Change is

I am a creature of habit. I am not a huge risk-taker. I like things simple and controlled and easy. I like for there to be routine and normalcy and predictability in my life.

Most of the time.

Then sometimes.... sometimes I just get this itch to bust out of the shell that has been made 100% by me, the shell that keeps my predictability predictable. Sometimes I wonder, "Okay, so what would happen if I did this?" or "Hmmm...that's just so insane that I think I'll try it." And sometimes I do break free and stray from my routine. Then there are the times - more often than not - that I just sit back and shake my head and say, "No. I won't try that. It's too scary, too confusing, too out of my zone, too much for me." I really think too much.

And while a life of complacency and normalcy and routine is very complacent, normal and routine......well, sometimes it's boring.

So that's why the week before Christmas I'm shutting Diva Daycare down. All of my little diva-ettes will be turned over to other moderately insane caring individuals who will begin caring for them. And those new caregivers will begin loving them - but never as much as their Kiki has. Did this decision come easily for me? Oh gosh no. I have worried, fretted, cried and prayed so hard over this decision that I've nearly given myself an ulcer. I can't tell you the evenings that I have gone to bed early just so I can be alone to think and to pray. And to cry. I feel like I have a personal stake in their little lives, whether that is reality or not. Someone told me that I was being ridiculous and that I was just another person in a long line of people in their lives that would eventually be forgotten. That person was wrong. I hope. I'd like to think that someday their parents will talk fondly about the crazy woman who loved them and sang to them and danced the cha-cha with them while wearing a feather boa and a pirate hat and who taught them the fishy song and read Go, Dog, Go! to them so many times that they eventually took the word to the extreme and began telling everyone to GO!

It was such a hard decision, but I know it's the right decision. It's right for me and my family right now. And that is my ultimate responsibility. Telling the parents was hard. One adamantly refused to believe it. One teasingly offered me more money. But everyone has been supportive, even in their initial panic and disappointment.

I'm going back to school. I'm going back to school!

As my dad says, "It's about time." And it is about time. I'm excited, nervous, and absolutely scared to death, but I'm ready. I haven't gone to school in nearly 16 years and that fact alone is daunting. I'm going for a Journalism degree and by all indications should be able to get both my Associates and my Bachelors mostly online with a few night classes scattered throughout. It's utterly non-traditional and from what I hear, very hard to pursue a degree online, but my family and friends are behind me all the way and that will help me on those nights that I find myself sitting at the computer wondering just what the heck I was thinking.

I'm also very seriously researching the ins and outs of publishing a book in the very near future. It's a huge task, but strangely it seems far less scary than going back to college.

My kids are ecstatic that I'm going back to school, but Sam's worried I won't fit in the desks. Thankfully my computer chair and the couch are comfortable and I assure him I won't have any trouble with that. I did explain, though, that if I do take an actual class in a classroom that the desks are just a little bit bigger than the one he sits at every day. Abby thinks that it's rather exciting that she and I will both be doing homework in "our" office. Kady's just glad that next semester I will be the one to take her and pick her up from Lab School. And they are all overjoyed that I will be able to attend class parties and field trips with them again. Paul is glad we're moving our bedroom back to the other end of the house into a room where our furniture actually fits.

Mom and Tater are my rocks. They were the two that received the countless phone calls and endured the conversations revolving solely around me and my exhausting need to overthink any decision. They are supporting me all the way. I couldn't love them more. They are saints. Very patient saints.

My dad and step mom are supportive as well about the prospective book and college. They both have been urging me for years now to write a book and Dad could hardly wait to get off the phone with me Sunday night so he could tell her.

Our debt with the one last credit card has been moved around and is now under a more manageable kind of control. I cannot wait to tell Sears to kiss my big toe when that check clears. I'm also dropping Caller ID because there is no longer a need to dodge phone calls from them wanting money I don't have.

We booked our January trip to Disney World today.

I might possibly be available on the shelves of a bookstore near you in the next year. Okay, well my book might. Not me. You'd experience one night of my whining and alphabetizing your pantry and you'd take me back to Barnes and Noble the next morning.

Oh my gosh. I'm going back to school.

Change is good.