it's a good thing no one called for me to go in this morning - youngest is home with this deep, hacking cough. i took this subbing gig so i could be home with sick kiddos, specifically my son but other sick kiddos need momma too, without risking my job. and in an 8 hour day saxy makes more than i do, so it just makes sense for him to work and me to stay home when one of the littles is sick. so i'm working on getting taz off to school and keeping froggy in bed until he's off, then i'll give froggy some breakfast, her medication, and some cough syrup and put her back to bed.

personally i think one day off a week wouldn't be a bad thing anyway. it'll give me writing time and a chance to catch up on other personal projects as well as time to take care of anything we need done. out here i guess that's not such a big deal though - they take mondays off instead of saturday for a lot of places, including the dmv, and the bank is open until 1 on saturdays. so they give weekday workers a day to get a lot of stuff anyway. but i definitely need a writing day, at least until i get used to this and am not so tired at the end of a work day.

the down side is that $300 is a lot of money.

but today is for froggy, even though i'll get other stuff done. i'm actually expecting a rather miserable winter coming up. the move, the financial changes, new schools, etc etc etc - all of these are new stressors, and it's a proven fact that more stress and unusual stress contributes to getting sick. the stress doesn't have to even be bad - getting married, getting a better paying job that you actually like, things like that contribute to the stress levels too, and thus to illness. just take a look at this test (i.e. only unfortunately, although you can print it and do the math that way) and see how you do. mine came out to 307. my kids' comes out to about to 244. i don't want to pessimistic about this, but i do want to be prepared. and, according to that, there's going to be quite a bit to prepare for!

i figure we won't actually get reasonably stable until early next year (which is only 1 1/2 months away!). then the two months the kids are out for summer will hit and we'll be minus my income for that time. but by then it shouldn't be too bad - everything will be caught up so it'll just mean tightening up the belt for a short time, then i start working again and we'll be back on track. it won't be like the last couple of years of scraping by. a few months i can deal with. there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

i've been trying to figure out how to deal with the mess we got into when unemployed and the "little" home things we need to take care of. i don't mean furniture, although there is that too (personally, i think we're fine for the moment - i want bookshelves, but other stuff cane wait if need be). we need little things like new frying pans (our teflon pans are currently minus the teflon), yard work tools. and there are the personal needs - clothes for example. my thoughts right now are to pay the smaller things first and leave all the larger debts, other than mcat, until i get all this tiny crap taken care of. then i can go up a little at a time. so take care of everything under $100, then take care of everything in the $100-$300 range, then take care of everything in the $500 range, and so on. it'll get more people off our backs quicker. the only wrinkle is when the school loans start coming due - i seriously doubt we qualify for deferments anymore. lol

well, i'll figure it out. first we have to get stable. after that it's just a mere matter of adjusting things as needed.

But for now, I need to go get dinner in the crockpot and take care of youngest. It'll be a writing day for sure, but I'm not home alone so I do have other things to take care of today.