I hope you were able to put something together and be done with it. Your boss probably doesn't care what it is as long as it's short and helps him look good You know him and his weaknesses, so anything you give him to compensate for them will be perfect, right? I'm in favor of not killing yourself over it... although if you don't have anything better to do, it's not a bad thing to learn as much as you can about this client.

This company is actually plagued with payroll issues, none of which affect me since I invoice them, thankfully! And, yeah - my friend was the first 'real' professional they hired. The things she has had to clean up are unbelievable... and it makes you wonder what else you will find.

And just ... the sheer madness to the way they do things. I had lunch with my friend the other day and we compared notes. Honestly, the deeper I get into this, the more shocked I am that this place is as successful as they are. I am SO GLAD I am a contractor and not a full time employee. I flat out told my boss the other day that I was not looking for more hours and that I would never work a salaried position there. I didn't say it like *that*, it was sort of in passing/conversation - but after I said it, I thought, whoops, I am supposed to be pretending that I want to try on a full time job... but I would refuse a full time job if they offered it today, so what does it matter?

And I had a meeting to get budget approval for some desperately needed repair work. I almost got turned down because one manager doesn't like another manager! Employees are unable to do their job and you want to let them suffer because their boss is a jerk???? Really??

Yes, so glad I am not full time.

I have been so ... stressed? or something that I have not worked on any more job opportunities. I don't have enough time or mental space in the day. Nominally I am working three days a week, but the days are usually nine hours, plus I am putting in time here and there. I'm going to have to take 8 hours this weekend to come up with a report.

That time, plus insomnia, plus social stuff, etc etc. It's all starting to get to be a bit much. I need to cut back and am just starting to finally realize that I need to put some stuff on the chopping block.

Shopping for health insurance turned out to be easy - a Facebook friend posted a recommendation for a plan. We have to use the federal health insurance marketplace in my state. The biggest hassle is working with the incredibly broken website. Comparing plans was simple enough.

WRT to getting people to pay: a friend who hates asking people to pay said that he came up with the idea of asking for a retainer. I really liked that.

Even if your mother expects something different, I don't see why you can't treat her based on normal assumptions. I am not sure how to word that. I do this sometimes and it seems like the least bad alternative. Like you can just pretend that the person doesn't have insane expectations and treat them the way you would treat a normal person. If she has a friend with her, it kind of locks her into making more of an effort to be normal (well, for some people it works that way), so maybe she will just go along with it.