I did my "life is still chaos" post, and am now hoping to just move forward.

I don't know if I will accomplish anything today, but honestly I'd just be happy to get a nap. I may just crash all day.

My birthday was last weekend. I spent about 5 hours doing my last class for this year. It is what it is. That was the day of the class, and it felt awesome to be DONE! I sent off my professional license renewal and got that huge time suck out of my hair.

Going forward, will have to maintain my professional license on my own time and expense, but now that I know ahead of time I can at least plan for that. I should probably be doing one class every 3 months or so. No more cramming. Phew!

Back to my birthday... Just stayed home and kept it low key otherwise. I did make sure to relax and enjoy the rest of my day.

Yesterday was absolutely exhausting. I had a Kohls return I wanted to sneak in as early in the month as possible. Went around 8am and thankfully there was no line yet.

I thought I was going to have to do that earlier, then take MM(15) to the animal shelter. But MH has more brain cells left than I have at the moment, and figured out he could drop off MM and I could pick him up. Doh. I really thought I Was going to have to sit there waiting for him 2 hours. Too exhausted to figure out the logic.

Anyway, I picked him up, grabbed some fast food (because that's what we do any more) and took him over to my old/forever employer to work. He worked about 4 hours and he is DONE for the year. Woohoo! I was exhausted yesterday, but it's all good. In discussing his availability and "awesome admin" availability, it was decided he is not needed for the rest of the year. Which is the only reason I would step foot in that office. So I will probably work a pretty long Saturday next weekend (from home) but then I am out and done for the year. December is a MASSIVE deadline month and no idea how they will get all their work done, but it's not my problem. I've been setting pretty clear boundaries re: the last 10 days of the year or so. The only reason I set foot in that office is if I am taking my son there to work.

Wish I could say I'd be getting any time off, but I am just in a new "crazy busy" end of year work situation. As I am guessing the majority of jobs in my field are. My new job is very 9-5 and will be a HUGE break compared to what I am used to Christmas break. Because I won't be cramming all weekend and during the evenings. I do look forward to that. But it's going to be crazy demanding during work hours.

After that I rushed home to ready for my new work's Holiday party. Which I was absolutely dreading. For one, I am an extreme introvert so it mostly sounded like torture. Secondarily, I was just exhausted and wanted to take a nap.

In the end, the party was GREAT!

I don't even know what in the heck, but the house was amazing and had an incredible view. This was at one of the owner's homes. He is not one of the "super wealthy" owners, but he does well enough and is a home builder and so of course built a custom home.

They had hired caterers and the food was absolutely divine.

We had a great time, in the end. Everyone I work with is *so nice*. No idea how on earth I found these people. I would never expect to have so much fun at a party with a big crowd of people that I barley know. (Many of them don't work in the office and I have only met in passing).

In other news, I found out I have two weeks vacation time to use whenever. Woohoo! I will have to ponder. I don't have a lot of time off with this job, so it's deciding if I am just, "OMG I need a week off now." Which probably wouldn't be too feasible until March, given workload. So I don't know if it's that, or I am willing to wait for kids' spring break in April and to plan around them. We've already discussed going to the beach for a few days, but figured that would just have to be a long weekend. I will have to look at calendars and ponder.