April has been a whirlwind of activity for us, and with all that activity undoubtedly comes a bit of craziness! The start of the month saw us returning from Nicaragua, then just 10 days later we traveled to Maine for a long weekend with my husband’s family. The rest of the month I was busy out straight working on a large project for Let’s Dish!. I think April is notorious for being crazy busy, as people get rush to get outside after the winter.

May starts on Thursday and I just can’t believe summer is almost here already. What is it about getting older that makes the days (and years) seem to fly by so quickly? (OK, just writing that statement made me sound like my mom. *yikes*) This is the one time of year I wish time would slow down. The girls are playing softball, the weather is absolutely beautiful (most of the time), the flowers are in bloom, and it doesn’t get dark until after 8pm.

We built a {insert fancy name for deck cover} to hold our new hammock chairs (direct from Nicaragua) and have since become the new hangout for all the neighborhood kids (who think these chairs are amusement park rides). But they really are wonderfully relaxing places to sit with a book on warm spring afternoons.

But there hasn’t been a ton of relaxing on them yet, what with all that crazy busyness I mentioned. Have you ever wished you could attach some sort of homing signal to various household items? Lots of people lose their keys, but we don’t have that problem too much. Library books are a huge source of frustration in our household. Those should come with homing signals that can be triggered by the library when a book is overdue. Wouldn’t that be great? (Note to any library administrators reading… please invoke the signal only between the hours of 9am and 9pm.) The library has told us we have a book overdue, and my daughter can’t find it (of course). We’ve turned the house upside down but it still eludes us. I know, we should have a better system and stay more organized. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I’ll get around to perfecting that system next April.

It’s been about 6 weeks or so since my youngest child started full-day Kindergarten. Those of you who are moms know how big of a life change I am experiencing! My life has gone from being filled with children (and all that comes with that: snot, poop, throw-up, etc.) all day to being alone all day! There are glorious aspects to this change, as well as not-so-glorious aspects.

I’ve been blessed with a job I can do from home, which means I can still be here when the girls go to school, and when they get home at 4pm. But in between, I have 7.5 solid hours of ME time! After eight years, it’s about time!

I’m mostly filling my time with work, which is great. But, I also got to get my hair cut this morning without hiring a babysitter or dumping the kids on my neighbor. What a concept! I’m also finding time to fit in a few old hobbies, such as writing. My plan is to write something in this blog a couple of times a month, even if it’s not totally design related. I really just want to get back in the habit of writing regularly, so I hope you’ll bear with me as I do that. Hopefully the topics will be somewhat interesting

One quick note before I close for today. In my encounters with xTrain (which you may have read about in the previous blog post), I’ve come to know of a woman named Justine who is the spokesperson for xTrain, and is also a part of a movement called Lifecasting. She carries around a video camera pretty much 24/7, and broadcasts her life online. (As I’m writing this, she’s getting her hair cut while 404 people watch live.) It’s strangely interesting, but I don’t think I could do it. What about you?

I received an email yesterday from someone I worked with at USWeb in Boston more than eight years ago. It was great to reconnect! He found me on the professional networking tool called LinkedIn. I created an account with LinkedIn a few years ago, but hadn’t logged in lately.

So last night I tried searching for old friends and was surprised at how popular this tool has become. I found former employers, previous coworkers, and even my college roommate (from 10+ years ago). What fun! Want to see who we know in common?

I heard from some other freelancers that this is a great way to manage references and recommendations. Instead of having to bug your references time and time again for recommendations (each time you get a new freelance client), you can invite them to join your LinkedIn network and view your recommendations. That sounds like a good idea to me… time to bug my references once more

And I am busy! That is a wonderful feeling. Two months ago I posted that I was searching for more work. I should have posted sooner, but I have been so busy with work I didn’t have time! That’s a good thing! (A very good thing )

I’m actually getting more work in a couple of areas, including web of course, but also two book projects. One is a cook book, which is a lot of fun for me since I love to cook.

In other news, we had our brief brush with reality TV when a film crew came last week to shoot an episode of DIY’s “Finders Fixers.” This is a show that seeks to fix mysterious problems that a homeowner can’t solve. In our case, it was a big stink! Our basement really really really stunk. In the end, our problems revolved around the previous owner’s pets, who apparently visited that basement quite frequently. (I’ll let you watch the episode to see all of the stinky details.) Lots of fun, but very tiring as well. The crew was at our house from 7:30am until 9pm! Crazy. I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out when the show airs sometime this summer.

Guess that’s it for now. I better get back to work!

Well, I’m officially job hunting. My situation has changed somewhat in the past two weeks so that I now have the opportunity to work on-site part time. Very exciting! So if you know of any positions opening up - contract or full-time w/work from home part-time - please let me know. While I’m thinking about it… my ideal job has the following characteristics: option to telecommute, flexible hours, agency setting (i.e., I’m not designing hot dog packaging all day, every day), family-friendly, and variety of work (web, print, etc.). Also, I’m looking for a company dedicated to high-quality, usable and functional design. Happy job-hunting!