Update January 22, 2021

Hi all! I hope you had a good week! We did in this neck of the woods.

This week Aaron finished reading Keys to the Demon Prison by Brandon Mull to me and the kids. It is the 5th book in Mull’s Fablehaven series, in which a sister and brother must save the world after discovering that their grandparents run a preserve for fantastic creatures. It was a fantastic completion to the series.

I also finished listening to Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo. This is a coming-of-age story of a Latina teen who struggles with how her sexuality fits in the world and in her family’s religion. It was all beautifully composed in slam poetry. I highly suggest the audiobook. This book has been sitting in my Audible library for a while, and I decided to try it out since I’m planning on focusing on BIPOC books this year.

I am currently reading Ring, Shout by P. Djeli Clark and listening to Lakewood by Megan Giddings. Aaron is reading The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan to us. And Aaron and I are listening to 1984 by George Orwell.

Family Life

Over the weekend, I picked up an extra job as a PCA for a woman with ALS. It makes my schedule even busier, but gives us that extra financial oomph we’ll need to get through the startup of our book-selling business.

We are really enjoying the business so far. We shipped out our first major load of books this week, and bought plenty more for resale. Now we’ll see what kind of money we can draw in.

I made the (?) mistake of looking into BSA for Deirdre. Mostly, I thought that it would be more goal-oriented and activity-focused than I’ve noticed Girl Scouts being. I’ve been going through a Journey with D11 and her cousin O11, but and it’s positively boring! No wonder her troop hasn’t completed any Journies or gotten any badges! Anyway, her Girl Scout troop is dissolving at the end of the year, so I suggested D11 think about BSA instead. She is very goal-oriented, and gets a lot of pleasure out of achieving her goals – being in a group that provides many opportunities for earning merit badges would be enjoyable to her.

I told her I’d look in to BSA if she’d like to try it out. She sounded interested in earning badges, so I found a troop. The activities sounded really fun – they went skiing this week, but invited D11 to join them in rock-climbing and archery at Base Camp next week. I hadn’t meant for her to start right away when I looked into it, and now we have to figure out how to pay for BSA if she wants to join. Oops.

As I’ve mentioned, we have been considering building an ADU for dad to live in when he is unable to live alone. Now that I have an estimate from an architect, I’m wondering if the same amount of money could be spent on buying a larger house in our same school district, and what that would entail. I just want to look at all the available options, which habit is the bane of my existence. I contacted a couple of realtors to see if I could find one who was willing to give me honest answers to my questions on the topic. One of them did a beautiful job of answering my questions, and she will be coming to look at the house next Monday to see what she thinks.