Gosh darn, I am so fed up with people pitying me.

It's cool in our society to be miserable I guess. I just get so fed up with it.

Anyway, so as you guess, I think nothing gets under my skin than counting down the days until Friday.

Life begins on Friday and ends on Sunday?

What a pitiful way to live.

I was just thinking about it because I decided to come in today to work to get caught up a bit. My co-worker and a friend both went on and on and on about "poor me."

I Wasn't that worried about it. !!

For one, most of the reason I had to come in was because I took 2 days off last week, and was feeling a bit behind. So I am not going to gripe about a 5.5-day week when last week was only 3-days working.

But secondly, I was an incredibly good mood on my way to work this morning and actually looked forward to it.

So I guess mostly I don't identify with the Fri-Sun mentality, and I don't want to. Work/life balance is extremely important to me, but so is liking my job! So that it's not so tough when it needs a little extra attention. For the long run I prefer to limit my work weeks to 40 hours. But a few extra hours here and there isn't a big deal to me. Because I really like what I do.

Anyway, people also way underestimate how nice it is to get a break from the family too. Particularly when the kids were littler. But I went to aerobics/yoga this morning (Which no doubt helped my mood) and I came in and did some work I enjoyed (I usually leave the stuff I Want to do for the weekend - it just helps it go faster) and then I splurged on some greasy fries and a soda and didn't have to answer to anyone.

I am all alone at work and it is very peaceful. Just something I don't get much at home.

& I will be home by 2:00 and will have the rest of today and tomorrow for the fam.

I have nothing to complain about here. Hopefully will help my stress level though, because I did feel rather behind. I am feeling better, taking a break for now.

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In other news, I just wanted to share an interesting post from MMND. On How To Live a Resort-Type Lifestyle:

http://millionairemommynextdoor.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-...

Interesting to think about.

I just have one caveat to add. Well 2.

I am not so sold on the "renting is better" but we have only owned our home here a few years and rents are double our mortgage. (Was triple in expensive land - Bay Area). So though I understand how renting is often cheaper, I still can't wrap my brain around it. Nothing I have ever experienced. But it is California...

My second caveat is that once you get used to resort living, there really is no turning back. It sets the bar rather high, and with time you do kind of get bored with it. So for that reason it may not be so ideal.

But if it's affordable, then why the heck not?

I think we are rather pro resort living because we lived in a condo back home with a lot of amenities (as all we could afford, but we did get accustomed to the amenities). & then when we moved here in 2001, resort communities were all the rage. We went with new construction, which I am not sure existed without a resort sort of plan. So we just went with it. What the heck. The move meant our lifestyle went up tenfold while our expenses actually decreased a bit.

As such, I have never been particularly big on vacations. Like my own Fri-Sun thoughts, I think it is kind of pathetic to live for one week out of every year (or something along those lines). I know when we moved here we thought very much like we would be on vacation every day. OR every week. OR at least once a month.

But that is also where I come with the wise words that the novelty most certainly does wear off. I remember being giddy when we moved here, but now it's just kind of, eh. We see it every day. So I do appreciate the "novelty" of a vacation - keeps it fresh. (There is a psychology to the idea of "vacation").

The community we live in isn't particularly grand, but we have some nice public parks and tennis courts, etc. Three parks easily walkable for us.

We also have a private lake in our community, and a private clubhouse and pool.

We have homeowners fees, but they are quite small and actually have gone down with time (thus far). The lake is really the expensive part to maintain. So we'll see how that pans out in the long run.

One pool to maintain divided by 1000 homes? Pennies compared to owning our own pool. We luck out though in most of our neighbors don't take advantage of the pool or the lake. So we QUITE enjoy the peacefulness of both.

Anyway, it's not something I talk about much, but I feel we live a resort lifestyle in a sense. In addition, it's just a couple of hours drive to anything we would want to do in the state (beach, mountains, Tahoe, camping, hiking, etc.). & it is just a short walk to a fair amount of leisure (parks, pool, lake).

I also notice, too, living in an area where most people prefer to keep to themselves, the lake and pool do give us an area to connect with our neighbors. As does the homeowners association. So they are kind of nice perks in their own rights. We have actually made a few friends by the pool.

Anyway, dh and I so enjoyed condo living when we were young and childless that we have thought much of going back to condo living once the kids were grown. We figured we could probably downsize and simplify at that point.

We hadn't really thought much about where we would maybe downsize to. I guess we mostly figure that is so far in the future. We probably just want to settle where our parents settle, or our siblings. & who knows, for now. We get the feeling they all may leave the state eventually. (Too expensive!)

So I hadn't really thought about it, but MMND's post got me thinking. I think I would definitely push for a resort-type condo. Whether we rent or buy - depends on a lot of factors. We'll just have to see.

I just had to add too, I have seen the few articles about people who rent mansions on the beach for short bouts of time. You know, the ones who move every couple of months (what are they, house sitters maybe?)

Ugh. IT was kind of the same vein - live like a millionaire for pennies. BUT I couldn't take all that moving!

I think this is a more realistic way to achieve much of the same kind of goal.