Penny Pinching Mom

Thanksgiving Was Nice

I’ve been horribly stressed out. There have been things going on that I don’t have the time or inclination to blog about, but I will say that they have taken their toll. I’m behind on my work yet again because of it. I almost stayed home for Thanksgiving, but I decided to take Pumpkin up to my mom’s long enough to eat and hang out for a little while. She was dying to go, and I desperately needed a change of scenery.

We didn’t get to stay long at all, but it was a nice Thanksgiving. Dinner was delicious as always, and I got to see both of my siblings and their spouses and kids. The only one missing was Hubby, who insisted on staying home and splitting wood.

I had planned to take Pumpkin’s Crocs up there and give them to my brother’s daughter, because Pumpkin won’t wear them. They’re like new, so I thought someone should get some use out of them. But Pumpkin didn’t dig them out of her closet in time, so I didn’t get to take them. Turns out it wouldn’t have done any good anyway, because my niece now has to wear orthopedic shoes. I’ll have to remember not to buy her any Dansko sandals for Christmas.

I hated to eat and run, but I had to get back home and get some stuff done. And I actually did manage to do a little writing when I got back. Things are looking a little better than they were now, but I have yet to fully recover from the shock and stress of it all. I guess it will take some time.

A Full House

As you might know from previous posts, Hubby’s cousin is staying with us. Yesterday one of his old girlfriends came to see him. She’s from Florida, but apparently she’s moving back to the area where the cousin is from. Since she knows nothing about the mountains and apparently doesn’t have a GPS, she brought the cousin’s brother along to show her the way. Her niece came, too.

They got here early yesterday afternoon. They had planned to just come up and spend a few hours and go back, but the weather was horrible. Rainy, foggy, just plain nasty. Any time it gets like that, there’s always a thick fog on the roads going down the mountain. So we ended up with three extra houseguests last night.

It’s not the first time we’ve had that many people sleep over. But it was a tight squeeze. One person ended up in the floor, and the living room furniture was full of either people or their stuff.

Oh well. As long as that’s not an everyday occurrence, it doesn’t bother me. But if I had that many people staying in this tiny house all the time, I think I would go crazy.

Getting Back in Gear

The past couple of months have been pretty bad on the writing front. I’ve just been so stressed out that I’ve had a hard time getting anything done. But I’ve got to snap out of it, for my career’s sake and my family’s.

My clients have been sending me very little work because I haven’t been able to get stuff turned in on time. All told, this month I would probably make more if I were on Social Security disability than I will from my writing, unless I’m able to get all of my assignments done and pick up some extra work. Not good.

If I were to go to the doctor, I’m pretty confident that she would give me some medication for anxiety, depression, or perhaps even both, and maybe that would help. But going to the doctor isn’t an option right now. So I’m just going to have to try to work through it. At least I’ve been having a good day every now and then. Maybe they will become frequent enough that I’ll be able to get back to some resemblance of normalcy.

So Much for Rearranging

Hubby and I had planned to rearrange the living room over the weekend. I got to work cleaning it up, and he cleaned his truck out in the meantime. But by the time he got done with the truck, he didn’t want to do anything else. So the rearranging has yet to happen.

I was rather looking forward to it. The way we’re planning to do things should look much nicer than it is now, and leave more floor space. The only problem will be that the TV will be where I had planned to put some wall sconces to add more light where it’s so dark. But I guess if the TV is there we won’t need as much light in that area, at least not while we’re watching it. And we could always put some sconces on the wall next to it. We’ll see how it works out.

Hopefully he’ll feel up to rearranging this coming weekend. I’m anxious to see if it turns out as nicely as we’re hoping.

People Wasting My Time

I am happy to help people who are serious about working at home get started. I didn’t have anyone to help me when I was trying to get something going, so when I hear about someone else who is interested in bucking the system and working for themselves, I have no problem with giving them advice and even sharing job leads.

The problem is that most of the people who have asked me to help them get started just aren’t serious about it. I mean, if I’m going to take time out of my life to come up with customized advice for them, I expect them to at least try. But in most cases, they ask for advice, I send them some and tell them to get back to me if they have any questions, and that’s the last I hear from them. There have only been one or two that have even bothered to thank me for it.

Of course there have been a couple of exceptions. But most of the time, I might as well just not even bother. And last week, I didn’t. I got an email from one of Hubby’s relatives asking me if I knew of any way he could make some easy money online. (Bear in mind that this is a guy who couldn’t be bothered to take surveys online. He probably wouldn’t take a job testing acne treatments for $100 an hour.) A whole narrative about how there is no easy money and he should get off his sorry butt and get a job popped into my head, but I didn’t feel like taking the time to type it out. Instead, I wrote him a note that went something like this:

Most of the stuff I know about is either surveys or requires writing. Unless of course you want to do adult webcam work… I hear there’s lots of money in that.

I haven’t heard back from him since. Maybe I should just copy and paste that into every request for help I get from now on. Well, maybe not every single one, but the ones from people who I know just want easy money.

Flexibility Has Its Disadvantages

For those who have expressed concern, I just want to say (1) thank you, and (2) I’m all caught up on my work now. It feels good not to be so stressed out for once! And yes, I will be taking a few days off… long weekend probably.

I was getting worried that I would have to quit writing and go back to a regular job. And that would suck. Because I do love being able to work on my own schedule. But as you may know, all that flexibility does have a few disadvantages.

For one thing, that probably contributed to me getting behind. I wasn’t out partying, or sitting here pretending to work but really comparing the merits of the best weight loss products all day, but there were plenty of distractions going on that weren’t helping my concentration. And there were times when instead of fighting them, I just gave in. I’m positive that it was because I was so severely stressed out, but had it not been for that flexibility, maybe I would have tried a little harder.

And then there are other people’s expectations. When you write for a living, people think nothing of asking you to drop what you’re doing and do what they want you to do. At least I’ve found that to be true in my case. Like one evening when I was working hard and Hubby asked me to stop and cook him something. Had he worked all day I wouldn’t have minded, but all he had done was a quick side job that morning. I got a little snippy, then asked him if it would be okay if I came to his work and asked him to cook for me. He ended up making himself a sandwich.

Even with those things to contend with, I wouldn’t trade my job for the world. I just hope that now that I’m caught up and going to take a breather, I’ll be able to get back on track so that I don’t have to even consider getting a J.O.B. again.

Leaking Again

I’m really beginning to hate having a basement. That was one of the things I liked about this place when we got it, but it has proven to be much more trouble than it’s worth.

Hubby and his friend dug ditches to catch the water and keep it from accumulating under the house, and that was working very well. But since we haven’t had the money to put tile in them, we have to be vigilant about keeping them cleaned out. And vigilance is not my or Hubby’s strong point. So last week, we found that after we got a bunch of rain, it was leaking once again.

If we hadn’t caught it quickly and cleaned out the responsible ditch, we might have had a really big mess again. The drain is still pretty badly clogged, so it water had started coming in, it would have had nowhere to go.

I wish we could somehow reroute all that water into some rain barrels or something. But I doubt that would be possible. So I guess we’ll have to save up the money to get some tile, and then I’ll have to nag Hubby to put it in, and then keep nagging him to clean those ditches out periodically. I hate nagging, but I guess I have to do what it takes if I want to avoid another basement disaster.