My Goodness! Am I busy!

Well, I've got TWO new 'cello students this week. Which I am very excited about, one adult and one child. I can use the money, and while the child has played for a while (family recently moved to the area) the adult is a beginner. She bought a 'cello at one of the local music stores, I am more than a little scared to see what she got taken for. (Do not, under any circumstances, buy an instrument about which you know nothing, without first consulting someone who knows something and TAKE THEM WITH YOU!!!) She also bought a music book. This is a very bad idea: all teachers have their own prefered books to teach from. She did not buy the Schroeder I and Suzuki I books I start beginers with. I know this because that store WILL NOT carry the music I ask them to. This is why I send my students to a different store which will stock the music I ask for. Which I need to call and ask them to start stocking the Bach Six Suites, I have three students who will shortly need them.
Anyway, it should be quite interesting, I meet the little girl today, the woman on Sat. The girl is another home schoolar. I love teaching home schoolers. And retired folks. They have flexible schedules. I have to cram all my working people/public school kids into a couple hours Wednesday evening and Saturday morning. The home schoolers/retired folks are spread out throughout the day on Wednesday. It's so much easier. And they actually practice. As in, home schooled children are much, much more likely to practice than public schooled children are. Their parents make it a priority.
I do have two canceled lessons today, one young lady has to play at her school's 'Art Festival' during her normal lesson time, and one young gentleman called me this morning "Mom slipped and fell and hurt her back shoveling snow. She can't drive me into town for my lesson." I'm quite sure the lady in question would appreciate prayer: she has a history of nasty back problems and shouldn't have been shoveling snow (or lifting anything over ten pounds) in the first place.
Then, I played this gig downtown at a little shop, the down town shops do an Art Walk the first Friday of every month. (This was the day before I came down with the flu.) It went very well. Now, my husband, through his astronomy prof, has become aquainted with a gentleman who owns a coffee shop right by campus. Who likes to have musicians come in and play. Who puts out a hat, and seeds it, for musicians. All of a sudden the opertunities are rolling in, and we can really use the cash. Now, with Baby on the way, I just need some energy.
Dad forwarded me an email from one of his museum coworkers, who got it from a friend who got it from . . . who knows the whole chain, but it's a group trying to start up a natural foods co-op here in town. I emailed the gal who started the email, she had very nicely put her email in the body of the orriginal message, and so I guess I'm getting involved with that. I think it's a great idea, I'm just a little worried it will cut into the profits of the folks who run the Butcher Block, but there isn't anywhere to get anything natural except meat/cheese right now when the Farmers' Market isn't running. I'd like to be able to get natural dairy if we could: the boys drink six galleons of milk a week between the two of them. My husband thinks it's a good idea if I think it's a good idea, he leaves food decisions strictly up to me except for an occasional "Is there enough money left in the budget to go out to dinner?"
He leaves the budget up to me, too. And balancing the checkbook, and paying the bills. Which, of course, having been too sick to think for over a week, I am quite behind on. At least the utility companies don't charge much in the way of late fees.
Anyway, my husband, being a sweetheart, is out shoveling my parents' driveway. They are too cheap to buy an expensive gravel-proof snowblower, too cheap to pave the thing and buy a cheap snowblower, and too broken down to shovel themselves. Dad's pacemaker seems to be working well so far, and he's mostly over the flu. Mom's broken ribs aren't yet healed, they're taking their own sweet time about it.
Since it is spring break, I have my husband around most of the time, which is lovely. Mom has been hauling her grandsons off hither, thither, and yon, and all three have been enjoying it. The kitchen no longer looks or smells like a biohazard (flu is not conducive to dishwashing), and the livingroom is mostly tidy again, or at least, as tidy as it ever gets. Laundry is still behind, but I'm working on it.
So I'm busy, but it's mostly a good sort of busy. Life's treating us pretty well just now. Now, if we can just get that wretched former employer of my husband's to cough up the W-2 so we can file these stupid taxes (our income is too low to have to file otherwise but because I'm self-employed we have to file so they can steal SSI from me) . . . The IRS says we should get it by Thursday, we'll see what happens. Anyway, do not work for Teleperformance USA, we are not the only people we know whom they have refused to send a W-2 to. There is a way we can file without getting it, but it's going to be a headache, as is everything when the government is involved.