Update from an E-mail I Wrote to Nathan Simon
Let’s see… News from my exciting life, which I lead while living no less than 10 minutes by car from my family’s home…
Ian and I just had our 10 year wedding anniversary last Friday. Yikes. I’m still giddy-in-love with him and our trip to parentland has been difficult and challenging, but also has deepened our relationship with each other. I know it sounds goofy, but I am truly honored to be a part of this little family of three that we have built.
Ian is working for a company who provides early intervention services for children with autism. Although when he started he was working directly with the children, he now is doing a lot more management of consultants, cases, and deals with the funding agencies (such as school districts and the California state regional centers). The business belongs to an old friend, and Ian is working really hard to make it viable in the long term. It’s good work, but stressful sometimes. He often has to deal with parents who are somewhat crazy with grief over their child’s disability, and a model of in-home programs that leads to a handful of annoying problems like staffing. Still, he love it because he’s working to help little kids who might otherwise fall through the cracks.
I am still my own boss and we’re coming up on my 2-year anniversary of being in business for myself. I’m a good editor, but not a great business person. So I try to keep the business stuff really simple. I have a handful of regular clients. Lately I’ve been working on nursing and allied health textbooks for Pearson Education. With three other women, I am co-writing a medical terminology textbook this year. I love that project because it will lead to residual income in the form of royalties. My current challenge is to figure out how to work smarter (and not harder), in order to make more $. I’m able to be more selective about the projects I take on now, which is a good feeling. I’ve also been doing a bit of freelance writing for Sacramento Magazine this past year. I’m currently working on my fifth article for them. (I actually interned with Sacramento Magazine back in 96. We starved that year because of it, but that internship has paid off nicely since I’ve been freelancing.) I should probably try to expand and get published by other magazines, but I’m busy and lazy at the same time. I am, after all, still raising a small child.
Lucas is…loving, wonderful, clever, charming, smart, infuriating, independent, clingy, funny, graceful, clumsy, friendly, amazing, and confounding. I’m finding that three is an age of contradictions and paradoxes. Most of the time we enjoy him completely; sometimes I can’t wait to ship him off to grandma’s house or daycare or just about anywhere else. He is sweet as pie for others and saves his most challenging behaviors for me and Ian. This is textbook three-year-old.
Ian and I are starting to think about having another child—a thought that fills me with a warm and cozy feeling and a deep dread at the same time. (Maybe thirty-three is also an age of contradictions and paradoxes?) Like I said above, I sort of now feel like my old self has emerged from the fog of new-parenthood. I have my body back, my mind functioning again, and a lot more freedom to come and go when I need to. So, the idea of walking back into that cloudy dreamland of sleep deprivation and lactation and baby fat is pretty terrifying. On the other hand, I do want to have another baby and I don’t want to be 35 or older when I do it, nor do I want my children to be too far apart in age…. Basically, I am still completely neurotic, but now I can see that clearly.
