Well here I am in Temecula, California where the kids have moved. YD flew back to South Carolina for 3 weddings she booked before her husband's transfer to Camp Pendleton. My granddaughter turned 4 on August 18th. I arrived August 16th.

Financial things have been happening. I have a job! Yes I still have pain from fibromyalgia, but it is much improved after upping my amitriptyline from 10 mg a night to 30 mg.....100 mg is the usual for depression so I am well under that, but it seems to be helping the pain (but then the temps starting staying above 50 degrees at night around the same time, which also helps). Hopefully it will still help during our cold rainy season......

Anyhoo, I have been transcribing a couple of medical reports a month for my old ortho surgeon boss. I volunteered to do the billing and sending of reports since I had heard his wife (who I worked with for several years at his office) needed back surgery. I called her and she said goody come in and I will show you how we do it. I walked out with a pretty much full-time job with benefits becoming her executive assistant. She runs an assisted living facility in the town I live in. DH and I are now covered again by health insurance, having been uninsured for 11 months. It is extremely flexible (I am in Southern California for 3 weeks) and it is very fulfilling at the same time. Perfect job.

If my pain comes back in the winter bad, I will just cut back my hours. I don't have any set responsibilities, it is just keeping boss lady on track and helping out with administrative duties where needed.

Also our home in KF, Oregon where OD went to collge (second degree in diagnostic ultrasound) is closing today. Not sure what our loss is yet, but we are happy to be done with it. It was never supposed to be a rental (market fell right after DD graduated), we did not want to become landlords. We were very lucky in that in the past 5 years since, we have only had about 4 months that we did not have renters. We were extremely lucky to have fabulous renters, 3 different ones who took really good care of the house.

So the plan is to refinance at a 15 year rate and put that money back into our home, which is where we got the money in the first place. Looking back, it was stupid, but at the time it seemed smart. Who knew the housing marked would collapse? When we built the house, it seemed like a great idea!! Haha on us.

The rate at our credit union for a 15 year mortgage is 2.875% with no points. I told DH to get his butt in there and check it out since we should have our money anytime.

In other financial news, my small comp claim settlement will be received any day now too, so things are feeling pretty positive with us.

California has set up the exchange with Obama care, but it is still really expensive. For DH and I it would have been $900 a month, so having insurance covered for both of us is such a relief. Yes I am working for it, but in a flexible fulfilling job. I really couldn't ask for more.

In spending news, we are paying for granddaughter's first year of preschool. She is going to the St.Jeanne le something school here in Temecula 3 mornings a week. With daughter gone and SIL on duty, I will be going to mass and orientation with granddaughter on Sunday, meeting the teachers, etc. The kids already toured the school and granddaughter loved it. In fact when my daughter drove me over to look at it, granddaughter cried because she wanted to stay. Thus we tried to teach her the concept of the "school year".

I have been using the David Allen Getting Things Done method at work and have been very, very successful with it, so much so a coworker started writing things down instead of keeping everything in her head.

Now if I could only be so organized and on top of things at home!!

Now that I have a laptop I hope to keep up better here. I bought daughter's 3 month old laptop because she could not calibrate it to edit her pictures. Yea!! Now I can surf, post and pin while sitting with DH at night watching our TV shows!!