Cerina

Am I the only person here who watches this show?

That's good! I had an interview. Second one this week. So fingers crossed.

Well that's just all a load of bullshit right there. It doesn't matter how early I get up or how used to it I am, I'm not a morning person and my brain doesn't fully engage until after 10 AM.

tf

We're going to enroll Luke in the fall. I talked myself out of enrolling him at the end of this year because I think it's too much change too quickly. But that's probably just an excuse on my part. A few months ago my sister and BIL bought a new house. They're not renting their old house to my mom and grandparents (because we had to move my grandparents here from Houston and they're doing SO MUCH BETTER NOW). Anyway, my sister had chosen their old house because the school it's zoned to is one of the highest rated in Central Texas. She's probably going to use their old address if they decide to put my niece in public school. She's only 2.5 and they're loaded, so their options are wide open right now. My brother is also thinking about using my mom's address to enroll my nephew in pre-k next year, so now I'm wondering if we should be thinking about doing the same. It's about a 45 minute drive from our house, but it also seems like some of the best full-time job opportunities are also up north so it might be worth looking into. Then the kids could go to my mom's after school and my grandparents can help keep an eye on them for a few hours, which will probably be good for my grandparents as well. But I don't know. And I just hate public schools in general.

Well...we just got our first high school level curriculum. High school. And it's a writing curriculum. I never thought that the first subject we'd reach high school level in would be writing, but here we are.

Right!? I lt made me weird and jittery.

It's also easier to store in the freezer. They can be stacked for "filed" upright in a bin.

We do the same thing to ground beef for quick tacos or spaghetti. Also, if you have an Instant Pot or any pressure cooker, you can have perfectly cooked chicken breasts from frozen in about 20 minutes. This can be shredded for a variety of meals including tacos but our favorite it to melt a block of cream cheese into a large can of green enchilada sauce then add the chicken and serve over white rice or tortilla chips. And also, breakfast for dinner.

Yeah. By midnight or so he had pretty much restored most of his memory. He's still missing a chunk of time from the accident to realizing he was in the hospital (though I'm not sure which "realization" is the one he remembers now because I had to tell him dozens of times what was going on). He had a head CT and x-rays; skull, cervical spine, and brain are all perfectly fine. His mom and oldest brother drove up from Houston. They pulled into the hospital right as we were being discharged, so they spent the night here at the lodge with us. Noah apparently was completely inconsolable while we were in the hospital. My sister said he was curled up in a ball on the bedroom floor just crying about how Erik wouldn't have been hurt if Noah hadn't invited him to come with us this week and how he never should have suggested they ride the ATVs and on and on and on. But it's all good now. Erik is back here, his mom said he could stay, and Noah's finally satisfied that everything is ok.

Spent most if the day in the ER with my teen's best friend who rolled an ATV and hit his head pretty hard. All in all, he's fine. But he has some memory loss that scared the shit out of me.

Really well! They asked me to come in today to meet the rest of the team. There are only 6 people in the company, and 2 of them are in Arizona. They really seem more concerned about making sure I fit in with the overall culture of the office than anything. They said I should hear from them tomorrow. So we'll see.

I have 3 interviews this week. I'm still planning and starting the company, and it's going well. But it's a slow build and we need money now. So I'm looking for slightly lower-level positions that I'd normally be going for. I've applied to maybe 5 places so far and gotten 3 introductory interviews. The next interview is in 15 minutes. This one is the only one that would be an actual career change. It's still real estate, but it's for a private investment firm that does hard money real estate loans to people wanting to begin investing in real estate doing flips. The job ad also says they want someone with the 'skill/passion to create, implement and promote an exclusive educational curriculum focused on "life skills with a practical focus on real estate investment".' So this job is actually something I might be uniquely qualified for.

Can't imagine why you would be suspending him

That's probably the route I'll wind up going. Still need money though. I have a really good friend who did this. She's also building a house in Mexico (her husband is from there and most of his family still lives there), so I'll probably do it once their house is done so I have somewhere to recover for a couple of weeks.

As soon as I can afford it, I'm getting bariatric surgery. And the #1 reason I want to do that is because most plastic surgeons have a BMI limit. What I really want is to have my abs sewn back together. Right now I estimate that my upper ab muscles are separated by a good 6-7 inches, and I can't move because of it. The only way to fix this is surgery, and it's considered cosmetic. Most plastic surgeons will only do it as part of a tummy tuck or mommy makeover. So that's my long-term goal.

Some of you may have seen in the job bitching thread last week where I said that my old boss's old team lead, Mimi, called me to get permission to share my number and also to tell me that I should go into business for myself. Mimi's suggestion surprised me, but it's not like I haven't let the idea live rent-free in the back of my mind for years anyway. Within 2 days of her phone call, I'd set 2 appointments with real estate agents who want my help. It's been a whirlwind of anxiety and excitement and downright fear. But I'm going to do this. I'm going to start my own company helping real estate agents get organized and establish sustainable and scalable systems before they have need of full-time assistance (and some even after they've hired this assistance). Every single job posting I see for the operations side of real estate includes something along the lines of "develop and implement systems and processes for the business and create an operations manual" at the very top of the job duties list. The rest is generally routine administrative work that's only really possible (or simple) once systems and organization are in place. This is why I only worked for the last 2 agents for 6-7 months. That's about the amount of time it takes for me to organize, develop systems, train the agent in them, and then for them to realize they don't have a need for me to maintain what I'd built because what I'd built works really well. So instead of going through this several more times or finding a position with a more established team, I'm going to keep my flexibility and just do that for agents. On Monday, I made a trip into the NW Austin Keller Williams office to meet one agent who wants my help. She's now under contract. And while I was there I was introduced (by Mimi's assistant) to another agent who actually looked at me all wide-eyed and asked if I was "The One" (with much reverence). I told him that I definitely was The One (because when someone asks you if you are a god, you say "yes"!), and shared my number with him. I had a free 30 minute consultation with him yesterday, and he booked me for a longer (paid!) consultation early next week where I'm supposed to check out all of his systems and give him a proposal for how I can fix them and train his brand-new assistant (who doesn't have any administrative or real estate experience). I also have a Zoom consultation next week with yet another agent who has a full-time assistant who just needs a bit of training and for me to set up a few systems for them. I'd love for this to be a brag thread, but it's not because I AM FREAKING RIGHT THE FUCK OUT Y'ALL!!! How in the hell did I convince 3 different people that I know what I'm doing and that I can help them?? What am I going to do now? If I really sit down to think about it, I know I can do all the things I said I could - I have done them for myself or other employers. But how do I do it for them?? I already feel like I'm in over my head and I haven't even really begun to do anything yet. And don't get me started on pricing. I have no idea how to charge people yet. So far I've just offered an hourly rate that's my base rate for employment, so I already know I should have gone higher but then I feel bad for charging too much. Anyway. I'm calling it Realty Operations System Enhancement, or ROSE for short. I'm filling out paperwork for an LLC so I can pay myself like a regular employee and buy this house. And I need to figure out how that works. I bought the domain RoseATX.com, so now I need to figure out how to make a website. I'm so scared though. Just...absolutely terrified. And I don't really know of what.

Yay interview! So I think we're going to move back to Austin in a year or so. There's a lot of details to figure out first. My husband's grandparents died last year and left a house to my MIL and her brother. Neither of them want it. So we're considering it. The thing is, it was built in 1978 and while decently maintained until roughly 5-7 years ago, everything in it is original to the house (except appliances, roof and HVAC) and also occupied by hoarders. All of the flooring, wallpaper, fixtures, and hardware are straight from '78 and covered with a good half inch of dust. So good news/bad news. It'll be highly unlikely to sell in that neighborhood unless to an investor, so it'll need quite a bit of work to make it livable. Also good news, once updated it'll be worth probably a good $100-150k more than it is now. It's 2050 sq ft on a quarter-acre corner lot. More bad news, Trevor's uncle will likely want all of his half through a sale rather than working with us. We're unlikely to qualify for a decent mortgage since none of our jobs are really transferable to Austin. So now we're thinking of ways to make this work. We have a few things in mind, but are open to any and all ideas.