Living the Good Life....And it has nothing to do with money.

As I am sitting here outside on my deck working today, listening to the birds and occasional dog barking in the neighborhood, I’m reminded again how lucky I am to be able to work from home. In February 2007, I quit my Pharmacy Operations job at a major insurance company, after being there 25 years. I was in Pharmacy Operations only about 5 months in the most recent stint. I took that position because my previous Client Management position required too much travel and too many hours a week (50-60).

Since Grimjack’s relatively new job required longer commute times and some travel, and he had the better salary, we decided that I would quit my job so I could work from home for his brother’s software company. Everything I do, can be done on a laptop and by phone. This allowed us to pull Little Grim out of daycare, which was a huge savings there. When Grimjack needs to travel or work late, we no longer have to worry how to manage picking up our daughter on time or make arrangements for her to stay overnight somewhere because of his early train schedule, etc. We both have aging parents and it is getting more difficult for them to babysit her for extended periods.


I now have the benefit of spending time all week with Little Grim, which I couldn’t do when my other kids were younger. She just started preschool two mornings a week, because we felt she was getting bored here at home with little interaction with other children - She missed her friends from daycare. She loves preschool, is making new friends and is very happy. Right now she is playing on her new (new to her – an eBay purchase!) swingset with the dog and interrupted me to tell me she ‘bonked’ her head. No tears, so she is fine, and off and running.

But it is moments like that, that I would have missed if I was working outside the home full-time. I won’t knock daycare – my kids spent many years having other people care for them so I could earn a living as a single parent. But I ALWAYS yearned to be home with them, I felt I was missing out on so much. And now Little Grim has the benefit of a mom who is not coming home tired and miserable at the end of the day, waiting for her kid to go to bed so she can get more work done. I have a flexible schedule – I work 4 or 5 days a week, my choice, when I need to. I can rearrange my days as needed for appointments, the vet, grocery shopping, errands, laundry, etc, that would have required coordination with Grimjack previously, so we could make sure everything got done. We can’t figure out how we got these things done before.

I guess the point of this is, I will try to never take my life for granted, when I am so lucky that I have what I have. Sure, we make sacrifices, but nothing near the sacrifices I had to make as a single parent. We are healthy and happy, we have great friends and families, my kids are all healthy and happy, the two grandsons are healthy and happy, and LIFE IS GOOD.