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Archive for November, 2010

November Catch-Up

November 20th, 2010 at 02:30 pm

I post rarely these days, so this is a catch-up post since July.

Life is calmer these days than it was early in the year, thank goodness. 2010 has definitely been a personal crisis year with Henry's dying and my mother's illness, but things have settled down for the moment.

I'm still on unemployment and still working part-time. I got cut way back on hours at the CPA firm for 4th quarter but found a temp job working as office manager in a doctor's office to fill in the gap until tax season. I've had some interviews at firms I'd really like to work for but haven't yet landed the salaried job with benefits that I crave. There are so many people with more experience than me out on the market that I lose out on the experience front. But at least this year I'm getting interviews--I wasn't last year. I'm crossing my fingers that if worst comes to worst I'll be back at the CPA firm that I've been at since April 1, and working more on corporate taxes this year, which is *exactly* the kind of experience that I'll need to get the kind of job I want. It's not a sure thing since office space is tight and the boss has another part-timer who he hired on after me who has nine years of experience...but if they can make the office space work I have a pretty good shot at having the job I need this tax season to get the job I want in a year or so, so I'm being optimistic.

The biggest thing since July is that I've actually made some progress for once on my weight loss goal. The last time I made any progress here was in 2008, when I joined Weight Watchers and lost 25 pounds in 3 months...and then slowly gained back nearly 20 of it during the intervening time. I turned 50 in August and that lit a fire under me to make a serious effort to lose the weight before menopause hits and makes it harder.

I had read Joel Fuhrman's "Eat for Life" about 5 years ago and thought it too extreme, but that's the plan I've ended up using. His advice is to have a pound of raw greens, a pound of cooked greens, any other assorted veggies you want, 3 or 4 pieces of fruit, a cup of beans, and a cup of whole grains a day--and that's 90% of what you eat. I doubt I get quite that many greens, but I have increased my intake of them significantly, mostly by becoming a fan of the "green smoothie." I have one or two of those a day. I ate a lot of salads in the summer, and now with winter it's more veggie-bean soups--and by upping my intake of vegetables and fruit significantly and limiting my grain intake to a cup a day, I've lost 14 pounds since mid-September, bringing me to my lowest weight in about 5 years. There's still a lot to lose (about another 50 pounds) but I'm finally making progress.

Where I'm not making progress is on cutting the debt. My income is currently about 50% of what it was when I had a full-time professional job, and that combined with this years' health crises with Henry and my mom put me into credit card debt for the first time in 15 years. Then in September I had a water pipe burst (about a $3000 repair), and various assorted larger expenses--this month it's going to be tires (on Subarus you have to replace all four at once so that's about $400 to get tires that will last the remaining life of the car--I hope to eek another 5 years out of it and get it to 200K miles), plus I need new eyeglasses before tax season again, and that will be another $200 to $400. As Gilda Radner playing Roseann Rosanadanna said, "It's always something."

But all things considered, I'm on an upswing emotionally relative to the beginning of the year and I hope to savor this period of relative calm for quite a while until the next crisis.

(That's Henry in the picture. His six-month yahrzeit is Nov 30)