Time Warp

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post. Where has all the time gone?? I have about ten deeper posts sitting in draft mode right now but I can't seem to form thoughts coherent enough to get my meaning across, so for this post I will stick to an update of my life right now.

For the past five weeks I have been using this training schedule to get myself prepared for the upcoming Zombie 5K that I signed up for.
The training schedule is really meant for a running track but my gym doesn't have one and it is too hot to go outside so I have modified it for treadmill and elliptical. It's a fairly easy training routine which is probably why I haven't lost a single pound since I started it. If I do happen to lose a pound it magically reappears the next time I weigh myself. So, it's definitely not a routine for losing weight, let's hope it's at least conditioning me to face a 5K racecourse full of zombies and obstacles. Only two more weeks until race day, yikes!

As I have been training I have also been more aware of what I eat and how much I am eating. I've really been trying to be good about making healthier food choices, not having dessert when I am feeling full, and limiting my portions closer to an actual serving size. Apparently my efforts in this regard have also not paid off as far as losing weight goes but I think I am heading down the right road.

In other news, I have tabled any plans to move out of town or out of state for the moment and am officially signed up to take classes at the local college this coming semester. I'm not thrilled about returning to the land of homework and such, but if it gets me where I need to be then good.

The State of the State

Since I am stuck in the SMC Planning stage I figure I might as well continue to plan for when I do make it to the TTC stage. So, with that in mind there are two things about my home state I want to talk about.......

1. REs - So far as I can find, there is only one official RE in my state and he is not located in my town. He is located in a city about 220 miles away from me. That's about 3 1/2 hours of interstate driving when the roads are nice and clear. But it would be a rather difficult drive in the winter (October - March/April) with snow and ice, that is if the road isn't closed due to blizzards.
It would possibly be doable if I were doing IVF, but it would be ludicrous to drive that far for an IUI when my cycles are so completely unpredictable.
I'm not sure if any of the in-town doctors do IUIs and whether they would do them with frozen swimmers or not. Anyone have experience with a regular OB/Gyn being able to work with frozen sperm? Right now I'm leaning toward at-home inseminations when the time comes. Unless I move somewhere that has a local RE.

 2. Cost of Living - Ali brought up a good point on my last post - the numbers I quoted likely belong to areas with a higher cost of living. Areas where you really do need that much money to get by, especially as a single parent. Of course, I would love to make as much money as possible to be more secure in providing for my family (who wouldn't?). But I will also keep in mind that it is important for my mental health that I am comfortable in my job.

Anyway, my state has a fairly low cost of living, with one exception - house prices. I looked up some statistics the other day and while my state ranks somewhere from 35th to 38th for median annual income per person; it also happens to rank 11th for median house price. I've looked at house prices in the Sunday paper over the last couple years and I believe it.

We have lots of vacations homes, homes with huge tracts of land, and for some reason a gluttony of high-end retirement condos which have all kept our home prices high. During the recession prices went down a little but we never really had many foreclosures, at least not in my city. And now that the recession is winding down prices have only gotten higher. I guess that's the downside of living in such a beautiful state.

We also don't have much in the way of nice apartments that don't cost as much as a mortgage. Ugh, still working on this dilemma.

A Decision Made.....Sort of

All this past week I secluded myself in my room and researched the heck out of schools and jobs. I drove myself batty, changed my mind a dozen times, remembered exactly why I did a Bachelor's in Anthropology/Archaeology the first time (nothing else gave me the warm fuzzies), and finally brought my head, heart, and wallet together in some sort of compromise. I think.

You see, yesterday morning I was all set on going for a Bachelor's in Accounting. It is a career path with the potential to make a decent amount of money and I think I'd have a reasonable chance of doing well at it, perhaps even enjoying it. However, as I looked through the class offerings at my old alma mater I could tell that my heart just wasn't quite sold. And so, my uneasy feelings, combined with the thought of paying for another Bachelor's degree in a subject I wasn't sure about, left me feeling a little cold.

So I researched again. This time I came up with Medical Billing & Coding. There's a lovely little accredited community college about an hour and fifteen minutes away from me that offers this as an Associate's degree. Best of all, they offer an online program for it. Bad news is I'm pretty sure I'm too late to sign up for fall and I'm not sure if I could start in the spring or not. The only good thing about starting later is that I would have time to look into scholarships.

Then I started thinking, maybe I should do the Bookkeeping Certificate at the local school as well. It's only a year-long program and I could probably handle doing both at the same time for one semester if I started the Billing & Coding in the Spring. That way I'd have two potential career paths.

But then two things happened. I looked up the median salary for Billing & Coding and I came across an article (which I can't find now or I would link to it) on the Choice Moms site that had the results of a Choice Mom income survey. Most of the women that answered said they made in the $60,000 - $90,000 range, I believe, with a good chunk making more than that. The median salary for Billing & Coding doesn't even come close to $60,000, in fact it is far less and since that is the median income there is a chance I wouldn't even make that much. Would it be enough to raise a child on my own?

This has led me to test the waters of Computer Programming, another career choice I would probably need a Bachelor's for, and so far I am undecided on this one.

So, my plan for now is to probably sign up for the Bookkeeping Certificate. Meanwhile I will attempt to make a career path choice in time to sign up for Spring or Fall 2014.

Unless a lucrative job, that I would feel confident doing, comes my way in the next couple months (hear that Universe??).

If anyone has advice on jobs or career paths or the cost of raising a child (or two) on your own, please chime in, any advice would be helpful. I know money is a sensitive subject, and one few people feel comfortable openly discussing, so if you'd rather e-mail, my e-mail address is in my new Other page. Also, I have seen this PDF and read most of the Can You Afford It? page on Choice Moms, if that helps.

Scattered to the Winds

So many of my friends are moving, have moved recently, or will be moving within the next year. I'm beginning to think it might be contagious.

This very week a friend and her husband moved to Oregon while another friend moved to North Carolina.

In May a friend moved to Idaho and another friend hopes to join her there in a year.

At the end of summer another friend is moving to Indiana.

And in about half a year another friend and her husband will be moving to the east coast - probably in or near New Jersey.

This is on top of one of my closest friends moving to Arizona a couple years ago and another friend moving a couple weeks ago to a brand new custom built home in a nearby town.

Except for my BFF my town is now pretty much devoid of friends. And in the next year or so, my whole state will be practically devoid of friends as well.

This, plus my friend B trying to convince me to move where she is now, has got me wondering if I should join in this "great migration".

B's new town does offer some advantages on the jobs and fertility front (there's actually an RE's office in the town - more on the RE situation in my state in another post). But it has some disadvantages for raising kids (no family nearby).

Still, I think I just might consider applying there for any appealing jobs that pop up.

Decision Time

My temporary job ended on the 2nd. Thankfully there was enough work to last four full weeks this time! But now I no longer have an excuse not to make a decision on my future.

Work or school?

The way I see it, I have a few options for either:

• I could continue trying to find a job in the town where I live now, though there aren't that many to be had. Thinking in terms of a future baby, finding a job where I live now would be ideal. All of my close relatives live in this town and my best friend is here too. Problem is, there are very few good jobs to be had here. On one end there are tons of minimum wage jobs, on the other end you need a bachelor's/master's in a specific field plus 3-5 years experience. In between are the jobs that nobody wants to do, like the one I quit.

• I could expand my job search to other cities or even other states. It could be an adventure or it could be a big waste of time and money. Would someone from out-of-state actually hire me? And pay enough so I could have an apartment? Would I find myself wanting/needing to move back near family when I have kids?

• I could start my own business. I can only afford to start a micro business and I've seen enough statistics on Etsy to know that I might never make more than a little spending money. Still, it is a possibility to make extra money - if only I could come up with a really great idea.

As for school:

• I could go to the local college I applied to last December. I'm beginning to think the program I started off wanting to do is really meant as a supplement for people with business degrees and not as a stand-alone degree. Otherwise they don't offer much of interest to me.

• I could go to another in-state college. Found a great vocational program in the town where I got my bachelor's degree but I'm not sure if I'd physically be able to work in this field thanks to an on-going medical issue.

• I could go to an out-of-state college. More options for degrees but then there is the dreaded out-of-state tuition. I'm really not sure I want to take out another student loan after I just paid off the last one.

So much to think about. All of the above descriptions are just tiny fractions of the pros/cons running around in my head. And best/worst of all - I only have a short window in which to make my decision before registration closes on school and before my resume begins to show too much of a gap.

What to do? What to do?