October- the month of scheduling

Jeremiah has been very busy lately doing the political thing.  He made his first speech as a candidate to the Democratic Women in Anne Arundel County and it went well.  He's been going to different community association meetings, Democrat clubs, and of course maintaining his affiliations with the Chamber of Commerce (Pasadena Business Association) and different committees and clubs related to law.  Very busy guy.  

We've scheduled ourselves into a frenzy so that he can help me out with the kids here and there around his work and campaign schedule.  Extra help is needed in October because I've got my Itsy Bitsy Yoga classes on top of work, plus they upped the number of mandatory classroom-helper days for J.'s preschool (now it's two days per month).  This is also the month that the parents of her class are responsible for giving the school a good cleaning (which Jeremiah did this morning).  This is also the month that I'm leading a nature walk for all 3 preschool classes as part of my Committee Chair responsibilities at her school (plus I had to attend a board meeting to present the plans that I created for rain gardens and a sensory garden. I'm writing grants to get funding for these for the spring).  Participating in a Cooperative Preschool is no slacker ride!

Another freak scheduling nightmare that has hit in October is doctor appointments. It's the time for my annual physical, women's and eye exams and C.'s 18 month well visit.  So that's 4 extra dates that I've had to schedule and REschedule to fit in with our calendar.  And I've been chauffeuring paperwork around town this month trying to get doctor signatures on stuff for all 4 of us because we're applying to get private health insurance. Once that happens, I can cancel my health insurance that we're on that comes through my full-time job (and since I work for a nonprofit, I'm the only one getting a small discount on the cost anyhow. we pay full price for the 3 of them.).  And once I'm not required to be a full-time employee in order to keep up my insurance, I can drop down to working 20 hours instead of 30 which is much more reasonable!  This is scheduled to happen in January, after burning through all of my remaining personal time from being a full-time employee for 6 1/2 years.  Whoo Hooo!

Technically I've also been working on scheduling additional consultations regarding getting our roof repaired and getting solar panels (some fine day...).  

Best Moment Lately: this week we've been so busy during the days that Jeremiah and I have been crashing together on the couch to watch netflix at night. total vegging. ahhh....

Worst Moment Lately: my brother was in a car accident of his own creation on Thursday.  This has brought up lots of emotions and totally bummed me out. He was not injured in the car accident, so that's good. But he's in a very hard position now and I'm lost as to what my next move should be.  

Also, my babysitting schedule has drastically changed once again. The flu has been going around and this week I made 3 phone calls for childcare help (all rejected due to flu!) before finding a 4th person to watch the kids for a few hours so that I could get some work done. All that juggling is exhausting.  I mostly have things set up now but most days it's not clean and easy. There's a lot of scheduling work going into each and every day, considering who's driving, can J. make it to and from preschool, plus me fitting my work meetings into this narrowing window of child-free time. I can't wait until January when I'll have 10 hours less to work each week (and fewer responsibilities to boot!).  

Thoughts Lately: I've been planning Jeremiah's campaign float for the Pasadena Parade. If anyone reading this wants to wear a Vote Chiappelli shirt and walk with us during the parade, please shoot me an email! It's November 1st, at 2pm with a pizza party after-party at our house! Jeremiah will be sponsoring the MOMS Club float in the parade, as he did last year, but we can only walk with one float so we're going with the campaign one of course! We're planning the signs etc now and designing the float. It'll be my first time participating in the campaign with Jeremiah. I'm nervous that we won't look strong if we don't have enough walkers or something. The problem is that we have a lot of friends that would rather stick a fork in their eye than walk and wave and smile in a parade. And it seems that Jeremiah knows a lot of people that are supportive and will vote for him, but for different reasons won't be in the parade with us. And then all of my local friends are in the MOMS Club, which needs it's own walkers so they won't be walking with us.  So we've got a lot of family and some friends walking and I hope that in the end we don't look stupid.