Still in super busy mode. & still completely exhausted on the emotional front (always someone in the hospital or having a crisis).

Speaking of tragedy, the kids have school off Friday because of the smoke in our region. Smoke from the fires. That's a first. The air quality is just horrible here and we feel very trapped indoors.

I actually had an impromptu day off on Monday. Hallelujah! That was a long overdue day off, and so appreciated. We were having major IT issues at my job. With no computers, there was nothing we could do. So we moved up a meeting and then my new employer took us out to brunch. After that, we gave up and went home. I was over the moon.

MM(15) has been doing work for my old employer, and that is working out really well. I expect that he will make around $500 this month. I won't hold my breath about extra work past this year, but it looks pretty likely we will both be needed through tax season.

I was able to kill three birds with one stone, during the past two weekends. I took MM into my old office. I had two webinars planned and so just said MM could work until 3:00 or whatever (I couldn't leave until my classes were done). I parked myself and watched my classes while he worked. I was also able to do a little work for my old employer. Some multi-tasking.

I otherwise did not do any second job/OT during the past 15 days or so. Took a breather! Absolutely no deadlines until January, so nothing is really pressing at this point.

My goals are ambitious for this next week. I need to complete 8 more hours of education, for my professional license. It's actually 12 hours, but I have one last class scheduled in December. The other 8 hours are self-study and will be a little more work on my part. I am hoping the first 4 hours goes well and I feel up to just knocking it out (the second 4 hours) this weekend. I want to be DONE!

I am not planning to go back into the old office at all because MM(15) has so many days off this month and is just working weekdays for the rest of the month. (I just drop him off on my way/to from my job). We can re-evaluate in December.

Anyway, I want to knock out all my education AND I really should be doing some work for old employer. I am okay with piling on the work these next several days because my plan is to take the long 4-day weekend entirely off next week. Phew!

I'd like to maybe take next Thursday/Friday off and then spend the weekend tackling the house. Still so behind because I never had time to deal with anything.

I was feeling so frustrated last weekend. & is a lot of why I Was so happy to get an unexpected day off on Monday. My luck has been going the other way this entire year. I was in complete disbelief that I got a break! Anyway, so I guess that helped me to catch my breath and to hang on.

I am feeling frustrated probably because November is the slowest time of the year at my old job. Since my professional license is relevant to that job, I'd generally be doing all this on work time, and otherwise am practically on vacation all month. I worked 9-5, but might take 3-5 days off every November to do classes from home. Time off for the holidays. & the rest of the time the office is so dead and quiet and not much going on. Plenty of work to do, but was just so calm and peaceful. After a very long and exhausting year, some part of me is upset that my "17 years of QUIET NOVEMBER" is gone. It's just such a pattern that I am used to. But I know it will even out in the next month or two, or three or four. The trade-off will be "no crazy tax season."

I did get around to updating my sidebar. I still want to do some work/financial updates (might have some time in December?) but that is the cliff notes version. We have more retirement space to utilize, which significantly reduces our taxes. So we will be very "Retirement heavy" with retirement contributions in 2019. Or very similar to the early years of this blog. I honestly have no idea where we will be as far as my "10 year financial independence goal" and is something I need to look at. At this point in our lives our assets are working pretty hard for us and my pat cut might not impact that goal; if we rely more on asset appreciation than savings from income. But one reason I haven't bothered to even figure it out is the second job/extra income. & even if that evaporates, MH is planning to increase his income in the next year. So is something I want to work through eventually, but seems moot with all the extra cash I am making right now.

Edited to add: Last I checked, our net worth was up $80,000 for the year. Which means we have exceeded this goal for 2018, already. Will see where things land 12/31, but seem to be on a good track for this year.

I don't think my new job is financially ideal (right now) with this whole teen drivers/braces x2/college x2 thing right around the corner. BUT, I expect generous raises and bonuses with this employer and so expect the current state of things to be very temporary. & I think this job is absolutely ideal if MH does find more substantial or full-time work. Which is more the long-term plan. Even if MH went from $10k to $20k income, I think we would both be a lot happier with the shift in responsibilities (and that would put us where we were at before, income-wise). New job is working out really well and is another blog post I Want to get to eventually.