Fresh

Today, I was a piano teacher and nothing more for the first time ever. I'm not a secretary or an office manager or anything else horrifyingly boring like that. I spent two days training the new secretary who is taking my place, and I will do the same next week, and that will be it - finished! Done! Wahoo!

Today, I closed my checking account too.
Chris and I have found that separate accounts, for the most part, help keep the peace in our household. That's not true for everyone, but it sure is for us. But I was paying a penalty fee because I don't have direct deposit set up, which is really rotten because the little church I was working for, of course, doesn't know how to set up direct deposit as a payroll option. So the fee was rotten, as we've established, but the fee was also recently increased. It almost doubled. And my income just halved this week. So, I went in and closed my first-ever, very-own checking account.
That made this whole transition seem very, very real.
It wasn't scary or unsettling or anything, just suddenly real.
I might have to pick up some other demeaning, minimum-wage job to make ends meet, but I haven't thought that far ahead and I'm certainly happy to do that if it means leaving the awful place where I was and moving toward the happy place that's in front of me.

Today, I had Slow Coffee because I didn't have to gulp it down in order to wake up as fast as possible. I drank it out of a real coffee mug, too. Usually, I have my first cup in a real mug and then reluctantly switch to a travel mug.
I don't like travel mugs.
They make my coffee taste all plastic-y and bitter.
PS - I almost left my pajamas on while taking the kids to school. But then I realized that I had to go to the bank too and that would be a little silly. Some girl in pajamas and (probably) high heels (because that's the only kind of shoe I like, so it's the only kind of shoe I own) with serious bedhead (I mean the totally-flat-in-the-back-but-the-whole-top-is-sticking-straight-up bedhead), holding a (non-travel) mug of coffee shuffling in to close her checking account?
Suspicious, I say.

Today, I played the piano to my heart's content, I knitted a bit and pondered the ramifications of knitting for fun and not just as a means of filling up otherwise-wasted moments in my day. I had leftovers for lunch and saw my baby nephew. I caught up on all the blogs in my Google Reader account. I picked up my kids on time from school and after-school club and took them on time to their evening activities - a jazz band concert and ballet class. I was fully present the whole time.

Today, I had a fresh start.

Daily Bliss: Emma's pure excitement over the presence of capers in our dinner
Wake-up Playlist: Neal McCoy, Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye