This week

This has been a brutally hard week.  That is what I tell people when they ask how I am doing.  I don’t say I am fine or not fine, I just say this has been a brutally hard week.  My sweet cousin A lost her husband this week.  It was sudden, it was shocking, and her world has crumbled.  She is left to raise their five year old son alone.  Comparatively, my week has been quite easy.  I have cooked for A, and her father and brothers and anyone else who happened to be near.  (My love language is carbs.)  I have wiped her tears and looked at her song selection and the pictures she chose for the memorial service, and I took her shopping for the clothes she and her son would wear to her husband’s funeral. 

After all of these things, I have come home.  Home to my husband who is still alive, whose shoulder I can cry upon and tell him ‘this was so hard!’  And then I eat dinner with my family and sleep with my husband and say many prayers.  And the next morning after everyone has eaten breakfast and brushed their teeth, my sons and I head back over to her dad’s house to bear witness to her grief.  I am able to walk away from the deep shuddering grief in which A exists right now and breathe, which she is unable to do.  So comparatively my week has been easier.  No matter how my heart aches or how many tears fall, it is a paper cut in comparison to the ocean of grief in which she is swimming.  So when people ask, I just say it has been a brutally hard week.  

Mailbox phobia

Apparently I have a fear of checking my mail.  It really doesn’t matter what kind of mail: voicemail, e-mail, the actual mail-in the mailbox mail.  This fear has allowed me to pretty much ignore the mailbox all summer, and today I had to actually go to the post office to get my mail.  Because apparently those little boxes only hold so much, even with cramming stuff in.  So when your mailbox gets too full, the carrier brings it back to the post office, and you have to walk in and get it and explain, no, you did not ask for your mail to be held.  Just smile and mentally beg for your mail so you can leave before the kids turn into heathens in front of the sweet old lady who told you how cute they were.  Agonizing.  

However, I had promised A I would go get the mail last Monday.  So I did.  I did not promis to sort it  so it sat in a brown paper bag in my front room, which could be a formal living room, but is instead our entryway/craft area/dumping ground for everything.  Tuesday my sister in law and I went blueberry picking with our kids.  So I was able to put off the massive mail sort for another day.  I know I am sick, but this was me winning.  

Income or What am I Going to Do Until I Get a Job?

Well gang, the time has come, the time is now.  I am looking for a job outside the home.  I would really rather work from home, but I don't see that happening any time soon, so I am on the lookout for something that is a perfect fit for a woman with a history degree, an expired teaching certificate, and no desire to return to the classroom. Oh, and did I mention secretaries don't make enough?  In the meantime I have decided to get serious about earning some income from home.  I am not craft in any way, or even feel very creative, so I have decided to stick with what I know....English.  I will sporadically chronicle my success, or the lack of it.

The first step I have taken in becoming a work from home phenom, is to start writing for freelance websites.  I had only heard of DemandStudios, so I dove into freelance research.  I happened upon the Squidoo lens "101 Best Websites for Freelance Writers" ( www.squidoo.com/FreelanceWriterWebsites ).  HS Schulte lists the 101 best websites, gives you an overview of their format, and how well she did with earnings.  Her list is interactive, allowing readers to vote on the ranking of the different websites.

My goal is to take a new website every two weeks, apply or join, as is appropriate, and start building article libraries.  I am in my second week of writing for www.squidoo.com.  My username is MrsKatieE.  So far I have published 8 "lenses."  The majority of my lenses are about little boy birthday parties themes, with links to different products I have used, or that I think will make each theme easy to execute.  After I join the next website on my list, I will continue to write 3-5 articles per week for Squidoo.  

I am allowing myself a third week on Squidoo to continue learning the format, and get myself back in the groove of writing instead of editing.  We will see how things go.  My eventual goal is to earn as much working from home as I made as a high school teacher.  I am giving myself 6 months to a year to reach this goal, while preparing to go back to college for another degree at an unspecified date.

I also made up some pretty neat little flyers to put around our local college campuses, and coffee shops advertising my services as a tutor.  I am hoping to pull in at least a hundred a week tutoring once school starts.

The final step I have made was to come back to my blog.  I will post weekly with my usual chatter about blue vomit and inappropriate quotes from my 5 year old.  We'll see if people like it.  My time is now up and I have to go corral the small people, strip them, and wrestle them into the bathtub.  I will leave you with this awesome picture I took on a fishing trip with my dad.