Gingerbread houses

Recently, on Facebook, I have noticed a lot of people posting anti-Christmas posts. Those posts are mainly about how we should not be decorating for Christmas, shopping for Christmas, or even THINKING about Christmas, until it’s actually December. While I understand the reason behind this sentiment, I also understand that everybody has their own thing set up for a reason. And, ya know, stuff’s gonna happen.

Like today, for example.

Yesterday, when I was driving the kids home from Springfield, I noticed a house that already had Christmas lights and decorations up. “What the heck! It’s still November!” I muttered. But, when my daughter told me that she wanted to make a gingerbread house this weekend, I decided, “Go for it!” Really, there’s no reason to put it off. And it’s not gonna hurt anybody, either.

One of her best friends spent the night last night and so the two of them each created a gingerbread house.

Here’s a picture of both houses:

Here is a pic of the house created by her friend:

And here is the house that Jen built:

Jesse also got in on the action. At first, he was making a gingerbread house. Unfortunately, the roof kept collapsing. Despite Jen’s help to try to fix his house and my assurances that he could do it, he deep-sixed the project.

Jesse ended up making a tower instead:

I am glad the kids did a fun project this weekend. They sure enjoyed eating their creations up! And I am looking forward to making gingerbread MEN, too, but when it’s more of December.

Front and center

Earlier this year, I lost a writing gig that was supposed to be a “long-term” thing. But that didn’t end up being long-term after all. I was going to give myself some time to find new clients for that line of work and, meanwhile, looking for something more dependable to bring in extra income. At first, I didn’t really put much effort into that. I tried to find a job here and there, but I didn’t really put too much energy into it. I guess I was still holding out hope that I’d find a new ghostwriting client.

Now fast forward to the present. It has been over 6 months since A: I tried to find a new ghostwriting client. And B: I tried to find a more dependable line of work while searching for that client.

And neither of those things have happened!

So, recently, I made a decision. It was time to say goodbye to ghostwriting. And it was also time to put more focus on finding a new job. That’s the thing that has kept me so preoccupied all week. It was time to put this quest to find a new job front and center. It had to be my COMPLETE and ONLY goal for the time being. I had to REALLY focus on it. After I get a new job, then I can go back to focusing on everything else. But right now, I live, breathe, and eat this one goal: Find. New. Job. 

But then, earlier this week, something came up that sorta threw me off that task. And I got upset and all emotional but then I dealt with it on my own. So after that was over and done with, THEN I got back on track in finding a new job.

At first, I tried looking for work outside of the home, but, recently, I decided that I should not limit myself to that. That decision was reinforced for me in the very early hours of the morning when I woke up at 2 a.m. and, unable to go back to sleep because I was so stressed out about my situation, I decided to just pray. Last night, I had been VERY depressed about this situation. I was upset, disappointed with myself, and feeling pretty worthless. And, now, with it disrupting my sleep, I decided to just give this all to God. Just pray and let God handle it.

After that, I got out of bed (since I couldn’t sleep anyway) and got online to poke around on the Internet. That poking around got me noticing that I was checking out a bunch of writing jobs.

I stopped myself when I realized this. Wait a minute, I thought, what am I doing? Was I really looking for a work-from-home job after I had said goodbye to working from home?

But then I figured, yes, I suppose I was. I suppose this is something I should no longer avoid.

A lot of the jobs outside of the home had all these requirements I could not meet:

Phone or radio communication (no good since I’m deaf)
Prior experience in the field
A degree or certification 
Heavy lifting (no good since my arm injury is not yet healed)
Sign language proficiency (believe it or not, I’m not proficient in ASL because I only have one good hand. I’m a one-handed signer! But one job needed me to sign with two hands. My limitation with sign also limited how much of it I applied myself to learning. As with everything in life, I had to adapt!)

But I have actually had more luck in finding work when I work from home. There’s no communication problems because it’s all through email or private messages or a messaging system through a website. (And even if I had to make phone calls, I use relay.) Plus, I understand that I’m not exactly an attractive person for everybody to see. I have 3rd degree burn scars on my face. I’m not so naïve as to think the world is full of people who accept everyone despite how they look on the outside, because I know for a fact that there are shallow people who only want eye candy instead of an intelligent or loving or compassionate person. I know how it is in the world. I’m no beauty queen. (Which is pretty much why I never want to be on TV and tend to avoid video chats.) But working from home, I can keep my face hidden. Nobody has to see me. Yes, some websites want a photo. Ugh! It’s an annoying thing to deal with. I try to be careful with those. But working from home means I don’t have to deal with anyone who would recoil in horror when seeing my face. And, also, I can make my own hours!

And anyway, there was actually a couple of writing jobs on that website I was qualified for. With one job, I had the experience they wanted applicants to have, and with the other, I had a nice list of clips to share when applying for a position. Alas, they were not looking for writers in Eugene. Darn it!

But I went back to bed thinking about that. And I recalled how a friend of mine shared with me a work-from-home job opportunity this summer. I turned it down because I didn’t want to keep working from home, but now I was actually interested in applying for it. And also, there are ways I could work this job away from the desk and away from home. I could work it on a local level. So I contacted her about it this morning and we’re going to chat more about it this weekend.

But even if it does not work out, at least now I know that it’s okay to look for work-from-home jobs again. And I’d like to think that maybe God guided me to the answer to my prayer.