It is such a struggle to stay on a low-carb diet. I have been working at it for more than a year now. I’ve managed to lose 35 pounds, but it hasn’t been easy. I’ll stay on the diet, then fall off of it, get back on and so on. At least when I do fall off, I don’t go hog wild. The problem is often that there are not any low-carb foods available. When I do grab something that’s high in carbs, not only does it begin to derail my weight loss efforts, but I feel rotten. I’ve gotten to the point where I need to keep protein bars handy so that I don’t reach for a candy bar, or my biggest weakness, which is bread.

Yesterday was not a good diet day. I ate almost an entire bag of chocolate-covered almond candy. I had oatmeal for breakfast. A sandwich for lunch–definitely too many carbs. Today, I am going to skip breakfast and have some coffee. For lunch, I’m going to eat the rest of the split pea soup. For dinner, we are having grilled chicken breasts with cauliflower and Brussel sprouts, so that ought to get me back on track. If I need to eat a snack, I’ve got a pear and an apple. Hopefully, a couple of days of being back on my diet will get rid of my puffy “carb face.”

After I got my bachelor’s degree in education, I seriously considered going for an MSW–a masters in social work. After a couple of years working with some pretty disturbed children, however, I changed my mind. I decided that social work would be a very mentally taxing job. I just couldn’t leave work problems at work. I knew if I became a social worker, it would be an endless cycle of taking problems home and ruminating on them. That’s why I totally admire people who do become social workers. It’s not an easy process. Of course it requires a degree (or two) and then they must pass the social work test. Fortunately, the social work test has study guides just like some of the teaching exams do.

I had a couple of social work interns last semester, and they have now graduated. They are so excited! actually, they were excited the entire semester! It’s great to watch them go out and find jobs helping other people. Both of those interns were far more pragmatic than I ever was. They were great with the kids, yet didn’t seem to carry the burden of the world on their shoulders. I think they’re going to do really great.

My kiddo is growing like crazy. I just ordered him a pair of 9 1/2 men’s shoes. He’s 10. It’s strange, because now everyone in the house wears the same size shoes. Buying the shoes made me realize that I really need to spread out my purchases over the year as much as possible, since I don’t have my chunky paycheck coming in anymore. I don’t want to end up having to take clothing and other things out of our emergency fund. One of the things on my agenda to buy is Halloween costumes . I figure if I buy them next month, then I can get the sizes I need without worrying about stores being out of stock. That, and the coolest ones will still be available. If you think buying Halloween costumes in March is bad, consider that I am already starting to prepare gifts for next Christmas. Now that I have the time at home, I can shop for gifts at my leisure and even make some things by hand. Halloween costumes are generally too complex for me to want to sew them myself, though. Pajamas, sure. The costumes I’ll buy. I don’t want them to end up being too scary, you know? Next on the list, buying the Thanksgiving turkey. Just kidding.

I used to think that one of the coolest jobs would be to travel around the world, creating travel documentaries. Actually, I still think it’s a cool job, I just can’t imagine how I could ever do a good enough job at it in order to be able to compete with the pros. In fact, if I wanted to film anything these days, I’d probably outsource it to people who know what they’re doing. Seriously, have you ever seen the difference between a wedding filmed by the parents and a wedding filmed by a professional video producer? I found a video production Connecticut company that does just that. I wish that companies this accessible to people doing individual projects had been around when my mom was a young adult. She used to be a wedding consultant, and of course, when she got married, she made certain that everything was perfect. How she would have loved a professional video! That’s something that people today have access to that people even twenty years ago could have only dreamed about.

I think I could still make my travel documentaries, the difference is, at this point in the game, they’d be suitable for home viewing only. I’m just amazed at what is out there. It would have been an awesome career to have went into.

In our house, if you ask someone what time it is, you’ll see the person reach for their cell phone in order to answer the question. This works most of the time, unless the phone is in the other room, a purse or as happened yesterday, lost in the couch. I’ve thought about making things a little easier by purchasing a clock that we could simply glance at in order to tell the time. Imagine that! The thing is, the wall clocks I’ve seen in our local stores look cheap and too trendy. I’m thinking that a mantel clock would suit our style a bit better. Right now, the mantel has a collection of early 20th century rusted tools displayed on it. A mantel clock with a bit of an old-fashioned look would be perfect. I think Sage would enjoy one of the ones that chimes on the hour–I know I did, when I was growing up. Who would have thought that many families would come to rely on phones and computers for their timepieces? I miss the clocks we had in the house growing up, and I can’t believe I haven’t gotten a quality one yet for this house, and here I am with one child whose already grown! And how did he learn to tell time? On the stove and microwave, of course.

I’ve been in a situation before where I felt like I had no control over my debt. What happened is that I carried a balance on three credit cards, on which I was able to pay the minimum or above every month. Then, I got sick and had to have a major operation. Recovering from the operation led to me having to take unpaid leave from my job for several months. It was frustrating, because the credit card companies would call asking for payment, but there wasn’t anything I could do. They were very inflexible. What I should have done was worked out an Individual Voluntary Arrangement, aka i.v.a. with a debt counseling company. They would have had the bargaining power to get somewhere with the credit card companies so that I could make a monthly payment that I could afford. As it was, the credit card companies refused to negotiate with me directly and my credit got completely ruined. As I never want to find myself in that situation again, I no longer have credit cards. Still, now I am stuck paying higher interest rates for things like car loans because of that past situation. I wish I had known how to deal with it at the time so things didn’t get so bad.

I’m a sucker for Wordpress themes. At one point when I was new to Wordpress, I downloaded about fifty themes. I absolutely could not decide which one I wanted–it felt like being a kid in a candy store. Once I decided which themes I liked the best, I started to teach myself to customize them. I have done pretty well with a few sites, but some of them have been very frustrating. It can be very difficult to customize work that someone else has already done. I’d have liked to start from scratch, but my coding skills are pretty minimal. Recently, I found a tool called Artisteer 2.4 that allows you to actually create your own themes without having to know code, or even Photoshop for that matter, although I’m pretty good with Photoshop. I’m in love with the idea of creating my own themes so that each one is workable for each site. I like some of the options available, like vertical menus. I don’t know why more people don’t use that option–I know that I run out of space using the standard horizontal menus that come with most themes. Any theme I created would definitely have a vertical menu for pages, since I create several pages on most of my sites in order to optimize them. At any rate, I can’t wait to check this out.

I’m pretty determined to get a proper office set up. If I could just concentrate a couple of additional hours every day, I’d be able to make a significant amount of money. For that, I’m pretty sure I need the setup of a private office. One of the things I’ve got to deal with in the office is this horrific track lighting that is way too much for a low ceiling. I need some nice fixtures. I’ve been looking at some of what access lighting has available, and I may go with a simple, minimalistic fixture.

Talking about lighting in the office is ironic, since I want to fix up the office in order to make more money. The main reason I want to make more money is to be able to afford to get the house rewired. Believe me, no one want to rewire an old house like this one, so it is not going to be cheap! I can’t wait for it to happen, though, because I’m going to have the electrician hook up some more fans and drop some light fixtures down from the ceiling. It’ll give the house a much more sophisticated look. Oh, and I’ll finally be able to put in central air and heat.

I’m learning that about the only way I can get any freelance writing work done is by sequestering myself in my bedroom. This is really annoying, because the lighting is not good, there is no bookshelf, and most importantly, there is no desk. I find myself sitting in the bed with my laptop, balancing things on my bedside table. I’ve also taken to leaving the air filter on, so that its white noise will drown out the sounds of my son playing with the dog and the blaring television set. What I need is a lap desk, since it doesn’t appear that this situation is going to resolve itself anytime soon. It would be nice to get one with a cup holder, so I could manage my coffee while I do my research.

I do have an office, but right now it is filled with excess furniture from our old house. I absolutely need to get on the ball and clean that mess out so I can have a decent place to write. I was looking at my earnings last night and realized that I could easily double them if I could only concentrate. So for now, the bedroom will be my office, but I’m really hoping that this will be a temporary solution.

I don’t know what it is about my body chemistry, but mosquitoes absolutely love me. They hardly touch Greg and Sage, which means that I am the only one really miserable if we’re camping. Of course, I lucked out when it comes to chiggers. They love Greg, but won’t touch me. Still, Greg and I have been looking at RVs for camping because I can be such a wuss, especially in the summertime. I like my air-conditioning. We’re looking at RVs but we really can’t afford one. It’s a fantasy type of deal. One thing that I recently thought of though, is that we could look into rv rentals and take a trip for a week or so. Then we wouldn’t have to spend a ton of cash that we don’t have for an RV that would sit in front of the house and make the neighbors call the city and complain. (That’s what happened to the folks across the street!) It seems like the best of both worlds–we wouldn’t have to spend all that much money, the guys would get to camp, and I would get to have my air-conditioning and not get eaten up by mosquitoes. I’m off to tell Greg about this.