First Day of Freedom

Yesterday wasn't too bad.  I am now officially unemployed; or I guess I should say that I am now officially not employed outside the home and getting paid for it!  There is plenty of employment here at home!

  Our group went to TGI Fridays for dinner right after work; a group made up of former team members who stayed with the company in other departments, and those of us leaving yesterday.  We had a nice, noisy group, and we had fun.  No one got drunk, although one girl was a little buzzed when she left, so I made sure she got home all right!  I, and another lady had no alcohol.

I'll be keeping in touch with everyone and I have threatened to do a newsletter about every two months gathering everyone's news and sending it out to make sure that the others keep up with each other, too. 

So what did I do today, my first day of freedom?  Well, I have done some laundry and some shopping.  That's about it.  Thomas and Eler Beth took one of our friends, who is a college professor, to one of the quarries to look for fossils and pink crystals.  They'll be gone most of the day.  He and Eler Beth cut grass and did some yard work early this morning, and Andrew and I are going to finish it up later this evening when it gets cooler.  It is so hot out there today!  There is a breeze, but it is a hot breeze!

Andrew got up and then went back to bed.  He is either getting sick or he stayed up later than he was supposed to last night!  I went out and bought a lot of office and stationary supplies.  I'm going to re-organize my computer/work area here at home.   I just about freaked the kids out last night.  I told them that now that I'm going to be home for a month or two I'm going to be lookingat our household procedures and productivity and will be making up new Operations and Procedures manuals for all household chores and activities.  They stared at me for about a full minute, then Andrew said, "You mean you're going to be worse than usual?!"

  I said that I would have to do something here at home that tied in a little with my work, otherwise it would be like stopping cold turkey, and Andrew said, "And does that have to affect us?!"  I said that yes, I'm sorry, but it probably would, since they're now the only team I have.  Eler Beth said, "But I thought we were going to have fun this summer?"

So I laughed and said I'd try not to upset their schedules too much, and that one of the things I used to do at work was organize fun team-building activities.  My plans for the Helms team includes trips to the pool, the zoo, the science museu, Six Flags, and a few other things.  Eler Beth was immediately relieved, but Andrew, who, although he knew I was basically joking about the Ops and Procedures things, happens to know me very well and how my mind works, not to mention the fact that his chore/responsibility load is much larger than Eler Beth's, wasn't totally at ease yet.  He said, "You are going to re-organize some things though, aren't you?  You're going to be home more, so you'll be running things more, won't you?"

Is that a bad thing? lol  I promised I wouldn't go overboard with my organizational compulsiveness, my micro-management tendencies or my pickiness!   But I do know myself.  The last time I quit a full-time job at a company where I'd been for a long time was when I was pregnant with Eler Beth and Andrew was starting kindergarten.  For the first few month that I home I kept track of every paycheck, every expenditure, every receipt for every little thing bought, not just bills and the main groceries; I had a budget plan and I reconciled every receipt each week with the money in the bank and whatever cash we kept on hand.  I was never more than a few dollars off at the end of the week, sometimes just a few pennies.  Thomas got to where he would keep receipts for everything, even small purchases like a soft drink or a candy bar, so he didn't have to guess about what he spent that day when I asked him each evening.  Poor thing.  It wasn't that I was so concerned with money, but that I had been a comptroller for a food broker.  I had to do something at home that was at least a little similar to what I had been doing in order to keep sane.  It wore off pretty quickly, though, and Thomas was a dear to have put up with it for so long.

I'll be good, I promise!