A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

Today was a gorgeous day. Too bad I didn’t get to really enjoy it. Between nearly tearing my toe off and then getting one of those headaches that improved with medication but never really went away and left my head in a fog, I just didn’t feel up to doing much of anything.

I didn’t even get much work done. I did manage to get the work that was due today (but I had hoped to finish yesterday) done, but that’s about it. Oh well, at least I’m not behind.

According to the forecast, it’s going to be nice and warm for the next week. Surely between now and then I can get out and have some fun in the sun. I certainly wouldn’t turn down a chance to peruse Tuscany villa rentals, but when the weather is like this, I’m pretty content right up here in the lovely North Carolina mountains.

I was up late last night trying to get some work done. I called it a night at about 2:30 this morning. Hubby knew I came to bed late, so he didn’t pester me this morning when he got up to leave. I woke up and told him goodbye, then turned over and dozed back off, hoping to get a few more hours in.

Pumpkin got up, but she came and lay down with me. I dozed back off again, only to be awoken a half hour later by the dog. She was ready to get out of her dog box (which is her temporary doghouse until we get her a new one). I got up, let her out, and lay back down. I began to lose hope. When the phone rang right as I was about to doze back off, I gave up.

Hubby is off at his regular job today, but is working on a side job cleaning out a hardware store that has been sold. He has been bringing home a lot of stuff that the guy told him to either throw away or keep. He called a couple of hours after I got up, saying he was on his way home with a load of lumber and needed help unloading it. Not thinking clearly since I was still pretty tired, I slid on my wedge sandals and headed out.

I quickly came to the realization that those shoes were not going to work for the job. It would have been okay if we were putting it in the bottom of the garage, but it had to go in the top. That meant going up and down a fairly steep hill, and I nearly fell a couple of times. So I headed back in to put on my sneakers.

On the way in, I walked by his utility trailer. Somehow I managed to stub my little toe on it. Not just barely stub it, but hit it so hard it felt like it was going to be torn off. The toe didn’t get torn off, but the nail came halfway off. Ouch!

I hobbled in, put a band-aid on the toe to keep from tearing the toenail all the way off, and put on my sneakers. Then I hobbled back out and got back to work.

The pain subsided considerably, but going down the hill was murder. It still hurts to move it. I suppose I’ll live, but I’ll probably have to refrain from wearing sandals for a while. And I’m lost without my sandals.

I finally got caught up on my writing work, and I’m even slightly ahead. My clients are happy- so happy, in fact, that they’ve taken it upon themselves to make sure I have enough work to keep me booked up for a couple of weeks. As us southern girls say, “Yee-haw!”

It doesn’t look as though I’m going to have the weekend off this week. In a way that sucks, because it’s supposed to be warm and pretty out. But money is tight right now, so it’s good that I’m going to be making some. As soon as we get ahead on the cash flow, I’m going to see about cutting back a little on my work for others so I can get started on one of the ebooks I’m planning. I’m making a little passive income with affiliate programs, but I think a good ebook could keep me from having to worry for at least several months to come. And that will translate into more weekends off in the long run.

I suppose I should quit blogging now and get back to work. Now that I’m ahead of the game, I’d like to stay there as long as possible.

I’ve been getting some really strange spam lately. Almost all of it is coming to a certain email address. My web host’s spam filters used to catch almost all of the spam for it, but all at once it started letting a lot slip through. So I end up skimming what gets through, partly to make sure it isn’t actually legit and partly out of curiosity.

I’ve been getting an increasing amount of spam in German. I did a search on German spam, and all I found was some information about an outbreak from 3 or 4 years ago that was related to Neo-Nazi political agendas. That’s not the case here. I know virtually no German, but there are references to prescription meds such as Viagra and Cialis. Weird.

I also got one today that particularly intrigued me. The subject read “best” and the body said nothing except “your life is crap.” No images, no attachments, no links. I might have been offended if it hadn’t come to an email address that I inherited from the former owner of one of my websites and have never publicized.

I just don’t get the point of a lot of the spam I’ve seen. Even that which seeks to sell stuff perplexes me. Do people actually follow the links in these emails and buy stuff? I never have, and never will. If I do happen to see something in a spam email that I can’t live without, I’ll go search for it elsewhere.

Well, I took a day off yesterday, even though I should have been working. Hubby’s family was getting together over at his grandpa’s and having a cookout, and they would have been all bent out of shape if I hadn’t been there. So I went.

We had fun, but boy did I ever get sunburned. My right arm got it the worst, but my left arm is burned pretty badly too. The area just above each knee got its fair share, and the rest of me is still pretty much white as a sheet.

Today, my skin is burning, I’m getting cold chills, and both of my wrists are hurting (not sure whether or not that has anything to do with the sunburn, but I can’t think of any other reason for it). And Hubby and Pumpkin are out riding four-wheelers while I’m in here trying to meet a deadline. Not cool.

Maybe next time I’ll remember to put some sunscreen on. And maybe I’ll get my work done so I can have a full weekend of fun. At least maybe I’ll get to spend some time with Hubby tomorrow. He’s off for Memorial Day. But Pumpkin has to go to school, because Tuesday is her last day.

As crazy as the weather has been around here lately, I was beginning to wonder whether we were ever going to see any springlike conditions this year. But I just looked at the weather forecast, and it’s looking mighty nice for the next week.

Today is sunny, but a little on the chilly side and very windy. Tomorrow they’re calling for rain, but the rest of the week is sunny skies all the way. The temps are still going to be a little cooler than normal, but I’ll take what I can get.

The weekend is supposed to be a little warmer. I hope it all pans out like they’re saying this time. If so, you’d better believe that I’ll be taking another weekend off and having some fun. This could become a habit… but that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Hubby just filled out an application for a new job. I hope he gets it, because I don’t think it would be as physically demanding as the one he has now. And the pay is better as well.

The whole process brought back memories of my job hunts over the years. They’re certainly not fond memories, because I have always despised job hunting. I hope I never have to do it again. Looking for freelance gigs is much more pleasant.

Shortly before I met Hubby, I was doing some very serious job hunting. The low-paying part-time retail job that I had just wasn’t cutting it, and I was having to travel a long way to work. So I as much as I hated to, I put in application after application after application. For the first time in my life, I started getting a substantial number of interviews. I guess my low-level management position at the store helped with that. But I had no luck finding anything.

Then one day I got a call about a resume I had sent in for an assistant manager job. They asked me to come in for an interview. I did, only to find out that it was a job selling Electrolux vacuums. Now, I know some people who have sold them and made a good amount of money from it. But it was commission-based, and something told me that it would just be a waste of my time and the company’s time, so I passed on it. And given my later track record with direct sales, I think that was a good decision.

I never did find another job, and ended up staying at the store where I worked for a couple of years. But I met future-Hubby and ended up moving to the area, so at least I didn’t have to drive so far.

I’ve hunted for jobs on a few occasions since then, and I had slightly better luck. But only because I set my standards lower. I ended up in a couple of jobs where I could have probably made more selling one Electrolux a week. Maybe I should have given them a call…

There was an article in the New York Times last month about how bloggers are overworking themselves to the point of exhaustion. It was even insinuated that blogging might be to blame for some recent deaths. Who writes this stuff?

There’s no doubt that stress is a killer. But blogging in and of itself is not a cause of stress. Not unless you let it be. For me, blogging is a very positive thing. Let me tell you a little bit about why blogging makes me happy.

I started blogging in 2006. I hadn’t been online for a long time up until early that year, and I started browsing blogs. I thought about starting a blog, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to open up to the whole entire world like that. But it kept eating at me for some unknown reason, and it seemed like everyone else online was doing it, so I finally gave in. I opened an account at Blogger.com, and I got started.

It took me a while to get comfortable with it, but eventually I did. At the time I was working the night shift at a factory job, but I was trying to find a way to work at home. I wrote about my experiences in hopes of being an inspiration to other moms who wanted to do the same thing (even though I wasn’t having any luck).

I started blogging fairly regularly, because I was really beginning to love it. Then I found out I could make money blogging, and that made me ecstatic. I didn’t make enough to quit my job, but it helped me get some extra money to help with my quest to go into business for myself.

I started some more blogs, and I kept trying to find some way to work from home. I tried direct sales, but I really sucked at that. I bought a website, and started making a little money with that, but it wasn’t as much as I was making blogging. Then I got mad and quit my job, and I really began to feel the pressure to make something work.

Then it hit me why I hadn’t been able to say no to blogging in the first place: I love to write! Why not become a freelance writer?

I nearly talked myself out of pursuing that idea before I even tried it. After all, I didn’t have any formal education in writing or English. And I wasn’t that good of a writer… was I? But I finally decided that I had nothing to lose, so I started applying for online writing jobs.

Unfortunately, I got no responses. I ended up having to take a horrible job to help make ends meet, and I gave up on my dream of becoming a writer. I still blogged though, because I enjoyed it and it was helping me bring in money (and vent my frustrations about the whole situation).

Several months later, I got an email from a mailing list I had signed up for that included some information about a new company that was taking applications for ghostwriters. At first I dismissed it, but it kept eating at me in much the same way that the idea of starting a blog did. I trusted my instincts, and I applied. That very evening, I received an email- but not from the company I had just applied to. It was a lady I had written to when I first started applying for writing jobs, informing me that the project she was previously recruiting for had been shelved but she needed writers for a new project. I literally did a happy dance!

I also heard back from the other company the next week, and ended up getting that job. And somewhere in that time frame I got an ongoing blogging gig too! And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the beginning of my writing career.

I eventually was able to quit working outside the home, and now here I am working my own hours and enjoying life much more than I did before. Things are far from perfect, but I love what I do for a living, and that makes a big difference in one’s entire outlook. And it all started with blogging.

That’s not the only reason I like to blog, though. I still like being able to complain about the hideous color of my house (nope, haven’t gotten around to painting it yet) and brag about Pumpkin’s grades anytime I want to, even if nobody at home wants to hear it. And I still make a fair amount of money from it, which helps with the bills right now and will hopefully buy me and my family some nice things once our finances are looking better. So I can safely say that blogging is not killing me. It has made my life better in numerous ways, and I plan to be blogging until I’m old and gray. I might keel over in front of the computer, but I dare them to blame it on blogging.

Here’s a little video I made about why blogging makes me happy. It’s full of my favorite cheesy happy tunes, and it tells an abbreviated version of the above story in case you couldn’t make it through reading the whole thing. Enjoy!

There’s no way I can get a laptop right now, but I found out that I might be able to get a great price on one when I am able to. Hubby’s cousin told me that his brother-in-law fixes up old laptops. He puts in new hard drives, laptop memory and whatnot, and he sells them at great prices. He said he just sold one for around $250!

Of course I expect to pay more than that. I’ll need something that has lots of pep, since I often have 10 or 20 browser tabs, a couple of instances of Word, email, and maybe a spreadsheet going at one time. But he will now be the first person I talk to when the time comes. If he can’t do it for a reasonable price, I guess I’ll either get one built at a local place I went to a few months ago or order one from HP.

I have had my Thunderbird in the paper several times, but had no takers on it. So I still have it. I would love to keep it forever, because that was my dad’s baby. The only reason I considered selling it was because we needed the money. But I’m not letting it go for peanuts, and I guess that’s why nobody’s interested.

It’s in good shape now, but I would love to fix it up nice. That’s one car that I could actually get into hood scoops and car spoilers for. But I’m planning on keeping everything as it was when it came from the factory, because that’s how my dad would have wanted it. And it’s a pretty darn spiffy car without adding any aftermarket stuff to it.

I would like to find a set of the wheels that came on it that were in better shape, and get it a good paint job. And the power windows could use new motors. Other than that, all it needs is a good tune-up. Maybe one day I’ll get around to doing all that and put it back on the road.