Poor Neglected Blog

It's amazing how quickly a few days can pass without much of anything happening. It seems silly to be constantly posting here, saying "Today we sat around at home, watched TV, read books and went to the grocery store" but that would pretty much sum up our last week or so. It seems to be important to get the kids out of the house once a day if at all possible, but we have settled into a slow summer routine of Megan staying in bed late reading, staying in her PJs all morning, then once she is finally up and ready to go somewhere it is lunchtime, and then Calum wants to take a nap, and then it seems too late to go out and our day is nearly over. Megan and I have been happily immersed in all the wonderful used books I've bought during my investigation of the Vancouver area's used book stores, so the days tend to go by quickly.

I've been doing a lot of thinking thanks to all this time at home and I realize that with us having found a good school solution for Megan, and Calum being at a prime age to go to preschool a few mornings a week, (not to mention the freedom of being in a new place without ongoing commitments and a busy social calendar), I suddenly have fewer responsibilities and can begin to consider a career change as it were. I don't intend to give up being at home with the kids just yet; I know that being available for them is still valuable even when they're old enough to go off on their own adventures. But after some exploring of various post-secondary institution websites, I realized I could begin taking classes part-time, maybe as early as this fall. It's been about ten years since I left University hoping that some time off would help me to figure out precisely what I wanted to do. I realize now that I have let my perfectionism stop me from considering a lot of options. I bought a couple of books this weekend that confirmed my guess that my abilities, personality, and the experience I've gained through the administrative work I have done in LLL would make me a good candidate for a human resources job. I am going to see if I can get some financial aid and apply to start the part-time HR Management program at BCIT this fall. The part-time program should take 2 years to complete by which point Calum would be ready to start school. They have many evening, weekend and distance ed/online classes, so I could continue spending my days driving my kids around to their various schools and activities, building my bookselling business and having some flexibility in my schedule.

Speaking of the bookselling, I managed to get out to some garage sales on Saturday and pick up another big stack of used books to add to my inventory. I still won't be able to register with Abebooks until we unpack our boxes and retrieve my inventory after our move, but at least I can increase the selection by taking advantage of garage sale season. I picked up a couple of grocery bags full of old hardcover novels at an estate sale in North Vancouver. It was pretty obvious that an old person had died because they were selling off the entire contents of this house that looked like it had been decorated in the 60s. Some of the books were so covered in dust and cobwebs, I'd guess that they hadn't been removed from the shelves in decades. I hope that I can help these books find new owners soon so they can be enjoyed again. My plan is to carry on garage sale-ing most weekends, buying up as many books as I can find and then open the business within the first couple of weeks of August. Exciting!