%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |
How once woman went from being a SAHM of four to a published freelance science journalist |
|
I'm revising this intro after more than 15 years to better reflect my intention When I started this blog in 2004, I was a stay at home mom to two small children, a college graduate with a degree in English and Astrophysics. By 2007, I had four small children, ages newborn, 2, 4, and 6. For several years, Writing.com was how I kept my sanity. This blog began, first as a way of staying connected. Later, when I worked on a novel, I used it to stoke the writing fires as I plotted out short stories and the next step of my novel. Ultimately, I moved my writing preparation to "Invalid Item"  In 2010, I became a single mom who had homeschooled her children for several years. I had a 2, 4, 6 and 8 year old and had never had a "real" full time job, since I was married while in college. Everyone told me that I would have to buckle down and take on a "real" job. Instead, I decided to attempt to live my dream: to make it as a writer. I knew that if I didn't try then, I would never really dive in. I counted my money and set a deadline. If I hadn't began making a decent (defined) amount of money after so many months, I would suck it up and get a J-O-B. After some thought, I decided to play to my strengths. I served an internship at Sky & Telescope magazine while in college and enjoyed writing about space and astronomy. With an astrophysics degree, I thought I would be able to sell myself more easily, and a small niche should be easier to penetrate. It's been about ten years since I was first paid for an article on Space.com. In that time, writing - journalism - has been my primary moneymaker. I've often thought about setting up a blog on my website - www.astrowriter.com - but just haven't gotten around to it. There are a few things I would like to share for those who are interested in scientific journalism in general. Now that I'm back on WDC, there's no reason not to combine the two and use the site blog for that sort of interaction. There are certainly plenty of folks on this site interested in the publication process. So while I'll probably meander around some, that's the intention of of this blog: to share some of my struggles as a published journalist and to help answer oft-asked questions. |
| We were supposed to close on our house today. We have been excited about it for the last 45 days while we waited to close. Alas, it has fallen through. And the reason will probably surprise you. Our mortgage lender, Nations Home Funding, sent our paperwork through underwriting. We started getting worried on Monday when they were having issues, since our closing date was that Friday. As we drew closer to the end of the week, more and more problems appeared, until we finally came to one that proved insurmountable - a lack of guarantee. You see, my husband took a new job November of last year, a year ago next week. His W-2 for the position was obviously not high in terms of income (after only two months of employment). We provided two months worth of pay stubs to the finance company. We had also told them when we ran through the prequalification process that he had changed industries, was making more money, and had little in terms of income on his tax documents. Never was it stated that this would be a problem. Yesterday, Thursday, the day before we were supposed to close, the finance company contacted us with "the big one," the major problem that would keep us from closing. They wanted a guarantee. They wanted my husband's employer to guarantee that he would make so much a month for the next 12 months. They wanted it in writing. Well, of course this didn't happen. Would your boss give you that guarantee? As his supervisor stated, "What if you are injured and are on disability? If we have provided a guarantee in writing, we would be liable for your full income, not just the 60% of the disability portion." (On a side note, they said they would gladly state pretty much anything without a guarantee; they would say "He is on track to earn $y,000" or "We have enough work that he will likely earn $z,000/month." They just couldn't give a guarantee, and rightly so!) Personally, I would love a guarantee on a lot of things. Perhaps I should ask the finance company to guarantee that the house we were purchasing would go up x% in value over the next year. I mean, we could make it reasonable, based on the previous year's record (the same thing my husband's company would base his salary assurance on). Maybe I could ask my car insurance company to guarantee that I won't have a wreck. If I'm a really good negotiator, I could probably convince God to guarantee my kids will all live to a ripe old age and never touch drugs in their life. Come on! Maybe it's the recent mortgage scare that has prompted this problem. I certainly understand that the major employment changes that we made in the past year might make the financial backers hesitant. But to demand a guarantee is ludicrous! And to wait until the day before we are supposed to close is insane, not to mention poor planning on the business end by all parties! So if you are looking to buy a home, make sure your mortgage folks know that your employer probably won't give a guarantee. And if you are on the East Coast, stay FAR FAR away from Nations Home Funding. |
| Hello, I don't know what is wrong with me this week, but I'm in a BLECH state. Unfortunately for anyone who is still hanging in there, I get rid of the blechs best by writing, so here goes...blech dumping! Seriously, we are supposed to close on our new house on Friday...that is three days! The closer we get, the harder it gets to live in the motorhome. I don't know why. It just feels like this place is getting smaller and smaller. I don't want to do anything. I'm eating WAY too much chocolate... I'm also not thrilled with our post-closing plan. We are going to close, then drive 14 hours to Georgia, load up the moving truck, and come home. The plan is to load up the whole truck on Saturday, BUT we have to go to three places - my mom's house, my in-law's house, and then our storage unit. And we have to hit the house's first, because that is where the heavier furniture is. (Furniture that, in the case of my inlaws, I don't want, but that is apparently irrelevant to the situation.) We're going to church on Sunday, and then hoping to leave GA by Monday, maybe Tuesday. Maybe leave Monday and drive halfway. I don't know. Anyway, this time next week, I will either be IN my new house, or really stinking close. ARGH! I don't know if I can stand the wait! |
| Well, things have been a little hectic around here - but that is rather par for the course, isn't it? It has been a crazy year, living in a 36' motorhome with four children six and under. But there is change on the horizon! We are supposed to close on a house on October 26th. Two weeks and two days! It's hard to believe, I know. I'm not sure I do, myself. For fun, I sit around and imagine a huge empty house. Since we sold 99% of our stuff, it will be fairly uncluttered! DH wants to embark on a "pick up the cheap crap" kick, but I am not heading that way. I want to buy slowly - and with cash, after what we've gone through to get almost completely out of debt! - and get what we want. So we might take a few castoffs (like beds and a kitchen table), and then add the rest in slowly. DH is not excited about sitting on the floor, but them's the breaks. Once we have the last debt - a student loan - paid off, we can start looking at furniture. I am really hoping to be done by the end of the year, but that may take a miracle; still, the worst case is to be done by February. It sucks, though. We have paid off over $35k from April to the end of September. Now it will take us nearly that long do do just over $10k. But we'll be in a house. I can already imagine the difference a house will make. For one thing, it will be easier for me to slip away and write while my kids are awake and playing. I have been toying with an idea; a book of short stories. I know, short stories aren't huge hits. Mine is theme based, leaning towards LDS teens. I was considering doing a series but, well, let's just say it would have to be in 100 books. I'm not sure I want to spend quite that much on it (though it would be interesting to see!). Then again, I possibly could, if I could get that much interest. LOL. I'll probably hit the stories, though, and then go from there. (It would be a total of four collections of 25.) But the point is, I had this idea, and since then, I have been pretty much attacked with inspiration. For instance, I thought about basing my collection around one group of teens in a particular ward (that is church, to you non-LDS folks). Maybe ten kids. So in some stories, one teen would play a major part, but be more casual in others. That would keep it consistant, as well. So I've been thinking about the characters. Ultimately, I'd like to go back to a novel - I've had a couple other thoughts on those, believe it or not - but it's been awhile since I've done more than content writing, so I'll probably ease back in. That means that my "creation blog," "Invalid Item" by A Guest Visitor , will probably get more active, as well. I may even hit Muse's Alley for more contests, and do some more reading. But the majority of my free time, I plan to direct towards writing. I really miss it.Maybe the first thing I'll write you is a tour of my house... just kidding. I was going to post a link to an older real estate listing, but alas, it is off the net. We did get a great deal, though. The poor house had been on the market since December of '06, with no offers and few showings. We ended up picking it up well below asking price. In fact, it is only two years old; the people bought it, lived there less than a year, and then got transferred. So it is in fantastic shape. Unfortunately for them, we got it for about $10k less than they paid for it. If I had realized the housing market was going to take such a kick, I may have been able to hold out until our student loans got paid off (we would've been debt free except the motorhome before Thanksgiving) and gotten an even better deal. On the other hand, my 6 month old is turning into a crawling machine; we just don't have enough space to safely allow her to crawl. She's mostly stuck on our bed, poor thing. So I'm looking forward to that big empty house. Alright, just wanted to share. I'll be in and out still, but somewhere around the holidays, I should be back in to stay! And write! After a year of little to know creativity, I am raring to go! |
| Hi all! Sorry for the long delay, and, uh, thanks to anyone who still might be reading! Things have been their regular way - loopy - around here. The short summary: I was asked to teach (in a volunteer position) the youth in what we call Seminary. Traditionally, this is a class of teens that meets every day before high school (unless you are in Utah and it is part of your school day) and studies the scriptures. Since we are such a small church (branch), we meet only once a week. However, this takes a lot of time and prep and, since we are once-a-weekers, it includes homework! So I have been busy preparing for it. We started the Tuesday after Labor day, and have had two classes so far, with our third tomorrow. I think it is going great. The kids seem to really enjoy it, I'm having a blast, and I, at least, am learning a lot. We have a great group of youth. As part of my priority shift, I resigned as a blogger on families.com. It was just too much work while in a motorhome. I only have a very limited amount of freetime, and I knew I would need it for class preparation. So my time as a paid blogger ended with August. I am kind of up, kind of down about that. I enjoyed blogging, but it was very time intensive for not a ton of work. Also, since I really do want to be a SAHM - and one who homeschools - I feel a bit resentful towards something that takes me away from what I want to do. I wind up stressing about how many blogs I needed to write, got more snappy with my kids, stayed up too late, etc. I will have to think about whether or not to try something else in the future. In the meantime - we are closing on a house! We found a house we really like and decided to go ahead and do it. It is not the way we originally planned but we didn't want to do another winter in the motorhome. On top of that, my sweet little baby is 5 1/2 months and trying to crawl, and there just isn't room in the motorhome. Good reason to buy a house, eh? Not really. But most of the apartments around here also have the "benefit" (note the quotes) of being Section 8 housing. Yes, folks, what a neighborhood to live in. If we had gotten the closing date (60 days) we had asked for, we would've had everything paid off, or been maybe $2k away. Since it was bumped back to the end of October - October 26th - we may end up taking until Christmas to get everything paid off. Maybe not. I really hope not. I am watching for "magic money". LOL. (If you have any that you want to send, my address is....just kidding. Sort of.) Since April 1st, we have literally lived on next to nothing and paid off...<drumroll please> about $30,000 in debt. We have about $15,000 to go. (Sad, isn't it, that those numbers are so huge?) Mind you, we lived on nothing; people from our church kept "dropping by" with diapers and clothes for our kids. Which was very sweet of them! We have no more credit cards - they were "murdered" the last week of August. We will have the money for Michael's uncle gone by the end of September. At that point, we will have only the student loan (abt $11k) left. I am really hoping that we still can do some serious damage to the student loan before we close, but realistically, we will maybe only kill $4-6k, and only $6k if we are very fortunate AND I never see my husband AND we eat toe lint for the next month. Which I am seriously considering. Anyone have any toe lint recipes? After that, our payoff pace will slow down significantly, and it may be January before we are out of debt completely (other than the motorhome, which will have a FOR SALE sign as soon as we move in the house, and, of course, the house). We are planning to have the house paid off in about 14 years, though depending on college funding, it may take a little longer. It should definitely be gone in 20 years AT THE MOST. And that's assuming that we don't get any raises at all. At the same time, we will be seriously funding retirement. My dad thought "budget" was synomous with "living on beans and rice for the next 20 years," so let me assure you that such is not the case. I ran a very tentitive monthly budget that included extras such as vacation money (in addition to his regular vacation pay), lessons for the kids, date nights, and the like. We did have to make the decision to go from putting 15% into retirement down to 10%, which means retiring with "only" about $4 million worst case instead of $8 million worst case. That's rough. We'll try to scrape by. LOL. So, there you go. Our purty purty house. Nice and big, with four bedrooms, so we'll dump the two girls in one room, two boys in the other, and keep one for homeschooling. Huge master, big bathroom with a jacuzzi tub (I would've been fine with just a garden tub) and skylight over the tub (I can't wait for my tub!), big kitchen, nice stairs, and dh's two favorites: garage and basement. And an extra building out back. We got a pretty good price on so large a house because the lot is...unique...but we plan to spend some time over the next ten years gradually landscaping (with cash). That should make it more appealing when we go to sell. Alright, I'd better go. I can still hear my kids. I'll probably be busy until we get into the house (and maybe for a bit afterwards), but I'll try to touch back in. PS I did have a good series idea from my Seminary class....one day I will have to work on that one! |
| I don't know what's wrong with me lately. It's not like anything is really going badly, but I think I am just really struggling with postpartum. My husband is gone a lot, he is working so hard with the goal of us getting out of debt. I really want to get there. We found a house this weekend that we really liked (we are looking so we get a feel for the market, so we don't repeat past mistakes when we go to buy), and we knew it was a good deal, but I didn't want to buy it til we were debt free. Besides the mantra, buying now would seriously slow us down on the debt snowball, and we are going to take out another credit card on Saturday, when the check clears. I am really excited. We will have no more credit cards by about August, and then all that will be left are the student loans and a family loan. We are so close I can literally taste it. It took a long time to motivate dh to work so hard to get the debts going, and I don't want to slow him down. On the other hand, I feel like I am in a fog. It's not an all day in bed thing - I struggled a lot immediately after Candy was born. Now, when I feel like not getting out of bed, I linger a bit until I finally convince myself to get up, and then the kids and I walk to the park. The walking does a lot for me. And the kids burn a lot of energy. Both are good things. I am just having a hard time keeping track of what day is when, or really caring about things outside of the immediate. I take care of the kids, read to them, play with them, but I have a hard time getting hte things I need to get finished done. Like, stuff for church. I don't even have a lot to do, mostly make phone calls, but I am out of it. And tired. I just feel worn out, and I am slipping into a "hey, notice me" phase. Like, my visiting teachers. The way our church is set up, all of the women are supposed to have a pair of women come over and visit once a month. At the same time, each woman has a partner and the two of them go visit several women once a month. In reality, not everyone keeps it at a high priority. It is a priority to me, because I think it is important and I've seen it make changes. But somehow, I never get visiting teachers who think it is important. My VTs came over once in March and took me out to breakfast - very nice. They have not been back since. And I did tell them that I always struggle with postpartum. In fact, speaking to one of them a few weeks ago, she said, see, you haven't had any problems, and I said, yes, I have. But still no one has come to see me. I need to stop mopeing and focusing on me, not be so ego-centered. I know this. But it's hard. I'm struggling already, and I'm trying to be a better mother and not yell and lose my temper (because I have a bad temper and I come from a situation where I was emotionally abused), and my husband is working 12 hour days 6 days a week, and sometimes gone. Like, this week. He left sunday night and came back tonight. He is leaving tomorrow morning and he should be back Thursday night. I couldn't go with him for the first half of the week like I had planned because I had a meeting today, and I can't take the motorhome the second half because he will be in NYC. New York City and a motorhome? I don't think so. So I am struggling alone with the kids. And I have told my visiting teachers this, and still, nothing. So, having just read QBQ (a book about personal accountability), the question to ask is NOT 'why won't someone show me they care?' or 'why won't they come visit me?'. What I need to ask myself is: -What can I do to get rid of the postpartum? -How can I get organized so I don't forget things like meeting dates and doctor's appointments? (I missed both my 6 week checkup and the baby's appointment because I forgot them) -How can I relieve stress on my husband so that he doesn't wind up grouchy the few hours he is home? I am going to be proactive. |
| Things are, as usual, chaotic here. One day, I promise to submit for publication again - you know, the way this blog is titled. But it will definitely have to be after we get out of the motorhome. Right now, the only time I don't have kids hanging on me is, well, right now. That means that bedtime is the only time I get to: relax read write study scriptures pray oh yeah, and sleep But I am slowly developing a routine. I am getting a little more rest, and am not as worn out as I was right after Candy was born. This week, I've managed to get the baby, my four year old, and my two year old all to sleep at the same time. My almost-six year old (less than a month!) reads on the couch, and I flip up the laptop and get an hour and a half, give or take, to blog for families.com. This week, I've hit 3-4 blogs in the afternoon and, except for tonight, another two at night. I probably should go ahead and do two more, actually, or at least one. I am on track for three blogs every day this week, Monday through Saturday; I only have to write one more for Saturday and then edit the Week in Review blog to be updated (it lists all blogs published up until this morning, but will ultimately include them through Saturday). If I can keep up that habit, I will be way ahead of the game. I will be on target for the max number of blogs (75) this month. That means a whopping $300 paycheck. So I need to stay ahead of the game. I really should go back and work on my blogging, since I don't have anything set up for next week, but I'm sort of enjoying the down time. Then again, I may go ahead and chill out today, and then hit the deck again tomorrow. If I write 6 blogs tomorrow, that will cover most of the surface blogs for the week. What I'm doing, if you haven't looked (the link is at right, c'mon, you know you want to!) is writing one 'everyday subject' blog each day. I even have some themes going. M-W is pretty much a free for all, but then Thursday is my 'funny' day, Friday I review a General Conference talk (from the leaders of the church) from the past (anywhere from five to seventy years ago), and Saturday is the 'freebie' week in review. Then, the other two are based on the lessons we have at church. See, the entire church, worldwide, pretty much has the same lesson plan for Sunday School and then for the men and women's group (Relief Society and Elder's Quorum). I am a nerd and always try to read the lesson beforehand as part of my scripture study, and I also take notes as I read. So I have turned my studying for the day into a blog. Hmm, cashing in the scripture study. Could that be a bad thing? Then again, it keeps me motivated, and I really do enjoy it and did it before I blogged it, so it's not like I'm hitting the surface. Besides, I enjoy doing a little more in depth study. Incidentally, the Sunday School (Gospel Doctrine) lesson this year is on the New Testament, so even if you aren't LDS, feel free to stop by and read. Heck, feel free to stop by and read anyway! And comment. I feel so unloved over there...just kidding. Sort of. If I can keep up with that, then I am going back to my contest writing, also content, and see if I can pick up some more Amazon.com gift certificates. We are on a super-tight budget right now, but if I can get some of those, I can have some 'fun' spending. Right now, I have $80 in GCs. I will definitely be getting the new Harry Potter book, and am looking at a laminator for homeschooling. In fact, I will probably be purchasing more stuff for HSing. Which will be cool. Okay, I am going to play a game. Yup, not blog, play. I actually already have 18 blogs written up to Saturday. Keep me on the ball, cuz I need that $300! PS On our getting out of debt plan - we have paid just under $10k since April first. We are living on just the rice, not even beans and rice, and putting practically everything on the debt! Okay, we had a little bit in savings, but not much. We are on target for having all of the credit cards gone by early September, and I am still hoping to get rid of the rest before Christmas! |
| Hey, all, just thought I'd drop a few lines. I'm fighting a blue funk at present, not sure why. I had a good week, spent a lot of time on the road, but today was just an awful day. Not hugely bad or anything, but I spent the whole morning looking for stuff - paperwork for dh's job (that he needed to get paid), my cell phone, reciepts for dh's job (that he needed to get paid) - and it just made for a rotten start. Then I was trying to scan the found reciepts but had no luck at making them legible, which really ticked me off; I spent an hour playing with the light and dark and got nowhere. I finally quit because I had a meeting to go to, and dragged the kids out with no shoes and with no lunch (we were going to a 4 person meeting at church and we grabbed BK on the way). Talk about frazzled and frustrated! Courtesy of said meeting, I have even more work to do, and no idea how to accomplish it. I thought I might grab a few minutes here just to blog, but my sweet new baby wants me to hold her all the time, even when she's sleeping, so she woke up. I have to practice disengaging from her without waking her. I thought I had it. And I really shouldn't be blogging; I should be working on some of the zillions of things to do. But I don't really feel like it. One of the things on my fun fun to do list is to scan my kids birth certificates and fax them in so they can get health insurance. You know what, I can do that while I blog. <scurries over to find said certificates> Look at that, I am so talented that they are all scanning as I speak. Then I can fax them over and cross the whole thing off my to do list. Woo-hoo, I am so good! That should get dh off my back; he keeps saying, "Don't fall kids; if you break your arm, you don't have insurance" and shooting me nasty looks. Stinker. Still trying to figure out the whole motorhome thing. We were crunching numbers and are wondering how smart it is now with escalating gas prices. Stupid pain in the backside. Of course, now I've misplaced the person I am supposed to fax the information to. What a day. Things like this make me wonder why I try sometimes. Now I have to play with efax. By the way, my stress relief is disappearing. I'm thinking about taking a shower, but we are almost out of water, and dh will get extra snipey if I use the last of it and he can't shower tomorrow. I'm thinking about walking over to the bathhouse but that is a five minute walk and I'm not sure. On the plus side, the water heater there is bigger than our puny six gallons - or is it 8? Whatever. All the hot water is used in less than 10 mts. So it might be worth it. But then I have to get dressed. I'm trying to convince myself that I will really get up at 6:30 and run in the morning. What do you think? I was planning to this morning but wound up staying up til after midnight and so didn't. But if I go to bed in the next little bit, I might make it. Maybe. Part of the reason for my stress is that the whole motorhome is a mess. And I am the only one who cleans. I bring dh his socks to match because he is anal about the shades of white (not yell at me anal, just, gosh this isn't matched anal) and he says "well these have no mate" and leaves them on the bed. Which becomes the floor. In a 36 foot motorhome, that is not a working plan. I'm going to start throwing them away. I am about ready to pitch everything out the window. I am having to fight over the stupid efax now so I'd better go. See what happens when I get proactive? This sucks. |
| Can you imagine life going as planned? I didn't realize my dh's first job for next week is 600+ miles away, one way. That is a long car ride! And not so good for motorhome mileage. It looks like we are taking the car and towing the second, although I'm thinking we might be better off to just take one car; still, I hate only having one car. If I hadn't promised the kids we would go to the Joseph Smith Memorial at his birthplace this week (and if it weren't for the fact that my birthday is Wednesday and I'd like to have dh around), I'd seriously consider staying home. Either way, we are going to hit three jobs in the first 2-3 days, then dh will drive out to the rest of them from "home base". I thought we were done with hotels and here we go. Grrr. Of course, he doesn't usually drive so far north; he's covering for another guy whose wife just had a baby. Note: other guy didn't cover for dh last month when we had a baby, grumble, grumble. |
| Hi everyone! I thought I would drop in and leave some information. Mostly just to let you know that I am still alive, but also to let you know what is up. We are still living in the motorhome. In fact, next week, we are going to hit the road. We spent this winter at a single campsite after a car wreck freaked me out about driving in the ice and snow (did you know that PA is COLD?!), and then we were in the six-weeks-before-the-due-date-so-don't-travel-range, followed by the postpartum recovery range (more on that later). This is a pretty cool campsite, and I think we are going to go ahead and purchase a seasonal lot, which basically means that we are going to have a lot for a year. We had talked about a storage shed, and this doesn't run much more than that. We are also planning to base out of here, which means that we'll be coming back frequently. I think I calculated it up to just under $55/week, so if we camp here just one day a week, we're pretty much break-even (albeit on the high side); we'll be doing that at least for Saturday nights so we can go to church at the same church almost every week. I really like the playground here, and all in all it's a good site. Anyway, we are going to be driving around the northeast starting Monday. We are driving up to northern New York - the GPS thinks we oughta cut through Canada! - and northern Vermont, then back down around NYC. We had a baby! On April 9th, we had a little girl, Candice Marie, aka Candy. 8 lbs 14.5 oz, 20 inches, and my second biggest out of our four kids, despite coming the day before her due date (and the doctor told me she would be the smallest!). An easy delivery - no joke, two pushes and she was out - with very few problems. I *did* have a spinal headache following my epidural, and wound up getting what they call a 'blood patch', basically a second epidural. I stayed in the hospital an extra day by choice; they said they could do it on an outpatient basis. Otherwise, no major problems. Candy is adjusting fine, and her brothers and sister are adjusting well to her. I am still trying to get the hang of balancing four kids under the age of six, but doing fairly well (I think). We've been going to the park pretty much every day (they have a great playground at this motorhome, one of the reasons I love it), which is great for avoiding postpartum. She sleeps through nearly everything the kids throw at her. Including my 2 year old son incessently kissing and hugging on her. She is a very good, very laid-back baby. I'm still writing for families.com. I slacked off for awhile, but I am trying to get back up to three blogs a day. If I can manage that, I can earn $300/month, which is great, but really tough with the four kids. I have about twenty blogs - one a day - written in advance right now so that I at least hit the minimum, but I am writing two based on my scripture study, so those are written on a daily basis. I keep meaning to post the blog link off to the side, under the 'offsite blogs' link; I'll try to do that today. For now, if you want to read them, you can click on: http://members.families.com/scottiegazelle/blog Feel free to stop by (frequently), since I get a percentage based on views along with my writing income! Finally, we are still on our Dave Ramsey get-out-of-debt plan. We were on hiatus while we were pregnant, per Dave's suggestions, but we are finally on the way to paying stuff off. We've paid off $5953.19 since April 1st; that includes paying off TWO credit cards! I am anticipating the next credit card dying a brutal death in mid-June, and all of the cards gone by late August, mid-September at worst. Everything but the motorhome should be gone by Christmas. Then we'll save up some money and either buy a house or rent and save, depending on how long we think we'll stay in Pennsylvania 'til then. At that point, we'll sell the motorhome. If we wind up paying for a year in this park, we'll probably continue to travel (and save money) until this time next year. Right now, with dh working his backside off, we are basically living on about $1k/month and throwing everything else to the debt. He is working and planning to work 6 12-hour days at least until the credit cards are gone. He is really tired but really driven. Alright, off to dinner. Talk to you later! |
| Has it really been so long since I've blogged over here? I guess that is to be expected. We have, of course, moved, and I am finding Pennsylvania significantly colder than Georgia (also to be expected). Right after we moved, we went back to Georgia for Christmas, so we are still sort of 'settling' into our habits, despite living outside of Atlanta for nearly two months. And, of course, along with everything else, I am blogging on families.com. I am the LDS Family blogger. I started off rather slow, with the holidays and all, but I have been fairly consistantly turning out three blogs a day for the last week or so. Not only that, but I have even scheduled one blog a day a good week ahead. This is because I know I am going to go MIA, and I would frankly like to be a full month in advance at that point. That will be a challenge, but I have two months to do it, and I managed to get a week extra worth of blogs out this week, so we'll see. Here is the link to read my blogs. http://members.families.com/scottiegazelle/blog I'd love to have some feedback, although I know I am probably quite undeserving, as much as I have been absent around here. Nobody ever comments <sniffs in self-pity> over there; well, rarely. I'm trying to decide how much folks are reading. The other blogger - who is pregnant and due fairly soon, I think - has gone MIA this week, so I'm interested in seeing how we rank at the end of the week with just me. Anyway, I will try to do a better job of posting job opportunities over here for folks looking to blog. In the meantime, I have to go make lunch; I just wanted to check in with you. I might even come back and tell you about how we completely totaled our van on Monday night; thankfully, no one was hurt even a little - not even whiplash. But for now, the PB&J beckons.... |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
