I updated both blogs today (check out my food blog…very cool!) and I updated my links on this blog….

So our tax return came and wow, we’ve got some money now!!! So what are we going to do with it??? Catch up on bills…. We aren’t paying off the truck all the way but we made a huge payment on it, 4 times larger than our normal payment, so we will only have 2 payments left on it. And we paid all the bills that we were behind on, not that we were all that behind on them, no cut off notices in our mail box, but we were behind. It feels nice to catch up even if we don’t have a lot of money to play with. We do have some but not much and it’s got to stretch some since there is a lot we want to do, and need to do. Like getting the motorcycle registered, insured and get Bishop his license and all the safety stuff he needs (like a helmet, jacket and gloves). And of course get the Wii for Lindsey so we don’t have to hear that bull shit anymore. After that the excess will pretty much be gone but we will still be caught up on our bills which makes us both sleep better at night.

Onto my vent for the day: mom is getting on my nerves again. I have to find someone else to watch Derek because she is claiming that she does so much for us (only watching Derek at this point) and we repay her by letting Granny’s car go to hell. Yes, there were a few dings on the door from my car door being parked so close under the car port but those were taken care of with a magic eraser. And yes, Bishop took the broken visor off because it was a driving hazard but I put it back on and fixed it no problem. And yes, we still don’t have a replacement tail light cover for it but they can’t be found and we taped it up as good as we could and it’s legal to be on the road. And yes, there is a dent in the hood, a small one, but I have no idea how it got there or even when it got there, it could have shown up before Granny died. Yes, she paid for the registration and the insurance on it but she asked us if we could park it here and for us to use it. We aren’t taking advantage of her by using and beating up the car. I don’t want to be dependent on her for anything. NOT ONE SINGLE THING. So we clean up the car and take it to her house, she can do with it what she will. And I have to find someone to watch Derek while I work so she won’t have to just so she can’t throw stupid shit like that in my face. She is driving me nuts!!!!

Derek has done nothing in the last week but pushed boundaries. Over and over and over he is getting into stuff he knows he shouldn’t be messing with. He knows he shouldn’t be on the end table, much less messing with the stuff on it. He knows because when you catch him he gets off of it and runs away. He knows he shouldn’t be doing it and it’s so frustrating that he continues doing it. Or when he grabs something off my desk and I say “what do you have” and he runs away. Like yesterday. I was in the kitchen talking on the phone with mom and getting dinner ready and I came into the living room and there he was, hiding behind the computer chair. I asked him what he had and he ran to the other side of the living room. When I finally caught him he had an empty spool of thread in his hand. Ok, he can play with that but where did the thread on it go? There was very little on it and for the life of me I can’t remember if there were any needles in the top of it or not but the label, where the needles would be pushed through, was gone and no thread to be seen….makes me worry but so far I haven’t found any needles laying around. I guess I need to keep an eye out for them.

And in other matters I think I need to baby proof the kitchen…I don’t know how I’m going to do that without drilling a bunch of holes in the cabinet doors…and I’ve got to figure out how to keep Derek out of the downstairs bathroom….it might mean a simple baby gate in front of the door, but I don’t know if that would work. I can’t just close the door, how easy would that be? Because the cat boxes are in that bathroom and if Derek is going to be loose in the kitchen that means the cat food will be in the bathroom too….I’m at a loss. He needs more room to roam, the living room just doesn’t hold his attention any more. Maybe I’ll ask my online buddies about putting baby locks on the cabinet doors without drilling holes in them….I wish they had handles on them, it would be so much easier but no, they don’t.

Today we are going to the play group and later I have to pick up my paycheck and go to the bank…since Derek woke up at the insane time of 4am he is napping now, I’m sure he will be up in an hour but that means the 10-12 play group time may be cut short for want of a nap. We’ll see.

This week, the last 7 days, has been crazy. Thursday and Friday I took Derek to a play group here in town. He had a blast!

Eating a snack

Playing

Playing

He didn’t really play with the other kids but he had a great time. This week we are going back because it was so cool.

Friday I did my Shopping Trip for the week since I had to work on Saturday.

Saturday I worked, cake decoration training. Cody, the other fryer, dunked his hand into the fryer (dumb kid, he didn’t tell anyone and instead of filing a incident report and going to the hospital he just went home and no one has heard from him since. He is supposed to work on Thursday but I have a feeling that I will be filling in for him that day…), I made my first solo cake and decorated some on 4 other cakes. It was super fun.

Sunday was crazy. Our packager called in sick, we couldn’t get a hold of my manager, then when she came in we couldn’t get a hold of anyone else who could come in so instead of cleaning I ended up packaging for the last 3 hours of my shift. And as I was leaving my manager had a rack of bread that she was pulling out of the oven catch on the lock and fall over. Thankfully she wasn’t hurt but she lost all of the bread off of it. Craziness!!!!

Today was better, no major upsets, no accidents and everyone showed up. Pretty good. I helped our packager catch up on some of the stuff not done yesterday then because the store manager called a meeting just as I was about to leave I got some overtime….cool.

I don’t have to work tonight so I can get some extra sleep but I do have to work on Wednesday. I can use the sleep….

We are falling behind on everything it seems. This week I’ve worked 5 days, 40 hours, but it just isn’t enough. My check next week will be good but the one I get today will only be for 24 hours, just enough to pay the bills that have automatically come out but not for anything more. I’m hoping I can talk to mom about getting an advance on my inheritance from Granny’s estate. The grand total I’m supposed to get will be $5000 so if I can talk her into giving me $1000 now we might be able to get out of this hole we have fell into.

The long and short of the situation is that when Lindsey, my sister, moved out of our house and started living with mom again we lost not only my income but hers too. That is a total of almost $3000 a month that we were no longer having in our accounts. All the bills and stuff that we were paying have suddenly built up and in my job I’m barely making as much as I was getting on unemployment. I did go to my boss and ask for more hours which he was more than happy to give me, resulting in me working 5 days this week instead of the 3 I was scheduled but I’m not sure if the increased hours are going to continue or not and even if they do for now it doesn’t help us at all. I need to make $800 a month for us to pay our bills and $1000 a month for us to be able to afford groceries and gas for Bishop and I to get back and forth to work. So far I have been making about $700 a month with only working 3 to 4 days a week so we are falling behind. I had to call the dealership that we have our truck loan with yesterday and tell them although the payment is due tomorrow we will not be able to pay it until the end of next week. I can not tell you how much that shamed me to have to explain what was going on or even just to make that call. Luckily they were very understanding and since we’ve been making extra payments (when we had the money) it has put us in a good light with them. Come tax time we will pay off the truck, all $1250 we owe on it, so we will have one less bill and an extra $225 a month for other stuff (bills mostly) but for now we just don’t have it. And the worst thing? I have another bill that was due 4 days ago that I have to pay, come hell or high water. And if I don’t pay it we will be in deep shit though if I do pay it we will be in deep shit anyway because we don’t have enough in our account to pay it, causing a NSF fee which will add up to way too much money wasted on a stupid bill. It sucks.

Fingers crossed that mom will write me a check for the $1000….it may be the only way we can survive until tax time….