Flu, 2011 Edition

A week after getting his flu shot, baby Oblio's family has been passing mild forms of the virus back and forth. Yesterday I witnessed the baby erupt like a stewed prune volcano. Picking him up and rushing him, still spewing, to the bathroom sink, I am only agonizingly grateful that he wasn't alone napping in his room during the incident.

Hours later Darling lay in bed radiating a dry heat. After a restless night and a day in bed he is still warm. Feeling weak myself, sweating heavily, and taking a number of breaks, I made a blueberry-banana-spinach smoothie, oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon sweetened with honey, and, later in the day, egg drop soup. Never one to turn down the vitamin K, my husband downed the smoothie, but only managed a bit or two of oatmeal and a negligible portion of soup. Watching me amble about the kitchen with growing apprehension, my housemates force grapefruit seed extract and zinc tablets on me by the handfuls.

This evening's first aid class was cancelled, which spared me from having to make a very ironic choice. Now the only question is whether or not my zinc-and-grapefruit-infused self is going to feel up to metal framing class tomorrow. I also need to make a trip to the bank and decide whether or not I'll be able to do the house shopping this week before we run out of coffee and things get ugly.

I don't mind getting sick every  now and again, whereas many of the people around me seem to experience illness as a sort of personal and cultural failing. I find it interesting how sickly Oblio grew immediately after having the flu shot, but I don't take it as unshakable evidence of the evils of immunization. Babies get sick, no matter how hard we try and protect them. As much as I hate to watch my Godson suffer, a big part of me is unspeakably thankful that we live in a day and age in which the average baby survives. I'm not saying that our future generations won't suffer the undue burden of pollution, reduced environmental diversity, climate change, or even super-flues resulting from immunizations...but Oblio isn't likely to get dragged off by dingos or die of an infected paper cut, either.

Then again, I'm feeling unusually stoic about this bout of flu. Perhaps it's the security of practically living in a hippie pharmacy, of knowing the ins-and-outs of not having health insurance in this particular city. Maybe it's even the fact that Darling and I don't actually have anything better to do than sip soup and get better, being unemployed and all.

NIght Owl Finances

The coffee fudge was a total fail. I whipped up a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies at the last minute, packed them into a paper bag, and arrived at game night quite late. Fortunately my friends are as much night owls as I have become, and we all had no problem hanging out until four in the morning. We ate home-made enchiladas and played the Game of Thrones board game, which was good fun and quite complicated.

Darling and I spent most of today catching up on our sleep. I served blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, toast, fruit, and iced early grey tea for breakfast, and now Darling is facilitating the last board meeting over which he will preside as president.

I took the time to look over our financial situation, which isn't bad considering we both spent most of August totally unemployed and only one of us worked for a total of two and a half weeks in September. Darling received two paychecks and has a third on the way. He spent some of his first check on living expenses and supplies, and I immediately put half a tank of gas in the truck when he got back...

...Oh, by the way, I'm borrowing my Mom's truck as of a few weeks ago. Before anyone gets huffy about it, I've driven the truck about three times in three weeks. A potential carpentry job came up in Killeen and while it would suck to have to drive that far, it will suck a whole lot more to never be a carpenter because I can't get to work-sites. My goal is to get steady work nearby that within carpool or even bike range, but until that happens I have to be available for anything...

Anyway, the money we have on hand is just short of what we need to pay what we owe for this month's rent. I'm going to transfer $40 from the small savings account I really hate to touch and deposit that check on Wednesday. We should receive the rest of Darling's pay by next Friday which, along with a little more money out of our savings account, should cover October rent. I hate to drain our tiny savings just when it was becoming useful, but that's being unemployed and having a big ol' bill hanging over us. It will be a big relief to be totally caught up :)

Welcome Home, Darling!

Yesterday Darling came home from his gig in West Texas. I haven't slept well without him at all, and Thursday night was no exception. I barely napped for a couple of hours before Xy dropped off Oblio for sitting.

The baby was super happy to be awake in these pre-dawn hours, so I went ahead and prepped the crust for Darling's welcome home dinner. I use the basic bread recipe from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, with the addition of oregano and basil. This gives me 4-5 crusts, which is usually just enough to feed most of my house-mates :)

I baked the crusts and set them aside, then made a marinara using canned tomatoes, onions, garlic, thyme, and sage. During this time the six-month-old was very happy with a wooden spoon and mixing bowl of his own. At one point Bo came in and said, "I could see you as a Mom...actually, it's hard not to think of you as a Mom!"

Just before noon I had prepped the pizzas as much as I could and the baby decided to take a glorious three-hour nap. I flipped through The Joy of Cooking in the hopes of finding something exciting and sweet with which to surprise my love, and stumbled upon the candy and confectioners section for the first time. Fudge.

A few hours and a resignation of defeat later, there was actual chocolate fudge in my kitchen.

Xy picked up Oblio at three and I headed upstairs to scrub. Last week I took two days to put up shelving, de-clutter, and re-arrange the furniture. Yesterday I scrubbed and polished the long-neglected sink, bathtub, toilet, mirror and bathroom floor. Then I went to my room and carted out the last of the donations, emptied the trash, dragged the laundry to the machines in the pantry, made the bed, cleared the surfaces and gave the new shelving a final glance.

I was about to shower and get the pizzas in the oven so they'd be fresh and hot just in time for Darling's arrival when he showed up an hour early! Granted I'm not going to complain. It's so great to have him back :)

We got his stuff upstairs where he properly complicated the new room set-up, then we baked the pizzas. Most of my house-mates had been sniffing about the kitchen since noon, so we had quite a crowd in the kitchen for the event. It was actually the first time in weeks all nine of us have been home at once, which added depth to the celebration. Also, did I mention there was fudge?

Today has, in some ways, been a repeat of yesterday. I was up before the sun to greet a very awake Oblio. I prepped for lunch, started Darling's laundry, and cleaned our kitchen shelves until he conked out at nine a.m, then we took a fabulous three hour nap - best.Godson.Ever. After we woke up Darling watched him while I slipped down to finish lunch: nori rolls with rice, beet, apple, and cucumber, and a dessert roll with cream cheese, apple, and raisins. After lunch I folded laundry and helped Darling unpack his bags until Raja came for the baby. Since then I have worked on coffee fudge to take to a game night with friends down south.

Darling, a friend, and about a tenth of their total work.

Unification

Although I've been curious about carpentry for a long time, I wandered into the union last month with the intention of teasing my own curiosity and accepting inevitable disappointment. I would make one last stab at the construction industry and finally put the dream of being a skilled builder aside once and for all.

I kept my hopes low even after being welcomed into the brotherhood. But after Tuesday's union meeting, I can't keep that up. Between the political validation, social interaction, and straight up free training in valuable skills, it's a dream come true. It's absolutely unbelievable how I feel in that building, among my new peers and mentors. After the meeting I had a beer with some of the guys and talked for a couple of hours. And it feels so right.

My family doesn't really know what to make of it. This might be my own fault: sometimes I keep things close to my chest rather than risk their disapproval. At the same time, only my Mom has shown the slightest shade of enthusiasm for my choice. Today my brother actually hinted his suspicion of "corruption from within."

Um, okay. First of all: non- union construction is about as corrupt as it possibly could be. The average construction worker is very lucky to get paid at minimum wage, much less a living wage, and health benefits and pension are unheard of. The same workers are employed in very hazardous conditions and denied their entitlement to workers comp.

Union activity is 100% financially dependent on dues and a percentage of member pay. A member is free to leave the union at any time. So, while "corruption" is always possible, the moment a union stops acting on behalf of its members, and the day that non-union employment is more desirable, there's not going to be a union any longer.

I will admit to seeking the cloud to match my silver lining. I've yet to actually work a job, but things are supposed to pick up in October. I'm making connections now, and once a foreman sees me in action my reputation is going to soar. In the meantime, there are plenty of free classes to keep me busy.

Outing Fail

Yesterday I puttered around the house for a good deal of the day, then facilitated the weekly co-op meeting. Faced with another long, lonely night staring at the computer, I decided to go watch my housemate's band play in East Austin.

I've been so bored sick lately that I decided to make a night of it. I put on make-up, put up my hair, and wore a skirt, tights, and heels. Amazingly, it's not difficult at all to ride a bike in such a getup...even when said bike is borrowed and apparently without functioning brakes...

The ride was very pleasant, but I felt super-awkward at my destination. I was expecting a casual bar atmosphere. I'd only brought three dollar coins with the intention of buying a Lone Star and tipping a buck. The venue was actually a high-end novelty sort of cafe, and so packed that I couldn't get a seat at the bar. The hostess sat me at a tiny seat right next to the band, which I didn't mind. But then the server ignored me. After a couple of songs I went to the bar and tried to catch someone's attention, but gave up pretty quickly and left feeling pretty down.

I went home and baked chocolate cranberry cookies and watched Lonesome Dove until late into the night.

I'm glad I at least tried to go out, and it's about time that I start riding again. Part of me is even glad I didn't waste $3 on a crappy beer. But most of me is just missing Darling...

My Frog Friend Likes The Privacy Of His Own Home, Too

My 26th Birthday Ride

Guess what I found? A post written in late April detailing my super-awesome birthday camp trip/bicycle ride! I can't believe I forgot to publish it...I think my original plan was to publish it in two or three parts due to its insane length. But, you know what? I like reading long posts. They are much better than un-puplished posts, at least. And I'm certainly not editing this beautiful memory five months after the fact. Take a nap midway, if you'd like :)

A $40 bike and a borrowed bike.

I had the best birthday ever.

I spent a lot of money.

Thursday evening I went on a shopping trip with Darling and the money I'd earned that morning cleaning a house and the tips from my mid-shift at the coffee shop. Our plan was lightweight, high protein snacks for the bike ride. Somewhere between the bus stop and picking up a small basket I transformed into a ten-year-old girl packing for a fantasy picnic: our basket was heavy with bars of chocolate, a big bottle of juice, strawberries, energy bars, and packages of cookies.

Why did I think we would need chocolate syrup???

I didn't know I could spend so much on so little!

Friday we woke up early and had a big breakfast before packing our bags and catching a ride downtown to pick up the commuter bus to Leander. The commuter buses, by the way, are AWESOME. Big and comfy, free wi-fi, and plenty of space to stow bags, including those big undercarriage luggage compartments that Greyhound buses have, where we put our bikes. Not bad for less than three dollars each. Darling and I read and chatted until we got to Leander, at which point we actually got on the bikes and started cycling down 183.

This is a much sharper incline than it looks.

We must have ridden for about an hour and a half, mostly downhill with the wind at our backs. It was a pleasantly cool and sunny ride. We stopped two or three times for breaks, at which point enjoying our strawberries and juice in the shade.

I'll be honest: Darling and I are not dedicated road cyclists. In the city we will take to the sidewalk in the blink of an eye. I promise we'll get better, but I don't even like being on the highway in a car. It's so vulnerable and scary watching a sixteen wheeler share a lane with your husband...and at one point, two cars passed Darling at once on a two lane road, the three of them sharing such a limited space at once, the cars still racing along at 60+miles an hour. We'd checked on Google Maps to ensure that there would be a shoulder for the majority of the route, but road work blocked our way and actually squeezed us tighter to our petroleum-powered friends, forcing a two-lane road plus shoulder/bike lane into a single lane flanked by loud and dusty machinery.

Going downhill as we did, pumping away at top speed, it was easier to pretend that we blended right in with the huge trucks, careless SUVs, and weekend warriors on motorcycles. When I suddenly realized we had reached the bottom of the great hill, however, and saw the next stretching ahead of us like a great mountainous Tower of Babel to Heaven, I almost burst into tears.

Miraculously, that's when we turned off the highway onto the sweetest country road you ever saw. We coasted along scenic pastures, fields of longhorns and barbed-wire fences. Less than two hours after we embarked from our train station, having ridden from the northern tip of Leander to Liberty Hill, we arrived at the cabin.

Baby Cow!!!

"Where's your car?" a flabbergasted property manager demanded as I photographed a baby cow on the neighboring pasture.

After settling in, Darling and I agreed that the ride had barely been anything at all and decided to ride deeper into Liberty Hill to purchase tea bags and maybe have dinner. By this time it was roughly 4 p.m., and this leg of the trip was infinitely less pleasant. The heat of the day was well and truly upon us, we were harassed by trucks that seemed intent on forcing us off the road, and the entire idea behind the weekend seemed idiotic and childish. Yet again, as our trip teetered on the brink of unpleasantness, we found ourselves in the lot of a little local restaurant.

Dahlias had outdoor seating, a massive beer and wine selection, and a large selection of fresh and delicious vegetarian sides. Darling and I gulped down glass after glass of iced tea, forgot to order appetizers, and shared green beans, asparagus, cinnamon apples, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and the best chocolate chess pie I've ever had. Then we realized that, besides that carton of strawberries at noon, we hadn't eaten since nine in the morning. Needless to say, our ride back to the cabin was much more pleasant.

Taking a break on a country road

Until this point, I'd always taken the lead. Darling is much stronger and faster than me and has preferred to let me set the pace so as not get worn out and fall behind. Unfortunately I hate not being able to watch him. I feel he falls to far behind, making it more difficult for cars to pass us both safely. Already conservative with my energy, I go slower than necessary to close the imaginary gap.

Letting Darling take the lead, however, changed the dynamic entirely. Not only did I go much faster than ever before, quite comfortably, probably doubling our speed, but I felt much more confident demanding space on the road. Instead of teetering dangerously on very edge of the highway, I took as much of the lane as felt comfortable - enough so that cars would be able to see that there were two cyclists and forcing them to change lanes if they wanted to pass. If they wanted to share a lane with Darling, they'd literally do so over my dead body.

Strangely, cars seemed to react much better to this. Perhaps it was seeing a woman taking such a risk, rather than my long-haired husband. At one point on the ride back I noticed that we hadn't been passed in quite a while. I looked over my shoulder to see a woman in an SUV very patiently coasting behind us, making it all but impossible for anyone to get passed her or us. By the time we turned off that particular road, a good fifteen minutes later, she was leading a procession of five very annoyed drivers.

We arrived home in time to take a dip in the river before evening fell. It was then that it occurred to us that our time could have been managed more sensibly: we ought to have taken refuge in the water during that blazing afternoon, and hit the road during the cooler evening hours. Live and learn. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying a bottle of wine and television.

The river got deep a little further down

Saturday, my actual birthday, we spent the early morning reading, chatting, and relaxing. My friends drove in from Austin, including baby Oblio, and soon after my family arrived. There was a chocolate cake, a chocolate cake with strawberry cream, and one of those cheesecake samplers. We went to the store twice for provisions, buying lots of beer (for me and friends) and meat (for family). I got to hang out with Baby-O, whom I haven't seen in ages, and she did incredibly adorable toddler stuff like eat the pickles right out of my veggie burger and cover my clothes in mustard fingerprints.

We had a full kitchen, A/C, and cable television :)

Sunday we checked out of the cabin and hit the road for serious. Despite the thunderstorm warnings that kept me up all night envisioning us cycling home in a torrential downpour, it was another beautiful spring day. We agreed to ride towards home until we couldn't pedal any longer (having loaded friends' cars with the majority of our luggage), and headed south towards Austin.

We purchased a map of the area from a gas station, which showed neither our starting nor ending point. After a lunch at Subway at the northernmost point of Leander (bad, bad idea...two blocks later we saw a beautiful local diner and cried out in regret), we rode down 183. Construction was even worse going south, but the machinery was abandoned. It didn't take us long to claim the closed road as our own, and we traveled through most of Leander on brand new roads and freshly built bridges.

This was OUR road.

It was thrilling to exit Leander a handful of hours later, to have traveled through an entire city! Resting at the start of Cedar park, which I'd mistakenly always imagined to be a "neighborhood" of Austin, we were hit up by Jehovah's Witnesses while resting in a field. Weird. Forced reluctantly back onto the highway, we took a leap of faith and made a detour towards a Lakeline Blvd in the hopes that it would have less road work and more sidewalks. We were rewarded mightily for our efforts and enjoyed the majority of cedar park on that winding, beautiful road.

I wasn't expecting the outskirts of Austin to become suddenly rural, however, and getting from Cedar Park to northern Austin was surprisingly difficult. By five o'clock we were totally beat and Darling's bike - which needed a tune-up when we left, was making an absurd clunking noise and lost it's chain more than once. Slightly delirious and so distracted by hunger that I forgot the snack bars in my bag, we were overjoyed to find a bus stop. Ironically, it took us another three hours and an uphill ride to get from north Austin to our home in South Austin. But we were agonizingly sweaty, smudged with dirt and oil, slightly sunburned (Darling missed a spot on his arm), and sore as all get out, and therefore felt perfectly happy to sit for a while.

At home we took showers and faced with the choice of cooking, passing out and waking up in the morning sick with hunger and dehydration, or going out to eat, I decided to end our awesome weekend with my favorite sandwich from Magnolia cafe. We decided to walk. I don't even remember the walk home afterward, just waking up this morning feeling like I was made out of solid rock. A few hours later, however, I got out of bed feeling pretty great. Even my knee, which was bothering me the day before the big trip, feels perfectly fine now!

Queen of the Road!

We probably traveled 25-30 miles yesterday, my longest trip by far. Now I'm convinced that, with the right supplies, we could make a longer weekend trip...Though we might wait for it to cool down a little.

Tabs!

I finally, finally figured out how to put tabs on my blog! I've been super-jealous of all the other blogs with their fancy multiple pages and driving myself mad trying to get some of my own.

Now, naturally, I have no idea what tabs to create. I've been in love with the look, not the function.

After five years of free-form composition and close to a thousand posts, this blog is getting a little unwieldy. I recently went through the very time-consuming process of editing my 27 labels...and I'm still not incredibly happy with them. It seems reasonable to have five pages folks can access to get the meat of my story, philosophy, and processes.

...Come to think about it, those might be my first three pages right there.

A Clean Break

This year I made an extra hundred bucks every month by cleaning a house every couple of weeks. Truth be told, this is not a job I especially enjoyed. In fact, at first I was making over $300 a month cleaning two houses, but had to quit the better paying job to maintain my sanity.

The cleaning job I kept is straight-forward and fairly easy, even meditative. I toyed with the idea of quitting when I was juggling two low-paying jobs, and again when I had the good hourly-pay at the pub, but couldn't really justify stemming this steady trickle of cash.

Yesterday the cleaning job was canceled, and today it was canceled indefinitely. Part of me is kind of dissapointed. The other part is a little relieved. Cleaning the homes of other people is kind of a bummer because it isn't difficult. The entire time I have a hard time not thinking about how much better off the owner would be scrubbing her own sinks clean, committing her own two hours of time to making her life run more smoothly. And on the flip-side: my bathroom is getting scary gross without Darling here to clean it for me. I really should be spending two hours every other week getting my own business in order...and yet I don't.

Anyway, I should totally be focusing on getting construction jobs so I won't feel foolish introducing myself as an apprentice carpenter. It would also be good to earn money, earn raises, and activate my health insurance. Turns out I actually missed out on two jobs last week. I'm not sure if they forgot to put me on the unemployed list or if I'm just missing calls. Either way, I should have nipped that in the bud by now.

Broke (ish)

I am broke.

The house I was supposed to clean this morning canceled last night. I spent the last of my cash on supplies for shop class (which went really well, particularly as I was the only apprentice who decided to bring said supplies).

In a way, I am only theoretically broke. Darling has a paycheck, but no way to deposit it into our bank account. We agreed a while ago that he would hold onto it until returning to town...a little over a week from now.

Our first Christmas together, broke and madly in love

 

Also, I have a secret savings account. Actually, it is my normal savings account, but except for the occasional deposit, I have been totally ignoring it for months. My until-now-unspoken goal has been to save up enough money to pay rent in a pinch. But right now it's too little to do much good to anyone, especially if I drain it. In other words, there is money available, but I can't bring myself to touch it.

Darling and I have actually spent a lot this month, particularly in the pursuit and preparation for work. So maybe it would be a good thing to simply not have a choice in the matter of spending or not.

No More T.V.

I spent all day yesterday cleaning, re-arranging, and organizing my room in honor of my awesome  new shelving - there may even be some before and after shots someday. Hurray for productivity!

Unfortunately, the rest of the day was a practice in being totally unproductive. I watched everything Hulu had to offer of The Simpsons, American Dad, Family Guy, and Community. Then I finally decided to break down and check out Serenity, which I have refused to watch until yesterday for relatively petty reasons. It's good, but mostly made me wish I was watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Cowboy Bebop instead.

In other words, I totally fried my brain with entertainment media yesterday. I was up until four in the morning for the second night in a row, and at one point I even went out and bought and ate a pint of ice cream. Naturally, I slept way too late today and will have to do the house shopping tomorrow between cleaning a house and going to my framing class. Bleh.

But still, my room? Looking great. After weeks of prioritizing anything and everything above my home base, I'm finally able to go in there and feel comfortable. I feel like that was the first step of getting the rest of my life running smoothly.

The next step is getting a daily schedule sorted, even if it's nothing more than eating three times a day and getting to sleep at a reasonable hour. With Darling out of town and no job to arrange my time around, the hours just sort of flow together. Starting today I'll take a break from on-line television and start thinking about how I'd rather spend my slow days.

Out With The Old, In With The Built

Before Darling headed west I got his permission to de-clutter. After years of focusing on frugal accumulation of furniture, and then downsizing substantially to squeeze into the co-op, we still have a hard time with organization. I think it's primarily a matter of utility. We really don't own that much stuff, our space just isn't equipped to handle it. I mean, have you ever had a kitchen without a utensil drawer, knife block, or spice rack? I have. If there isn't a place for everything, ain't nothing gonna be in place. That's what's happening in our room right now.

The first thing I sent away was a beloved coffee table that was gathering dust in the corner. We have a table surplus in the room, including the one Darling made last year and a telephone table serving as a bed stand. I really loved this one, but honestly couldn't tell you how I would use it except as a junk repository. I gave it to a group of people running a new permaculture community in East Austin who will definitely appreciate it.

Today my goal was to give away the book case. Tall and wide, it would be a total prize if not for its depth of about five inches. To make matter worse, an uneven bottom pitches it precariously forward. It can't be trusted with much more than DVDs and paperbacks.

This afternoon I finally got the chance to sort through the house's selection of odds and ends to come up with a replacement. After a goodly long while I came up with six two-foot lengths of 2x8 and twelve wall brackets. Besides the length, they were basically ideal. I primed and painted them a creamy-tan color and spent forever hunting for the perfect sized screws.

My first plan was to mount the pieces side-by-side to produce three four-foot shelves, but could foresee the inevitable sloppy appearance. I then thought to mount the shelves in a corner at right angles, which might lend a sense of design and intention to the stubby shelves, but there would be quite a bit of lost space where they came together.

I figured a similar effect could be gained by placing one shelf on one wall at the corner, and the next shelf on the adjoining wall about sixteen inches higher. Unfortunately, that placed the highest shelf out of my reach and the lowest shelf at knee-level.

I finally mounted one shelf against the corner, and two more on either side, one sixteen inches higher, the other sixteen inches lower, at varying distances from the corner. On the adjoining wall I placed the other three shelves in a similar design at equal heights. The result is neatly asymmetrical and creates intermittent focal points perfect for framed art. I was able to move all the books off the case and give it to a roommate (who had been warned of its defects, of course). Now I just have to determine whether my rocking chair or remaining table belongs in that corner or against either wall.

Tooling Around

Darling got his first paycheck on Friday! He's officially a professional solar installer :)

My carpentry class on Thursday went really well. I met my fellow female apprentice and she is really nice - as are my other peers. The guys are sweet, really, and don't make me feel at all unwelcome. It's just a relief not having the absolute least muscle mass in the classroom...

We're learning about metal framing, which will be followed by drywall installation. I'm going to need a few tools for the next class: hardhat, tape measure, and maybe a belt. I'll be trolling about on Craigslist seeking full tool sets for sale, but quality is coming before frugality in this instance.

Firsts

My elder brother came to visit from Ohio on Monday. Going out to dinner with family was a nice way to spend Darling's last day in town. Tuesday morning I drove him to his new employer's house, from which they car-pooled to Big Springs. Afterward I ran some errands, drove my Mom home, and spent the night at her house.

The next day I drove Mom's truck back to Austin and had just enough time to chat briefly with Darling via Facebook. It sounds like he really lucked out with his roommate, worked his butt off, and is enjoying having a pool at the hotel to fall into after long days in the sun.

Yesterday was my first class at the union. I don't have a problem admitting to finally experiencing some doubt about the situation. Doubt is perfectly acceptable in my world. Especially since it feels like Darling and I are finally making progress towards where we want to be and what we want to be doing. I have another class tonight that should focus more on the physical work of carpentry, though, and that will give me a much better idea of what to expect in the coming months.

September 2011 Net Worth

The past couple of weeks have been rough. Incredibly rough. It's really opened my eyes to how busy I habitually keep myself regardless of employment. Between dog-sitting across town, baby-sitting a second day a week, and preparing Darling for his job in West Texas, I haven't had time to prepare for my own apprenticeship, keep up with house chores, answer e-mail or phone calls,  or maintain any sort of routine at all.

I totally surrendered to eating out and buying beverages to enjoy with friends. Not every day or every get-together, but often enough to make me feel pretty guilty.

That's why I was not looking forward to tallying my net worth. Imagine my surprise upon discovering that it's actually increased by $318.01! Not only that, but, at -$6,820.42, this is the highest it's ever been!