catch up

It is hard to believe that I have been a year without Bijou. I had thought about getting a new dog in the spring, even went to the pet shelter to look. I decide that this would not be a good time because of the expense. I still think about him a lot. For the past few months, I have been doing pet sitting to make some extra income. I would catch myself calling the dogs Bijou or other pet names I used with him.

Let me tell you what has been going on for the past 6 months since my last post. I have been on the fence about career opportunities. The Lord works in mysterious ways. He has provided for my needs. I found CEO Fellowship a local group that is training business leaders to think of their business as a mission field. It has me thinking that my next opportunity could be having my own consulting firm. I have been taking workshops with SBA and score to learn more about starting a business.

My unemployment runs out this week. A few weeks ago, I was trying to figure out what I should do to replace this income. I started to make a list of local colleges and tech schools to contact about teaching. The first call I made was to ITT. They had just posted the day before a position for an adjunct instructor for drafting and design. For my interview, I had to make a 5 minute presentation to the Dean, Department Chair and a couple of other folks. I made my presentation the week after applying for the position and was immediately hired for 3 courses. Thank you Lord. Each course meets once a week. So for 1.5 days a week for 11 weeks plus prep for classes I am getting a 1k more than what unemployment paid for 3 months. That will pay my monthly main expenses. Now I need to put something together to cover yearly expenses. Praying nothing major medical, transportation or house maintenance issues occur.

I was wondering why my path was leading to being at home instead of working full time for someone else. Mother has been having a real bad time with back pain. We have been spending a lot of our days at Doctors, testing and in the hospital. 4 epidurals, hearing aids, a stint in the hospital for what they thought was pneumonia. The epidurals removed the initial back pain, but another area flared up and so far nothing has relieved this pain which seems to be worse than all the others. Now, she has a hard time standing or walking for more than 5 minutes. Otherwise, she is in good health, but spirits are down and indicates she does not know what she is going to do if she can't get some relief. This weekend We had the talk regarding alternative living arrangements. She has just been trying to make it to her 83rd birthday. Her family history is 82nd year is a expiration date.

Last week, the mastermind group showed a DVD complied by Dents Research Foundation. Very scary material presented indicating that there is a 80 year cycle for an a major economic depression. The research indicates that this cycle is about to come to pass as all the individual cycles are peaking and coinciding for a perfect storm. To expect development by 2010 and to last 13-15 years. McMasions are dead and if you are looking to sell to sell before the end of 2009. The DVD was make at the end of 2007. The things they said to look for in 2008 have been on target.

I started thinking about what we have to do in the event that this were to be true. Basically my Mother and I would probably combine households like her family did in the Great Depression that occurred when she was a growing up. So I presented to her this info and along with her present disablilities asked her to consider moving to my house for me to take better care of her daily needs, since I probably going to be working from home with my own consulting business. We could batten down the hatches for the potential depression. She did not say no and she did not say yes, yet. When we have previously discussed this she would say no pretty quickly.

The house is pretty good shape for her to be better off here. My house is one level, and big rooms to have a sitting area for her separate from the areas that I have been using. The shower I put in a few years ago would be better than her using her tub at her house and my one level is better than having two levels to deal with at her house. She could do as much daily acitivies as she wanted and as I do things for myself I can do her things.

We do need to consider things to do to make it easier to get into the house so she is not so house bound. She still drives and I had already been thinking about doing something in the future with putting in a turnaround drive off the front of the house and bring the drive to the back drive way where the carport is. The back porch will need to be raised and add a ramp to allow her easy access to the back door which is used the most. She likes to sit out on the porch in nice weather. The hearing aids has made it easier for us to communicate, but she is struggling with accepting she needs to wear them.

In the meantime, I am praying for direction as to what I am suppose to be doing for God's Plan for me and now for Mother. Right now I have a peace that I am to be flexible and in preparation for the next part of the plan and that he will provide for our needs.

I have been doing job interviews. There has been great interest then financial package is presented and we are not on the same page. This is suppose to the time in my career to be making the most and to negotiate for less than max potential will be setting up for not meeting the end if career income needed for retirement.

Well it is late and need to put this to bed. This posting was not on my to-do list for the long weekend. I have a closet full of clothes that I need to get ready to take to Ladies of Charities consignment. All these clothes are too big for me now. Yeah. Over past 3 years, I have dropped somewhere in the vicinity of 75 pounds. Now, I am on this side of what some might call average. I would like to drop another 25, to get to lower body fat and that would probably get me to the far side of a 9/10. 8 is the smallest I recall being for a few months. I had given up on that along time ago. Today, I did get into a 11/12 party dress that I do not recall being in for 15 years.