Yes, folks! We are really pushing through with our children's homeschooling.
Yesterday, the girls took their diagnostic exams at The Master's Academy Homeschool in Mandaluyong City. Results will be released next week, so I'm really excited. Once we get the results, then our next step will be to enroll the girls. So now my to-do list includes clearing up a space in the house that we can convert into a study corner. It's important that we keep to a schedule, and having their own "official" space will help them get organized.
The girls are also looking forward to this new phase in their lives. My worries about my incoming fifth grader missing her classmates from her old school are fading fast. It warms my heart when she says that she prefers to have mommy as her teacher. The first grader, on the other hand, simply does not want to go to school, referring to her sister's old school. But she wants to study with mommy.
And so the WAHM will soon embark on a new journey as a parent-teacher. Come visit and keep us company as we trudge along the unfamiliar paths. My girls and I may stumble a bit in the beginning, but I'm sure we'll all have great fun learning together.
To know more about TMA Homeschool, please visit their site by clicking on the link provided on my list of Homeschooling Resources.
My dear friend, Elsa...
She’s been my friend for eons, and she’s ancient. She's 55, which makes her 16 years my senior. But ours is a friendship that defies age and absence. In fact, if there is ever truth in the idiom that absence makes the heart grow fonder, then we are the living proofs of it.
We became friends in 1994. At that time I was just starting a career in my hometown. My hometown, her turf. See, I left the place after high school, and she chose the time I was away to establish her medical practice there. By the time I came back, she’s already the number one family doctor in the province. And I was almost a stranger.
We were introduced by a common friend, another ancient one that I may write about next time, and we hit it right off from the get-go. She was amused by the way I dressed for comfort, and in the process I created my own fashion. I would ride the bike to the office, wearing long skirts and boots. I would dress my hair with scarves, and I would wear dangling earrings made of bamboo, or shells, or horsehair. I loved the ethnic look. I still do. The same way she does.
What I really admired about her was the way she ran her household. They were a couple of doctors, but they never had a househelp. She did everything. She had help from Uncle Sam (I call him that, or Doc Sam), who was at that time the only anestheseologist within a five-hour drive radius, and the kids, of course. I saw her as superwoman. Doing laundry, cooking, keeping house, maintaining a garden, and as if housechores were not enough, she also made her own quilts, and decorated her house with her framed cross-stitch projects. She had this curtain in her clinic made of flour sacks, but you would never think of it as that, coz she had it lined with a fabric with cross stitches on it. She is just the most creative science person I’ve ever had the major luck of being friends with. And you should see her trellis.
We had fun for 3 years. Then I had to leave again. Work brought me back, and work took me away again. And then I got married, had kids, and here I am, a WAHM, in another province, and she’s still busy with her medical practice in my hometown. I see her once a year, when I have to go there and pay real property taxes. And the sweet part is that, we just always pick up where we left off. Each time we get together, our time apart just fades away. We sometimes talk on the phone, or send e-mails. I miss her. She’s been a great influence. I sew my own curtains, too. By hand.
We became friends in 1994. At that time I was just starting a career in my hometown. My hometown, her turf. See, I left the place after high school, and she chose the time I was away to establish her medical practice there. By the time I came back, she’s already the number one family doctor in the province. And I was almost a stranger.
We were introduced by a common friend, another ancient one that I may write about next time, and we hit it right off from the get-go. She was amused by the way I dressed for comfort, and in the process I created my own fashion. I would ride the bike to the office, wearing long skirts and boots. I would dress my hair with scarves, and I would wear dangling earrings made of bamboo, or shells, or horsehair. I loved the ethnic look. I still do. The same way she does.
What I really admired about her was the way she ran her household. They were a couple of doctors, but they never had a househelp. She did everything. She had help from Uncle Sam (I call him that, or Doc Sam), who was at that time the only anestheseologist within a five-hour drive radius, and the kids, of course. I saw her as superwoman. Doing laundry, cooking, keeping house, maintaining a garden, and as if housechores were not enough, she also made her own quilts, and decorated her house with her framed cross-stitch projects. She had this curtain in her clinic made of flour sacks, but you would never think of it as that, coz she had it lined with a fabric with cross stitches on it. She is just the most creative science person I’ve ever had the major luck of being friends with. And you should see her trellis.
We had fun for 3 years. Then I had to leave again. Work brought me back, and work took me away again. And then I got married, had kids, and here I am, a WAHM, in another province, and she’s still busy with her medical practice in my hometown. I see her once a year, when I have to go there and pay real property taxes. And the sweet part is that, we just always pick up where we left off. Each time we get together, our time apart just fades away. We sometimes talk on the phone, or send e-mails. I miss her. She’s been a great influence. I sew my own curtains, too. By hand.
What's in a Name?
And here's another one that I believe is still relevant to this site...
Note: Nutmeg's Weblog is undergoing renovation and is now a Biz Blog.
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A lot of friends who have so far visited Nutmeg’s Weblog have been sending me e-mail and chat messages asking me where I got the inspiration in coming up with Nutmeg. And what is megawahm? So here it goes…
Let’s start with megawahm. I’m a WAHM, or a Work-At-Home Mom. I’m actually a virtual assistant. That’s what I do for a living. And that’s what my business card says. I do get a lot of questions on what a VA does, but that’s another topic altogether. I’ll cover that in my next post. But why mega? Well, supermoms are all over, so I’m creating a new class for the work-at-home ones.
Let’s get to Nutmeg. This one’s easy. Meg is taken from my English name. And Nut best describes Meg. I can be nutty sometimes, or oftentimes, or maybe all the time. Depends on who I’m talking to. Not a nut case, mind you. Just nutty.
So there!
Note: Nutmeg's Weblog is undergoing renovation and is now a Biz Blog.
*************************************
A lot of friends who have so far visited Nutmeg’s Weblog have been sending me e-mail and chat messages asking me where I got the inspiration in coming up with Nutmeg. And what is megawahm? So here it goes…
Let’s start with megawahm. I’m a WAHM, or a Work-At-Home Mom. I’m actually a virtual assistant. That’s what I do for a living. And that’s what my business card says. I do get a lot of questions on what a VA does, but that’s another topic altogether. I’ll cover that in my next post. But why mega? Well, supermoms are all over, so I’m creating a new class for the work-at-home ones.
Let’s get to Nutmeg. This one’s easy. Meg is taken from my English name. And Nut best describes Meg. I can be nutty sometimes, or oftentimes, or maybe all the time. Depends on who I’m talking to. Not a nut case, mind you. Just nutty.
So there!
Life of a WAHM
Here's a post from my old site that I really, really, really want to share with those mothers who might stumble on this site. I wrote this in February 2008. The schedule might have changed a bit since school is now over, and soon I'll be embarking on a new role, that of a parent-teacher. Yes, folks... I'm embracing homeschooling. And to know more about it, please stay tuned.
I’ve had 4 hectic days, and the new batch of projects is just beginning. I have this transcription project that I’m doing for a Canadian university, and the Lakbay-Aral to Olongapo which is drawing near. Plus some other odds-and-ends job that a VA does. And the housechores! I can’t neglect the housechores and the kids, however tight the deadlines are.
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I’ve had 4 hectic days, and the new batch of projects is just beginning. I have this transcription project that I’m doing for a Canadian university, and the Lakbay-Aral to Olongapo which is drawing near. Plus some other odds-and-ends job that a VA does. And the housechores! I can’t neglect the housechores and the kids, however tight the deadlines are.
VA… Sounds pretty glamorous, huh? But I tell you this, the glamour stops with the name. Well, at least as far as I’m concerned.
Picture this. The professional WAHM, called a VA, wakes up at 4:30 am, prepares breakfast for her school-age kids. The older kid, who leaves the house at 6:30, must be up at 5:00. While she’s having breakfast, the sexy WAHM checks her mail. But before that, rice must be cooking already, and the water for the girl’s bath must be heating, too. The WAHM then bathes the girl at 5:45, starts to dry her hair at 6:00, must be dressed by 6:15, because the service picks her up at 6:30. Hmmm… what’s missing? The lunch! Lunch is prepared sometime between 6:00 and 6:30.
As soon as the girl has left, she wakes up the second girl and feeds her breakfast, too. By 6:50, she must be bathing, hair dry and in a ponytail by 7:15, and must be dressed by 7:30. The service picks her up at 7:45.
Next is the little boy. He eats breakfast while Mommy is having coffee and Daddy reads the news. Then it’s his turn to be bathed. The boy, not the Dad, okay? When he’s fresh and clean again, he keeps Mommy company while doing the laundry. While the machine turns, the WAHM sweeps the frontyard. When the laundry is done, it’s time to download audio from the server. While downloading, the WAHM picks up scattered toys, sweeping the floor from the bedrooms to the living room to the dining room and finally the kitchen. Then goes back to where she started with a wet rag and mops the floor, going through the same route.
Okay, that was really exhausting, right? So she deserves to sit down for a while. She sits in front of her PC and checks if the download is going fine. Replies to some mail, manage the e-groups she’a moderating, put in some time in VA work until it’s time to cook lunch.
Uh, she has not washed the dishes from breakfast. Those are washed while preparing lunch, see. And the little boy falls asleep some time between the laundry and the dishes. Then the kindergartner gets home from school and lunch is served.
After lunch, that’s when the real VA work begins. Check the planner, tick off items already done, update calendars, read some more mail, reply when there’s a need, you get the picture. There’s a break at 2:30, when the grader gets home from school and it’s time to do some homework. By 3:30, it’s back to work. Hopefully, all three kids would go to sleep. If not, well… tough luck!
There’s another break for dinner. When an audio is on the bad side, it’s best to take a nap while the kids are awake and get to work when they’re in bed, so that it won’t be quite a contest between the bad audio and their shrieks. So it’s nap time at 7:00 until 8:30, tops. Then it’s back to the grind until the work is done. Good days end at 2:00am, better days end at 12:00mn.
You think you’re up to being a WAHM?
Better question is… will you be happy being a WAHM? I know I am.
Make a plan to become a WAHM
Once I’ve decided that I wanted to work at home and be with my kids, I then sat down to work on the financials. How much do I need to earn to be able to sustain our family? Giving up my monthly salary would create a big dent on our budget. That’s where the cost of work has been most helpful. See, in the beginning, I thought I had to earn the same amount I was earning from my employment. But after realizing that there were a lot of expenses that I would be taking out of the family budget, it was easier to come up with a realistic target.
Armed with a target amount, I then made a list of things I could do from home. I bought reference books and read them from cover to cover. Honest! I still have a copy of 101 Best Home-Based Businesses for Women by Priscilla Huff that I refer to ’til now, and I spent hours searching the internet for business ideas and work-at-home opportunities. And for each idea that I came across, I made an assessment of my skills and capabilities. Can I do this? And the better question is, can I do this for a long time? Because of course, you would want to start on something that you can sustain. Something that you can stick with for the long haul. And then assess if you can afford the start-up. With me, I was hellbent on finding something that I can do online. And when I found one, I really spent time and money to get some training. I enrolled in a training program, invested on a high-end desktop PC, scanner, printer, pedal, headset, and just about any software that the training center advised me to have. And because I’ve already made financial investments, the more that I was motivated to make it work.
Now, investing on hardware and software for a work-at-home venture is different from having to pay money to get a job. This is another important lesson that I learned from the professional WAHMs that I “met” online. While looking for work-at-home opportunities, you will surely come across sites that promise you earnings in thousands of dollars, just by simply signing up with them and buying a kit to get started. Uh-uh. That’s almost sure to be a scam. Always remember that you don’t need to pay money to get a job. The only exception to this rule is if you are getting into a direct selling opportunity where you need to buy a kit to get started. And even in this venture, you are not paying to get a job, instead you are paying for an inventory of items that will get you started in the direct selling business.
In planning to become a WAHM, bear in mind that your chances of becoming successful with a tiny amount of work are slim to none. Starting a home office or business entail hard work, constant re-education, creativity, and more hard work. So if you have decided to be a work-at-home mom, be ready to roll up your sleeves and dig in.
Armed with a target amount, I then made a list of things I could do from home. I bought reference books and read them from cover to cover. Honest! I still have a copy of 101 Best Home-Based Businesses for Women by Priscilla Huff that I refer to ’til now, and I spent hours searching the internet for business ideas and work-at-home opportunities. And for each idea that I came across, I made an assessment of my skills and capabilities. Can I do this? And the better question is, can I do this for a long time? Because of course, you would want to start on something that you can sustain. Something that you can stick with for the long haul. And then assess if you can afford the start-up. With me, I was hellbent on finding something that I can do online. And when I found one, I really spent time and money to get some training. I enrolled in a training program, invested on a high-end desktop PC, scanner, printer, pedal, headset, and just about any software that the training center advised me to have. And because I’ve already made financial investments, the more that I was motivated to make it work.
Now, investing on hardware and software for a work-at-home venture is different from having to pay money to get a job. This is another important lesson that I learned from the professional WAHMs that I “met” online. While looking for work-at-home opportunities, you will surely come across sites that promise you earnings in thousands of dollars, just by simply signing up with them and buying a kit to get started. Uh-uh. That’s almost sure to be a scam. Always remember that you don’t need to pay money to get a job. The only exception to this rule is if you are getting into a direct selling opportunity where you need to buy a kit to get started. And even in this venture, you are not paying to get a job, instead you are paying for an inventory of items that will get you started in the direct selling business.
In planning to become a WAHM, bear in mind that your chances of becoming successful with a tiny amount of work are slim to none. Starting a home office or business entail hard work, constant re-education, creativity, and more hard work. So if you have decided to be a work-at-home mom, be ready to roll up your sleeves and dig in.
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