Wednesdays are shaping up to be my day from hell this fall. I have three ballet classes scheduled with a two hour wait between the last two. During this time, my boss and I agreed to schedule our weekly meeting and see how that works out for me. Next Wednesday is the first day of classes. So in addition to my three classes and my meeting with my boss I have to return a second time to church for a meeting about the sound system purchase. Then I have a 4 PM lesson scheduled with my one piano student, Rudy.

After I get back from China, this day will end with a choir rehearsal.

I seem to be over scheduling myself but I don’t know exactly what to do about it. Wednesday will be the worse day. Monday I have the same schedule of classes. On Friday  I just have two morning classes. The return of my ballet accompaniment work is a welcome addition to our income which has diminished considerably since Eileen retired early. So it’s hard to consider cutting back much more on that work. At this point I have told the dance department that I would like Tuesdays and Thursdays off and they seem okay with that. Presumably if I said I needed to work fewer hours they would deal with that as well.

Eileen and I have paid off or are about to pay off all of our debt except our Discover balance. This frees up a considerable amount of monthly income that was going to paying off the Equity loan and Eileen’s car. We are hoping that all of this together will give us a bit more breathing space in our weekly budget.

I have been trying to be strict with myself on how much money I spend each week on groceries. Yesterday I only had twenty dollars left in the budget for the Farmers Market trip. I managed to be very careful but still returned to the car to look for change to buy potatoes.

So for $24 I bought blueberries, peaches, peppers, heirloom tomatoes, a melon, garlic, and potatoes. Life is rough, eh? I also did a fair amount of cooking this week, making evil quick cheese bread since we were running low on bread and excellent marinara sauce.

This all makes for pretty good eating for Eileen and Steve. So we aren’t exactly suffering. And there seems to be money left over for gin and Baileys.

I do wonder about my aging aching body.

Each day I have aches and fatigue. Uh oh. I also exercise each day, but do wonder about this ongoing exhaustion and aches.  I’m not sure the old axiom “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” obtains after sixty for this old fat guy.