Posting here, from the lake, where my (food-hoarding) mother insisted the cheese was still good, since she’d just brought it back from Aspen. As in, Colorado. As in, Yes, she checked deli cheese. Sigh.

So, daycare drama persists, and I think I’m going to give notice on Monday. We toured another facility on Friday, separate from her current place and not the dream preschool that, honestly, I haven’t yet given up hope for. But dream preschool needs her to be potty trained, and she’s staring down the barrel of 3, and when she turns 3 at the current place, she goes to the preschool room with a 1:10 ratio (with 20 kids), and I just don’t think she’s thriving in her current 1:7 (with 21 kids) ratio room.

This third option is still crazy close to our house, a center, but smaller, older, and shabbier looking. Our current center is kind of knockout beautiful and not typical for daycare centers around here, but I think that a smaller facility with crappier chairs will be better than leather couch lobbies and too many kids, right?

New place has an infant room for 0-1, with 7 babies, Wobblers are 1-2.5, with 8 currently, and then preschool is 3.5-4.5, with 10 kids. Each room has two teachers, and there’s one or two floats, and while it is sort of weird to see such a SMALL place for a daycare, it’s, again, probably because I’m so used to having such a spacious place now. I mean, I’m not in love with this third option like I am the Dream Preschool, but I’m also not in love with where she is now. On our visit, Ing warmed up quickly, took off her coat and wanted to stay, and the teachers seemed warm, and all have, or or working on, education degrees. And if I’m not going to be make-out in love with a daycare center, a smaller teacher child ratio and lower price (to the tune of $100 less a month) is a good reason to switch, right? I think if Ingrid had been twitchy about it, I’d be less inclined, but she seemed okay with it, and has talked about it since leaving there. And as my best friend reminded me, kids are resilient, right? Lots of kids have had more changes in their childcare by age 3 than one switch, right?

I think it’s time to try something new, but I’m still angsty about it. Reassurances?

You know how, oh, once a year I get all hand-wringy about the road not taken by finishing a writing degree, how I used to Write, blahdee blah blah?

Well, I actually have a paid writing gig now. PAID. And granted, it’s not a fortune, but it’s something. I’m blogging for an instructional technology blog, and I have a weekly deadline, and I get $25 per post. It’s not a spammy weird reviews-for-cash site, but a full on professional, affiliated with a major university (not in Maine) tech and teaching blog. (I’m not going to link here, but if you follow me at twitter, you know where it is.)

And today, I got an email from my editor(?) saying that they liked the last piece I submitted enough to make it a feature, for which I’ll get paid $75. Seriously! For writing about stuff I LOVE, I am getting money. WILD.

So, while the great american novel/memoir/children’s book hasn’t been published with my name as author, I am technically now a Paid Writer, right? That’s pretty cool.