figure out what to do

I simply don’t make enough to cover my bills. My car/home insurance comes due this month. Last month I had to pay my annual home taxes. My electric bill is triple what it usually is. It’s not like I’m out shopping or anything. My income just is too low. I really do need to figure out what to do.

Way too much to do. I’m expected back at work tomorrow. My daughter needs me to keep the granbeanie tomorrow. I need to drive to the pottery school sometime this week. This ornament projects has me in overdrive and the kids hit a snag moving back in (a problem with granbeanie’s ceiling that delays them about a week). Oh, yeah, and I also have to present myself and my work at the new gallery.

I had a nice lunch with my former boss. But my old job, any actual job, is not on the table. The university is part of the state system and due to the economy they won’t allow him to hire. What he could offer was contract work but he wanted me to do it as a part-tme job, actually going in a couple of days a week. I told him I just couldn’t do it. It’s not enough to replace what I have; I don’t want to give up my weekends (read:life)but we left it so that if he needs some freelance writing done I might do that. So, unsatisfying, but I guess I knew in my gut it would be like this. At least it wasn’t a hard decision. Still, it was good to see him and catch up.

I have my lunch with my former boss tomorrow. My stomach is in knots. I will be so glad when I know what my options are! Wish me well, y’all!

The meeting with my former boss has been moved to next week so I still don’t know what’s up. My gut says it’s not simply, “Come back to work.” But it could be. Meanwhile my current non-job keeps me very busy. It actually looks a lot like they fully intend to keep me on at the end of my term and I have conflicting feelings about it. Yet I need to work. And if I continue at this [lack of] salary I’ll be bankrupt before they actually hire me. Sigh. This economy sucks.

My old boss called me today. He wants me to come back. It’s not quite that simple, though. It wouldn’t be a permanent position. I’m not sure it would even be full time. Unless it’s both I would not have any chance to get vested in the retirement plan. I need two more years. I don’t know if it has benefits. I know it would pay well, but I don’t know for how long.

The non-job I have now pays less than minimum wage but they’ve already told me they want to hire me at the end of my term – if they find the money to do so. It’s a non-profit, so I couldn’t expect much even if they did hire me.

My old job was a 50-mile commute. Hardly worth it for a part-time gig. But I did love that job. I loved my boss there. I’m going to talk to him sometime next week. I’ll be frank about what I need and I know he’ll be straight about what he can offer.

Without going into boring and personal details here, I have several decisions I have to make with incomplete information. All require acting soon and no matter what I do I get locked into a path. These decisions are, by their very nature, mutually exclusive. Sigh.

I got home yesterday and she was up to her neck in clothes. She’d asked the cleaning company that has their stuff for her winter clothes. They brought over boxes of assorted things. She was going through a huge box of baby things crying. She wouldn’t talk to me but I know she’s hurting. What I don’t know is whether it’s because their house still isn’t done and she feels displaced, or whether it’s because it doesn’t look like she can have another baby or if there’s something else going on. But my child isn’t happy. I know it and I don’t like it.

Tomorrow I have a full day at work, a lesson to give afterward, an appointment to sell my old kiln shelves, and I just have to fit shopping in there somewhere. Maybe Wednesday.

So, I’m working for a pittance and doing manual labor on top of my professional duties. I arranged for plants and labor to be donated to my organization only to have our workday get rained out early. So I have 5 large plants and several smaller plants to put in the ground by myself. This is so beyond my ability. I did one plant today. My arm hurts as much as it ever has. I cannot do the others. And, yes, I know it is unreasonable for them to expect me to do it, but they do expect me to get it done. Argh. I didn’t think gardening would fall under “marketing.”