{ Gearing Back Up for Work }

So my two weeks of surgical recovery is coming to an end. I am back to a modified schedule next week. Physically I am still a bit sore but doing well. My struggle will be my fatigue level and respecting the limits it presents. Clients have all been fabulous and I know they will respect my modifications in the coming weeks. I miss my work but at the same time two weeks of doing relatively little has taught me a few things. They are:

• I need to create more balance in my life, even if I don't always feel it is necessary.
• I cannot hide behind my work any longer. I must tap back into the social/creative side of me again.
• I will create more time to be physically active again. This recovery has gone well but I know I would have been better off if I had been walking/stretching/moving more on a regular basis.
• I miss reading! I forgot how fabulous it feels to fall into a good book!
• Finally, none of my clients have failed to survive without me for two weeks. That means it is OK for me to have a life away from work.

{ A Note to Lisa }

Lisa,
I received your request but haven't been successful in sending you the information you wanted. Go ahead and email me at zonwhidbey@yahoo.com.

{ Recovery Lessons }

Things I've learned this week while recovering from surgery:
1. I'm grumpy as a patient, but not awful
2. Boredom is the biggest hurdle
3. Percoset is a BAD BAD drug (for me)
4. One must plan ahead to move anywhere or do anything
5. Daytime TV is beyond horrible!

I'm making good progress and should be back to a modified work schedule by May 1st....modified will be the hard part! The other half of the household will be working on the veggie garden (small though it will be this year) this weekend. I must simply sit and watch (I HATE that!)

Thanks for all the good wishes!

{ Ticking Clocks Can Enlighten }

"Tick tock" is the quiet drum that beats in the back of my mind as the minutes wane to my surgery. Don't get me wrong, I am not worried about the surgery itself, it is the inability to be accessible to my clients that is my largest stressor. Which brings me to an interesting place...the need to create balance even when I don't mind the lack of equilibrium. You see, I love my work and I don't ever mind working seven days a week or checking emails and phone messages constantly or getting up in the wee hours to work on a particularly hairy project. This life I have created as a self employed person is exactly that...the life I created.
But I acknowledge and have acknowledged for a while that my job is too all consuming and I know from watching my mother's life that it isn't always healthy. Since losing my mother unexpectedly three years ago to ovarian cancer I have taken both lessons from and solace in how she lived for her work. We did similar jobs, she at a community college and me as an independent contractor. There are days when I am buried in my work that I feel oddly close to her. But those are the same days that I know I have not walked in the garden or had dinner with friends or reached out to my family. It's been an amazing part of my journey, these three years. But as the clock in my head ticks down to the witching hour of my surgery, I WILL take the full time away from my office to rest, recover, read, walk the garden, maybe sketch again and be something other than the keeper of the pennies. Hopefully I can find the other side of my personality still fully intact, simply waiting to be reengaged.
I'll blog again once I am on the other side of surgery! Until then, be well, file your taxes before midnight tomorrow and grow some veggies! It's spring somewhere!

{ The Face of Spring }

Despite our grey skies today, the face of Spring smiles at us!

{ Garden Fairies Are A Wonderous Thing }

I have fairies who have swooped into my garden and battled the chickweed and crab grass and have been victorious in their fight! Not only that, they have layered the ground with black gold compost and with their wands aloft, cut the grass, in anticipation of glorious days ahead. The small buds are beginning to swell on dormant plants, signaling an awakening from a long winter's sleep. The strawberries - traditionally our first fruit of the season - have run their marathon of fresh growth and flowers should appear soon, followed by sweet fruit. (Hopefully the bunnies will share this year.) With my cuppa tea on the back porch this morning, it was a lovely site to behold!
Happy Passover, Happy Easter and Happy Spring to you all!

{ Restructure/Refinance? }

A lot of talk has occurred lately about refinancing and restructuring debt. We have a super decent rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage. However, with the current rates dropping (yesterday's was 4.875%) I ran numbers to see if it would be worth yet, another refinance. (Since we've owned this house it would be the 4th because the rates just dropped year after year after our purchase.) After crunching all the numbers and checking our value on Zillow.com (and deducting $8000 just to be reasonable) to be sure we were still in the 20% equity range, I found we could save $179 a month - or $32,000 over the coarse of the loan - not bad. But we're holding off. Here's why:

• We make an extra mortgage payment each year by adding 1/12 of a payment each month to our mortgage. That brings our actual pay off date to somewhere in the 23 year range - a savings of approximately $92,000.
• We don't want to create a situation where our deduction becomes valueless from a tax standpoint. Lots of people focus so much on the cost of the loan that they don't consider the value to the deduction. We aren't going to be property moguls. This will most likely be our only property investment and we still have our largest earning years ahead of us (hopefully). We need all the deductions we can get.
• Due to points on the loan, it would make the $179 savings irrelevant for 2 years. We could pay cash during closing but our short term (9 months) of savings isn't even to the half way point and I'm not willing to dip into that yet.
• Finally, when I crunched the numbers and thought about $179 a month I realized that we could save that much right now by restructuring our current budget.

So, for now, we wait and see if the rates drop lower than 4.5% That would worth a second look.
Tomorrow's list:
Client work, garden work, haircut

p.s. Thank you Lisa from Vermont for you good wishes on my surgery! I will have only one night in the hospital and a two week recovery if all goes according to plan. Should have lots of blogging time on the couch, though! Hope your weather turns sunny soon!

{ Spring Arrives At Last! }

Today was a glorious day here on the island. The sun was out, we reached 71 degrees and I sipped my morning tea on the back porch overlooking my garden. (Thanks, Cathy B, our garden maven friend, for your hard work these last two weekends helping to rescue it from weeds while we recovered from the crud!) While I did have to work so as to prepare for my impending surgery, I so enjoyed throwing open the windows today!

My chore list is long before next week's medical adventure so I should not linger here long. I just wanted to share a couple of photos of our lovely day. Wishing you all Happy Spring...finally!

{ The Party is Over - Now Clean Up Your Mess }

I flew out of state this weekend to celebrate the birthdays of my fabulous niece and nephew (and while I really can wax on for ages about them, I will refrain). On the flight back I grabbed this week's issue of Time magazine. Cover to cover was about different aspects of what else...the economy. The cover article by Kurt Anderson, I think, precisely outlines how we got here. Like an intervention where the cold hard truth is meant to bring about a turning point, Anderson outlines our two decades of denial and excess. But most importantly, he talks about moving forward from this point.

Using my own analogy of a giant, wild, over the top house party that has come to an end, there is now a huge mess to clean up. For too many months we've been standing amid the mess fretting about...well, the mess. Meanwhile, there is a whole new set of house occupants - our youth -about ready to show up to take ownership. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Yes, some of lovely, overpriced furniture is ruined, and the carpet is stained, the crystal is gone and the five car garage is (and should be) demolished. But the house is still standing. The next wave of occupants will not see the same opulence as before, but we must leave them solid walls, clean rooms and safe shelter. They will come to define their own decor, their own style - hopefully learning from our mistakes. Fear cannot be our motivator. In the sober light of day, doing what's best for the next occupants of this lovely house is our primary responsibility. So, don't wait for maid service - they've all been laid off - pick something up and start cleaning. Don't try to salvage the pretty decorations or what used to be, focus on the basics. And next time someone invites you for a 20 year shindig, just say no.