and of course to visit family and friends up there!), and we’re on the hunt for our next rental home.
• … and I’m going to the gym three times a week.

All together, this whole list means that we’re finally starting to put our lives back together. I spent SO long saying, “I want my life back!” after we moved down here. It feels so good to be moving forward again. We’ll never have the life we left behind, and I’ve accepted that. But now, finally, it feels like we have a reasonable substitute. A new beginning, and a stable foundation upon which to continue to build. I still yearn for more in the way of socialization, but the pieces that were previously scattered or missing are now starting to fall into place.

Life doesn’t feel quite so broken, anymore.

* More on this topic in a future post.

What Do I Do All Day?

As a stay at home mom, this is a question I have been asked numerous times over the past two-and-change years. The answer today is definitely different than it would have been a year ago. At that time, my son wasn’t yet walking, I wasn’t looking for work, my husband was working, and we were living in cold and snowy western New York. Still, I had just as much difficulty answering when the question was posed to me over lunch yesterday as I have had when it’s been asked of me in the past.

What do I do all day? Obviously a lot of my day is eaten up with toddler activities. I play catch, I run around the house saying, “Choo choo!” with Bug running around behind me, I read books about dinosaurs and Sesame Street. I go out to the park near where we live, or to the tennis court or playground in our community. I change diapers and battle about lunch. And I sing silly songs. And of course, I laugh at with my husband as he performs the same repetitive and not-always-dignified tasks.

On the other hand, I also spend quality time with my computer. Sometimes (admittedly, not that often) I’m writing. More often than that, I’m editing. I am the volunteer editor for my church newsletter. This typically only takes up my time for a week or so each month – the week nearest the article deadline (and for a few days after because there are always stragglers), and it’s work that I love. Seriously, if I could get someone to pay me to do this, I would be a very happy me.

And of course, I spend time trying to find something that someone will pay me to do. I get daily e-mail updates from various job-search sites, and I make periodic check-ins on some other websites as well. This can take anywhere from five minutes to several hours, every day.

That takes up the bulk of my day. The rest of the time is split up across daily household tasks, reading (books and the websites I frequent), playing with photography, going to the gym (albeit not as often as I should) or doing yoga/Pilates, and occasionally watching an episode of Gilmore Girls when Bug is napping.

Sometimes we go shopping, or spend a family afternoon at the beach or a zoo. Generally, though, we stay fairly near to home. It’s a quiet life, but it makes us happy. We may be unemployed, but we keep ourselves entertained.

Back, Forth, Oink Oink Oink

Sick Pig image from www.cuddlecards.com/ccpics/sick_pig1.gif

My 18-month-old son is a genius at sharing. Early this week, he came down with a sniffly, sneezy, clingy. whiny, unhappy little virus and a 102.5 degree fever. By a day and a half later, I had a scratchy throat. Waking up the next morning, I could barely move – which is a lot of fun when you’re home alone all day with a toddler, let me tell you. Aches, fever, still coughing, and just generally miserable. This was yesterday.

By afternoon, my husband had also started showing symptoms, and came home from work. We made a call to our doctor, who said that our symptoms sounded very much like swine flu. Yay.

So … off to the Urgent Care center we went, and the doctor there said it didn’t sound like the strain of flu that’s been going around. O convinced them to test him, at least, as he’s forbidden from working until they know whether or not our doctor’s suspicions are correct. Mind you, at the time of the appointment, none of us had fevers, and Buggie’s symptoms had largely subsided. She figured his illness had run its course, and therefore ours would soon follow.

Forward to today. Fevers haven’t returned, but Buggie’s symptoms have. His nose is runny again, and he’s been tantrumy and miserable. (Those who know our sweet little boy know that this is NOT his typical disposition.) O has been sacked out on the couch with body aches, a cough, and exhaustion (like me, yesterday). I’ve had waves of misery, alternating with waves of actually feeling almost human again. My nose is drippy (as in, has not really stopped at ALL since yesterday afternoon), my eyes are puffy, and I have a mild cough still. Last night, I was prepared to accept what the urgent care doc said, but when Buggie’s symptoms returned today … we’ll just say I’m less convinced.

We should know for sure by Monday, in any case. In the meantime, we’ve stocked up on groceries, canceled our weekend plans, and spent a lot of the day watching TV, reading … and being yelled at by a cranky toddler.-old