Blabbity blabbity blah.

Not much new here, other than the depressing amount of time I'm spending at home. Still pretty much unemployed...but I have a few money sources coming in. First off I still have one client that will only work through me, so I'm still going to work about 4-6 hours a week (but not making any sales commissions...so its barely worth the money to be there) But I am not in a position to turn down any wage right now so I'm sucking it up. Second I'm still teaching my little art class once a week, so far no new students but I'm expecting more will come out of the wood work after Christmas. Third, my sister wants me to courier files for her from her paralegal office to various attorney offices. And fourthly, my neighbor is paying me to drive her teenager to work a few days a week.

So on a "good" week, I can make about $355.

That really pisses me off, but it's better than nothing.

With all this going on it looks like the "sexcation" I had planned to Boulder CO. isn't going to happen. My tour of gay American cities will have to be put on hold.

In other depressing news Mike is borderline diabetic and his cholesterol is creeping up enough for the doctor to be concerned. So our doctor drew up a pretty simple diet plan and I offered to do it with Mike to support him.

Of course I regret my offer.

Basically more fruits and vegetables, more lean protein...and very few carbs (sob). I have lost the chubby-hubby pounds I've put on since my car accident a few years ago, and I feel more energized and all that jazz...but FUCK I would kill for a can of cheesy pringles and some ramen noodles.

I think I'm done ranting.

Yeah no more bad news bears for the rest of the journal...I'm not the pity party type.

In art news I am going to be cranking out batiks for various family members and friends as Christmas presents (because I'm broke as shit). So I will be sure to take pictures of those.

I also have a bunch of silk scarves to work on, batiking is really meant for silk and the extremely thin scarves I found on the batik supplies site were only $2 each. So I figure I can do a whole mess of those and by time spring/summer comes I can sell them at my town's farmer's market like the other starving artists.

Also I agreed to do a bunch of pink ones for my Relay for Life team. It's good karma to donate.

Of course now that my minds working on art things I'm thinking about all the stuff I WANT to do...like buy broken tiles and plates and mosaic my basement wall where the foundation is exposed.

I don't plan on living in this shoebox forever but that would be fun and relaxing for me.

In "kid news" we have decided not to home school my son, he just turned 8 and is in a Montessori school...which was supposed to be the solution for when we encountered the "he's bored and learning things he's known for years" stage in public school. But now he's somewhere where they are supposed to give him work according to what he is mentally able to do...and he's gone so far ahead that they can't give him new materials because the school doesn't go up that high.

So my initial reaction to that was to pull him out completely and home school since...well I'm home anyways. Plus my neighbors, the ones who's kids I teach art to, they're home schooled and they are in a really great co-op program with all kinds of weekly field trips and stuff like that. So I was kind of excited to be a part of that but my son put his foot down and said he loved his school and his friends. And the more I thought about it the more sense it made to leave him be. He's on a scholarship so we don't have to worry about tuition till fall of 2012, plus he has 4 teachers at any given time, I can't compete with the attention 4 teachers can give him. Especially since I have a very demanding 3 year old and all of these odd jobs to do.

So long story short I spoke with his school and they said that I can pull him out a few days a month to go on these co-op field trips and that it wouldn't be a bad idea to supplement his learning at home. I'm not going to let him go further because at this rate he'll be doing algebra by next Christmas, so instead I'm going to "borrow" the language tapes and books my sister has. She's a linguistics major and can speak Spanish, Italian, French, Latin and Chinese. If I can keep him busy with a language program he'll still be learning but he won't be so advanced that he'll be bored in a school setting.

That was probably really boring to read but I have nothing else to talk about.

And no he's not a "genius" according to the testing but he enjoys learning so much that he puts all of his efforts into it. He's been that way since he was a baby.

Except for potty training...no effort there.

Well then I'm off to nap or something.