1-year plan

Relaxing Weekend & A Big Decision

Hello dear blog friends! I hope y’all had a wonderful family and friend filled holiday weekend. Ours was pretty low-key as we didn’t travel anywhere. Friday night we went to my brother’s girlfriends’ family’s house to celebrate Nochebuena. Never before had I been to a pig roast and it was a lot of fun – as all their parties are – and the food was amazing. Certainly not for the vegetarians out there. We had loads of pork, boiled yucca, black beans, rice, salad, fruit, veggies and tons and tons of desserts. On Saturday, we slept super late, met with my parents about party logistics (post later today), then went to visit my cousins from DC and their ridiculously adorable 16 month old daughter.

We also made the decision to try to conceive (TTC) and, regardless of our child situation, we will begin the adoption process in 2 years. We do still want a lot of kids. The adopting will be a child (or sibling pair) no younger than about 5 or 6 years old. We want time to bond with them, but don’t necessarily want to adopt babies. There’s so many older kids also needing homes and we want to help them.

There was also lots of job searching, a tentative decision to focus on a few select areas of the country to move too, did about 843 loads of laundry, and baked a ton!

I hope your weekend was fantastic as well!

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Biological Clock Made Worse by 16 & Pregnant

I have a not-so-secret vice. I love 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom. The girls on Teen Mom are like “friends” of mine to the point that Steve and I talk about them on a somewhat regular basis when something similar happened in our lives. OK, not so regularly, but you know what I mean.

This season I’ve only sorta watched 16 & Pregnant, but when I saw that tonight’s episode was 90 minutes AND about adoption, I knew I had to watch. I have never cried during a show more then during this one. I can’t even imagine how difficult a decision putting your child up for adoption was for a 16 year old, but wow. Ashley handled herself quite well and, in the end, she made the right decision for her baby. The good thing is her family adopted the baby so seeing her was easier than for Caitlyn and Tyler.

It’s no secret that we want to adopt. We’ve been discussing it a lot more recently. I don’t know when it will happen or how many we will have biologically before starting the process. We have also said that it doesn’t matter how many children we end up with and how they arrived (adoption vs biologically), we will love them all individually. I truly don’t understand why someone would fight for a child to adopt and make a member of their family only to push them aside bc they have a child biologically.

I sprained my ankle last Sunday and while I desperately needed to take pain pills and pain relievers, I was really hesitant to do so. The possibility of my being pregnant is pretty slight, but I still don’t want to risk it. Am I insane? Yes. But I also know what medication can do to a fetus so early on. Instead I keep it up as much as I can and keep an ice pack on it. 3 days ago a big bruise surfaced on the outside of my heel. This morning I noticed more bruising at the base of 4 of my toes. Sexy. But yet, I won’t take pain meds of any kind.

Yes, I’m that worried. I’m 34 years old and never had a [real] pregnancy scare. I track everything with an iPhone app and am heavily considering buying a basal body thermometer to really track things. The last few days I’ve had a low-grade fever, but sort of wonder if it was simply ovulation. Who knows. I’m not up on all that stuff yet since we aren’t “trying” to get pregnant right now. We’re not not trying either, but that’s besides the point.

In a perfect world we would have insurance and be able to support a baby and all costs associated with a pregnancy. In reality, breastfeeding and cloth diapers will remove a big chunk of costs for the first few months.

So much to think about and do before we can get pregnant or start the adoption process.

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South Floridian Looking for Admin Job.. Help?

OK, truth time. I need a job. Pretty desperately. Yes, I have a part-time job 3 days a week and average about 20-22 hours per week. So for a pay period, I make what I used to make in 1 week. Ouch.

So we have this “plan” for me to get a job… any job [that I’m willing to do] for a few months while I continue applying all over the country. I hate Miami. I feel like a teenager living here full of hatred for this city waiting to escape it. I can’t really explain why, I just hate it. I never went out partying, and never wanted to. I don’t drink [since I was 19] or do drugs [never touched any] or anything else. And that’s not just about living like I’m pregnant, I was never interested in drugs or losing control like when I used to drink.

Tangent, what?

I know it’s horrible to take a job knowing you’ll only be at it for a few months, but I just can’t see us living here very long. I’ve been looking all over the country, with focuses on Austin, DC, Madison, and a few other places. The good thing about DC is all the government jobs. The bad thing is how long and seemingly ambiguous their application process is.

Right now I’m looking for an administrative job. Something in the admin assistant range. We just need the money. My current job is making it really difficult to pay the bills. Steve has been footing the majority of the bills lately and lemme tell ya, it’s a horrible feeling. Sure I’d like to be a stay at home mom one day, but only IF we can actually afford it. And even then, it’d be to home-school our kids.

How can you help, blog friends? If you know anything in the Miami area in an administrative capacity, preferably something temporary, could you please let me know? Yes, I have an MBA, but at this point, I just need some extra money to pay bills. I’ll worry about using my degree later on. Please post, RT and spread this post as far as you can in South Florida. I will love you forever! And if your lead lands me a job, I’ll send you something yummy made especially for you!

Thanks!

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Forgiving Student Loans? Sign me up!

So, y’all know I have a crapload of student loan debt, right? Apparently my mother was talking about it at a luncheon she was at yesterday as I received a phone call from her, then she passed the phone over to her cousin, C. C has a graduate degree and probably a fair amount of loan debt. She told me about “some program” where you work for “the government” for about a year or “helping someone run a farm in West Virginia” and they forgive your debt. I was only somewhat intrigued as she wasn’t really clear and, well, I was too busy to Google it at that moment.

But hours later I did and discovered that one of the programs she was talking about was AmeriCorps. They have so many options all across the country of things to do to help people out. The loan forgiveness part is still unclear, but how cool! I figure if I look in area with heavy snowfall, I could find out if I really did want to live in such a climate. Steve is more of a “let’s stay here for another year” then figure things out kinda guy. Maybe it just means traveling to places with snow to satisfy that cold weather itch. I just don’t know.

Yeah, I do realize this blog is all over the place, but thanks for reading!

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I Miss Snow and Cold Weather

I have an itch… to get out of Florida and back to the cold weather. Seriously, I hate it here. It has been in the 80s all week. Some may find that dreamy, but I find it to be the worse possible thing ever. It’s the holidays for Pete’s sake! I demand cold/ see your breath weather for months on end! I demand the smell of snow in the air and the anticipation of waking up to a light dusting in the mornings. I even demand icy windshield’s that make me late for work because I forgot to leave early enough to scrape it off.

I want to wear sweaters, thick socks, scarves and cute hats that I’ve knit up. Honestly, even though I made fun of them, I’d even wear Uggs… that is if I won a pair. I want to have my knitting mojo back! Seriously, the desire to knit is so freaking low that I can barely stand it. But that’s not the only reason I want to live in a cold climate again. The only real way my sheep farm will work is in a cold climate. The colder the weather, the more wool will grow and the more yummy yarn I’ll eventually have.

Oh, by the way, I was totally doing my research at Barnes & Noble yesterday and reading Barnyard in your Backyard. It was a good beginner’s guide to raising several breeds of animals, including sheep, geese, and rabbits. The biggest issue is finding a place warm enough for the ducks and geese and cold enough for the sheep to grow excesses of wool. I did learn that it wouldn’t take acres and acres of space for these animals too. They don’t need hundreds of acres, just enough for grazing, shelter and frolicking. We might even be able to do is on 10 acres to begin with. The hardest part is picking the location because then it’s a whole lot more research and finding funding.

Sigh. One day my dream will come true. Sheep2Skein, here I come!

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Productive Day & Opening a Business?

Today was very productive in my world.

* I created a logo for my friend Kelly’s church group’s event. It’s super cute and pending the next set of edits.

* I did loads of research for sheep farms. Yep, totally random! Hubby and I started talking about where we want to be in 5 years and what we wanted to have accomplished. Having a sheep farm would be pretty damn amazing for so many reasons, and also because…

* I registered the domain name for my YARN SHOP! While I may not be a really experienced knitter having only been crafting goodies since late 2006, it is still a passion of mine. Nothing would make me happier than having my own yarn shop.

One day, eventually, the Fletcher’s will be the proud owners of Sheep 2 Skein Yarn Shop in a state yet to be determined, but definitely somewhere up north.

Sure, owning our own business will certainly take a lot of capital, which is also why the sheep farm would be helpful. Shearing sheep for wool apparently makes a decent amount of money. Sure sure, a sheep farm costs a crapload of money too. We have quite a few things to sort out.

Also, owning a business will make my life super flexible for having kids once we find a really reliable manager and staff.

In a perfect world, right? Well, at least I bought the domain. LOL

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