Saying Goodbye to the Corporate World

A week ago on Friday was the last day of my full time job as a Software Engineer at GE Aviation. HOLY COW, YES-I-DID-JUST-QUIT-MY-JOB!!!!!!!!!!!  It's been such a surreal head trip, I haven't had a chance to really process it or sit down and write about it until just now. This wasn't really officially planned or thought out very well... it was a decision made more on emotion, than logic... The "smart" thing would have been to:

a) finish our home renovations
b) move
c) sell our current home
d) move the kids into the newer (much more affordable daycare in our new area) and work for another year so that we could begin to pay off the large amounts of credit card debt we are quickly racking up.

But I decided that I just didn't want to. I wanted to stop working.

So I put in my 2 weeks and resigned. It's insane really, but I want to throw financial caution to the wind and be a stay at home mom and the sooner the better. After years of praying about it, my husband is finally on board. I know there will be a lot of lifestyle changes. We eat out all the time. We buy most of the groceries and misc. household items that we need (want) without really a second thought or discussion. We don't have a tight regulated budget. We are going to have to figure out how to live off of less than 1/2 of the income we are accustomed to. I'm not exactly sure how we are going to make this work... but there is no turning back now.  (OK, well, I do know actually, and that is with Epic Withdrawals from my 401k plan and a lot of prayer, that is how.) I'm also going to have to figure out how to be WAYYYYY more domestic than I am now... and that, my friends, is a scary thought, but I am really excited about learning. I'm going to have to develop a heck of a lot more patience when interacting with my children also, so I'll have to take that day by day. I'm going to have to cook and clean and all that stuff that does not come easy to me.  I'm about as opposite of a "Martha Stewart" type as they come...

Right now I feel very humbled and extremely blessed to have my family's support in making this very huge transition in my life. I want to thank every blog reader who ever said a prayer for me when I needed it. (And there were many times when I really needed it!) Thanks to every family member and friend (Nova and Lisa) who listened to me complain for hours about my job stress.  Thanks to a few amazing co-workers (Barb and Char) who sent me off with kind words and the perfect parting gift, and for my Spiritual Encouragement group (Pat, Mike, Jim, Mike, John, and the rest of the gang) who prayed over me for "success" in my new "job" and gave me a very touching card.

And most of all, thank you to my husband, James. You are my best friend. I love you! I know I am a very lucky woman to have you and thank you for putting up with all my crap.

Anyway, the coolest part of all this was coming home last week to a "surprise party" my husband and kids put together for me.

SURPRISE!!!

I mean, how can much better can life get than walking home to a welcome like this???

My kids don't know what they are in for...

Check out my cool sign!

And I even got an Ice Cream Cake! :-)

Thanks for reading my blog. I hope you all enjoy your 4th of July weekend with family and good friends. God Bless!

 



Two lines of GOOD NEWS

A completely 100% ALL CLEAR night for thorough lice checking the entire household. Woo Hoo!!!

We were finally able to get to CONFESSION last Saturday!!! FINALLY!!! Thank You, God!

The best remedy for self-treatment of Lice

Two posts ago I lamented about finding a head full (and I do mean a head full) of lice in my daughter's hair. It has been a rough week, folks... Going through all the "traditional" treatments... The NIX shampoo, the lice combs, the rosemary essential oils preventative shampoo, handpicking out every single lice egg I could find... I think I've already spent over $200 on specialty lice removal items. My goodness.. changing everyone's sheets daily... combing out every strand of hair, cleaning like a mad woman, it's just all a bit much, after a 10 hour work day. At last things are getting better. We are having "Lice Wars" to see if we can find any evidence on any of the kids' heads at night time bath. 1 point for a nit, 2 points for a nymph, and 3 points for a fully grown bug. (It's the game you really want to lose, trust me.)  I search and search and after very thorough nit-picking, I can usually spot one egg and/or one baby lice on a head. Now I really freaked out after finding a single bug on the baby's head! (We are still co-sleeping.) Great, yes, I checked myself and found a microscopic bug and a nit or two. I was so thoroughly disgusted. I just don't have time for this! It's gross. And you want to hear something crazy??? I washed my daughter's down comforter that was quarantined after the initial finding... and had stuck it in the dryer to "kill any remaining eggs" it was ever-so-slightly damp when I pulled it out, so I spread it out and left it on top of the dryer to air dry. In the middle of the night, I went down to put in another load of clothes, and when I flipped on the light I saw what must of been a dozen lice crawling around on this white comforter. What the .... ? I have no idea where they came from (did the eggs hatch after taking them out of the dryer or did they crawl off the other clothes from my daughters' hamper?) Who knows. I put everything in garbage bags and tied them up and I am still trying to wash and vacuum, wash and vacuum, and not caught up yet.

As if that is not enough, today at work I was in the ladies room, and I glanced down on the linoleum floor.. and... I saw a small little bug the size of a pin point.. I had to focus to see it, and I recognized it right away, as a single louse crawling around in a circle on the bathroom floor.. whoa.. this was there before I walked in, so it wasn't from me... I am just paranoid now that these guys are everywhere. Please be on the lookout! I cannot be alone in dealing with this.

Anyway, of all the crazy remedies, this is the cheapest and was extremely effective for self treating myself. I found this on the Internet and it really works! Here is what you do...   Wet your hair with hot water. Douse your hair with baby oil... work it in everywhere and saturate your entire head with it. Get a high quality inexpensive vinyl shower cap and put it over your hair. I put this on and let it sit for several hours. The heat from your head combined with the oil with suffocate the lice. After a few hours, you can remove the cap, and sit down in the shower and begin to comb out your hair with a lice comb. It will be extremely easy to comb out because of the baby oil. Any bugs or eggs just slide right out effortlessly. I would comb once and then wipe with a tissue to check for any evidence, then repeat until I have touched every hair on my head at least a few times. Once you feel that you have gone over everything, wash your hair normally with shampoo to get out all the oil. The added bonus is that your hair will be extra soft because of the baby oil "conditioning treatment". This worked better than using the harsh chemicals and the bottle of NIX. I'm posting this, not to gross you all out, which I probably already did, but in case you ever have to deal with this, you will have an inexpensive and safe alternative for dealing with these horrible bugs. Hopefully, you will not need to!

My biological clock is still ticking...

Well, 2 days ago, I was really surprised when I started my cycle again. I guess I should have expected it, but it's been a very very long time since I've had a period. (Only 1 in the last 4 years). Actually after the surprise wore off and I scrambled for a quarter to hit up the machine in the ladies room... I felt a sense of relief that it actually arrived! I'm going to be 39 very very soon.. and while this is still young (kind of, er, well, maybe not.. ), And I'm just sitting here wondering where the time has gone and where it is going. The past year I've had some health issues.. mostly minor, but annoying. My under active thyroid is getting worse, I have gained weight, my energy level is not so good.  Back in April I started experiencing really strange new pains in my hips. I tried to tell myself that it was because of carrying my heavy 1-year old on the sides of my hips too much, but it just felt more like... arthritis starting to set in. It hurt and ached almost every day for a month and a half. Wonky things were going on with my body, I felt nauseous one day and actually ran to the drug store to take a pregnancy test. (negative.) My sciatic nerve was so painful another day that I was afraid to hold my baby while walking.
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Now I'm looking back and wondering if some of this wasn't just my old worn out body kicking itself back into gear for ovulation, and having a hard time getting going? Who knows. But I'm filled with ambivalence about getting pregnant. Of course, I also feel like my window of opportunity is quickly closing, and I've safely waited the 2 year mark that I needed for healing after my recent C-Section so there is no really good reason to stop this from happening.  No time like the present, right? Besides the fact that we own 3 houses at the moment and are in a state of turmoil and flux and I want to quit my job! And the fact that my husband moved into the spare room because I've been working such late hours and keeping him up with my typing on the computer. Who knows what will happen, I just have to trust God on this one, which has worked well for us in the past. I only hope I can physically and mentally handle "it" and everything "it" comes with - good and bad, if something does indeed happen in the future. And if our family is complete now, well, I think that would be OK also, almost relieving in a way, but would make me a little sad also. 

Anyway, just musing about all this.. nearing 40 and all.. geesh... it has its own special set of problems and concerns. So it's nice to know I'm not alone.  

Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite

We have been working very hard on getting our new home "ready" to begin moving into it. A lot needs to be done. Installing a mailbox, new carpet, painting, cleaning, scrubbing, power-washing, electrical work, carpentry work, siding repair, concrete repair, septic pumping, and the list goes on and on. We've been driving out to the country several times a week after work to check up on things and get started. It's taking a toll on everyone, and every time we go, we don't get home until late and the kids are up way past their bed time.  I'll try and take some pictures eventually and post them because we are going to do a complete transformation on this house so I want to capture some "before and afters". I signed up for Angie's List. So far it has been an awesome $20 well spent. We have found some great contractors from recommendations on the site, and it is so valuable to read the feedback and see the ratings. I wish I would have known about this years ago, it could have saved us a lot of trouble.

Last night we drove out to the house to check up on the (new and better) painters from Angie's List. They were an excellent choice! 1000% more professional than the last crew that stole my paint. (We decided they were not going to be doing any more work for us.) I picked a gray color for my house.. actually.. a cross between a gray and a beige.. apparently this is the "new" thing.  It's called "Greige"... The color I picked is Sherwin William's Perfect Greige. 

Do you want to see it?

 

After we got home last night, the kids were exhausted. They were so dirty from playing outside, I had to give them baths even though it was 2 hours past bedtime. That is when I found a whole head full of lice on my oldest daughter's head. Ewww yuck! :-) My 3 year old had a few of 'em too.. Let's just say, I spent almost 3 hours last night trying to de-lice the kids and I'm going to have to probably do it again just to be sure I got them all. My daughter's hair is so thick and brown it is extremely hard to see and get to them. It was no easy task. Poor kids... I feel terrible for not noticing earlier.  Lauren said she wanted to go to school and tell her best friend all about it. She loves nature. Aren't kids funny? I suggested she keep this one to herself, so people don't start making fun of her. Now I am wondering if home-schooled children have to deal with this? Perhaps, but I doubt it.

Thanks for reading my blog!

A thought on the virtue of temperance in speech

In my Last Post I talked about my new prepaid wireless plan. It's interesting to me how this new cell phone plan is causing me to think closely about my conversations. Since I spend a lot of time driving in my car (over 2 hours a day) I listen to Catholic radio or often will call either my husband, or my sister, or a girlfriend. Sometimes these conversations are deep, sometimes they have important purpose, like checking up on a friend in need, discussing evening plans with my husband, or solving some kind of problem, but sometimes they are just a waste of time... idle talk about nothing of great substance. Now that my minutes are depleting from a set amount that I can track easily, and I'm trying to save money, I realized that I don't want to "waste" my time on meaningless conversation. I'm thinking about saving my words for important things. I'm thinking about Ephesians 4:29:  Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.

Saving money on cell phones

It's time for a quick post. Nothing earth shattering here... Just another attempt to cut costs in my household and I'm exciting about my new "find". We cancelled our home phone a while back. (We use "dry loop" DSL-only for our Internet connection which costs about $30 / month.) We do not have cable. My husband and I each carry a cell phone with unlimited data coverage and a shared minute pool and we have an extra phone on this plan for my mother in law to use in case of an emergency. We use Verizon because the coverage is so great in our neighborhood, and it's also good in all of the rural areas that we travel to frequently. All of our family is on Verizon and we like the "free" mobile-to-mobile concept.

Anyway, our bills have been gradually getting out of control. Like $185 / month for these 3 phones! And we don't really even come near our cap of 1400 shared minutes with the nights and weekends and mobile to mobile. I have to pay 10 cents for each text message and seems like people are texting with greater frequency just to say "hello" and this has been racking up. The monthly fee for standard service is expensive. The additional data for the two of us is $60 more... So I've been researching a ton and have finally decided to go with a prepaid service. I decided on Page Plus Cellular. It is run on the Verizon network, so our smart phones will still work, email still works, and everything is basically the same as before. We can keep our existing Verizon phones and our same phone number and port in for free, with no activation costs. All I needed to do was to pay for the first PIN card with my credit card, and will have to do this every month (or get set up on the automatic renewal, which I plan to do soon.) The best part about all of this...? I put my husband and myself on a $29.95 / month plan that includes 1200 minutes of talk, 3000 texts, and 250 MB of data. I'm in the process of setting up my mother in law with a $10 card with 100 minutes that will last for 120 days and I'll fill her up every 4 months. This strategy is going to save us over $110 a month, for a total of less than $60 per month plus the ~ $3.00 monthly average for my mother in law.  And now I can accept text messages without worry. I'm loving this new set up and just wanted to put it out there. It had never even occurred to me that prepaid wireless was a viable option until last week.

What about you? How many cell phones are in your family and are you happy with how things are going?