At some point it was Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then it was the New Year, 2019, and then the longest month of my entire life, January, and now thankfully, it is February.
My students are taking a grammar quiz in which they have to analyze and diagram sentences containing compounds. It’ll probably take them a while, as it’s fairly difficult. The girl who has been absent for over a week just walked in and has so much make-up-work to do, I don’t even know where to begin. I’m sure she’ll feel just as swamped. Guess her parents should have thought of that before taking a mid-year out-of-state ski trip. But they didn’t.
I saw a lot of my family during the holidays, and a little after. Gabrielle and Antigone came down for Christmas and the New Year, and then midway through January we all reconvened with the addition of Charles, in Syracuse New York, from whence we drove to DC to participate in the March For Life. Once back in NY we got snowed in and our flights were delayed by several days due to a massive snow storm. It was stressful to be missing so much work, but liberating to have more time to spend with family. It always kills me to have to say goodbye to them though. Who knows how long it can be between visits.
In the mean time I keep myself distracted by working too hard, commuting too much, being too sick, and generally burying myself under the rock that is life.
For whatever reason, I’ve felt “off” since early January, which I can’t believe was only a month ago. The longest month of my life, I’m telling you. Everything from food and drinks making me sick, to actually being sick, to not having the slightest appetite… My immune system is crashing, and I’m 100% ready for a reboot. It can’t come soon enough. I just wish I knew what the problem was to begin with, because I don’t ever want to feel this crappy again.
Jefferson, Mary, and I signed up for a 5K. The year was drawing to a close and it seemed like a good idea. Now that the 5K is 3 days away and none of us have been getting the slightest bit of physical activity lately, it seems like a ludicrous plan. What were we thinking? Now I’m just debating if we’re actually gonna drive a whole hour down here on a Saturday to run a race that none of us have in the slightest way prepared for. We probably will, if only because we paid for it. Ridiculous.
Speaking of paying for things, Dave Ramsey has really been kicking our butts, in the best way possible! (I would 10/10 recommend using his methods for anyone interested in living outside of debt.)
We took his class from Sept-Nov., one session per week. It was great. It got us super motivated and on track for living a better life. But there are a lot of baby steps in between the Baby Steps, if you catch my drift. There’s a lot of hard work and sacrifice implied in paying off debt and living far enough below your means to make that happen quickly. When we got married we had 3 credit cards (with no balance I should add), an expensively leased car, and somewhere in the ballpark of $40K remaining in my student debt. Today, February 6th, we have no open credit lines, we have a used car from 2006 as my commuter, and we have $12K left in my debt. On top of that, Jefferson has gone down to working part time due to beginning trade school for Welding – a full time education and part time work.
Clearly, a lot has changed with our life situation. Trading in a car (and paying a chunk to ditch the lease), paying almost $30K in debt, and having that little teeny emergency fund, all while adjusting from 2 full time incomes, to one… it’s been a LOT of little sacrifices. We want to start saving up for starting a family, but at this time that would take a toll on how soon we can pay off the remaining debt. If we just kept putting everything towards debt with no additional savings, we could be done with the debt by this summer! Wouldn’t that be incredible? A year into marriage and debt free? That would be the dream. Maybe we can make it happen. We’re already excited to dump an upcoming bonus of mine and all of our tax returns into the debt, and that alone should take it down to the $6K range. Mind – blown.
But as always there remains the constant possibility that our family will up and grow. We’re not necessarily “trying” for it, but we’re also completely open to it, and doing nothing to prevent it (other than being dead exhausted 100% of the time…) So that could really add a new dynamic to life around here. That will be a little scary to adjust to as well, because we’re going to do everything we can to let me be a stay-at-home or work-from-home mom. So no more teaching… eventually!
For not having been here in a long time, I sure seem to have a lot to say. You’d think that would clue me in to come back more often… but somehow it doesn’t. I think of this blog space as an old haunt I used to frequent, one which stays the same no long how long I’m gone. But I feel less familiar here all the time, so perhaps its slipping away from me. Only time will tell. It was at least nice to be back for the day.
Nothing Was Said 