Snarke

Today I am Proud and Grateful

Today I realized that I am coming up on my one year of being "on my own" financially.  Which makes me sound about 19 years old.  What I mean to say is "freelancing without a net." 

After leaving the day job I was able to get unemployment and Oregon has this great program for people who want to go into business for themselves--it allowed me to receive my six months of unemployment payments while building my freelance business instead of spending all of my time searching for a job.  It's called the Self Employment Assistance Program and without it, I'd probably be a coffee pusher again by now. It also helped that for the first four months of my unemployment we were living very cheaply while Will made quite a nice living working for a water delivery company.  Think what you will about your water delivery person but Will was up to $14/hr before we moved.  That works out to quite a bit of extra money to cover expenses while I was getting started. 

I am incredibly lucky to have had the opportunities that I have had this past year and probably luckier to have had a fiance who would rather sell a kidney than see me give up this dream I've got. 

I already wrote my "oh my god its been a year" post before I did the re-launch of this site, but it hit me that holy crap I've been self sufficient for a year.  And that? Is kind of amazing. 

Now it is going to be my turn to step up and be the supporter of my little family of two (and a half if you count the cat) and I'm not afraid of the challenge.  Instead I feel like sort of maybe a little bit I can do it.

397 Days and Other Important Information

Oh my God! I suck! Here is some important information that I forgot to blog about: Today is my neice's 16th birthday.  Seriously.  This whole her growing up thing? Should not be allowed. So Will and I have finally set a date for the wedding.  It is looking like September 12 of next year.  I was thinking about putting up one of those big glittery countdown things that you see all the time on Myspace, but in the end I decided not to.  I'm still not sure if I decided not to because those things are gaudy or because having one on my blog would FREAK ME OUT. So yep.  With any luck, in 397 days I'll be married! And my neice? Is 16. 16! It's Outrageous!

Sleeping In

Yesterday and today I took full advantage of the whole "hey, I work freelance! I can totally go back to bed!" thing. See, in our house, we set the alarms for whatever time Will needs to be up (today it was six in the morning (and yes, it was hell on toast trying to wake up that early) oh my god I just did a parenthetical statement inside a parenthetical statement!) because Will sleeps through his alarm. He puts it on the radio setting and sets it to the butt rock station and turns the volume up to eight and a half and do you know what happens? Every morning I am blasted out of bed by the sound of some backward wannabe Kurt Cobain incarnate screeching and growling and Will? Snores on. He doesn't hear it and swears that his alarm is broken. What does wake him up? My very very pointy elbows and fingers jabbing him repeatedly in the ribs while I scream "shut that fracking thing off! shutitoffshutitoffshutitoffshutitoffshutitoff!" And of course, by that time I am very awake (it's hard not to be awake with the jabbing being done as violently as possible). And, of course, every morning as I am hunched on the couch and growling about how I would eat him if I could just to never have to hear that damn alarm again, he says "you don't have to get up with me, I mean, I appreciate it and everything, but you should go back to bed. You look so tired." Once in a while (like on the six in the morning days) I will go back to sleep for an hour or two to save my mood. Usually though, I just stay up and use the time to be all productive and stuff. This week though? This week I have gone back to bed with relish and slept until eleven. Oh yeah, I slept in until eleven for two weekdays. And do you know what is sad? That this will probably be the "stupid thing I do before I'm 30 so that I can blame it on still being in my 20s." How lame is that? My final act of rebellion? Is sleeping in. There are geeks who were rejected from CW reality shows for being too geeky who are shaking their heads at me right now and saying "not even I am that lame." But wow, I'm well rested.