Well, it's been good these last few months. Oliver started school after a big decision to pull him out of Brooklyn Friends and go to Plymouth Church School. We are so happy with our decision and Oliver really loves his new school too. Oliver turned 4, and mom and Carol came to visit for 2 weeks. Len and Elaine went to South Africa so they let mom and Carol stay at their place. It was a nice drama-free visit, and I was both relieved and sad to see them go.
Before school started, early September we took a trip to Montauk for a few days. The weather wasn't great but the 3 of us got to spend some quality time together in the pool and ate good seafood and sushi. When we returned I had a really bad cold and even got pink eye.
October I went back to teaching Mandarin at Imagine, Oliver's old preschool in Brooklyn Heights. It was nice to start making a little bit of steady income again. After trying out being a children's photographer, arts and crafts teacher. I started and stopped 2 business ideas (1. Open a place for kids doing arts and crafts using only recyclable material. 2. Becoming a professional organizer), and finally settled on becoming a certified parenting educator.
I found a place that I can do my studies from home to get certified, and came up with a proposal to redesign that company's website. I ended up talking to the cofounder of Breakthrough Parenting and they took my proposal. I haven't done any design work for them yet, but that should be happening in the next few months.
The funny thing is as soon as I decided what I wanted to do, the calls came in to do some freelance design work. The universe just works that way.
I've also been trying to take better care of myself. I started going for morning walks with Elaine. Maybe it's stress or the extra walking, but my alignment is totally off and the last few days I've been experiencing a pinched nerve numbing my right arm. And just when I scheduled an appointment to take care of that. Hurricane Sandy hit on October 29th. Where we live was ok, but all the subway systems got flooded so no one can get in or out of the city. We are very lucky that we didn't lose our power and had no damages.
In the last few months I've also been focused on getting our finances in order. I scheduled appointments to get our financial/retirement planning worked out. And I also looked into what to do with our house in LA. My whole view on whether to own or rent has changed a bit since we moved to New York. The prices are just too high to own and after having owned a house in LA it feels like it's a lot of added stress to maintain it. Where we live now we are getting to enjoy so many wonderful benefits of a good lifestyle. We love Len and Elaine and they treat us so well. Plus Oliver can go to a public school and we'll be able to save that money for his college. I can see many benefits of staying here and renting and manage our money well.
So many changes, but all good.
