I am still alive, it’s not a robot posting the Thursday Thirteens & the Friday Fill in’s, I’m just not really feeling the writing thing right now, I’m still adjusting to being on the phones again at work  & while it’s not as bad as I thought it would be, it’s a lot more stress. At home with the kids during the day is ok, very distracting & often either mr 9 or ms 13 is on the computer already when I get up (if they’re not still asleep when I get up- as is the case today- everyone has become a night owl since Mom is a night owl now it seems) them being around definitely has a censoring effect on my blogging, they’re always coming up to me & asking what I’m doing, wanting to read over my shoulder & playing editor about what I can & can’t say about them. Summer school starts tomorrow though & hopefully I’ll have a little bit of quiet time in the late morning for the next two weeks at least.
The other thing which I’m heavily focused on is the vacation plans, I know I’ve said in other years that we weren’t going to have much money to go with, but this year is going to be even worse, in other years I’ve had $200. or $300. put away from the tax refund money to help fill out the vacation cash, this year, with next to no refund, I’m going to have just what I can keep out of my paycheck. I’m going to try to do some extra overtime in the next few weeks, but it will really, only matter on the 2 weeks before the paycheck I’ll collect on the day we leave on vacation, anything before that, for the next paycheck (just 1 more before the day we leave on vacation) will end up being spent, that is just the way it is, my expenses always seem to expand to fit the amount of available cash I have on hand.
I found last year’s check register in my bedside table drawer the other day (I’m still not at all sure what it was doing there) and found that I’d been just short of $1000. When we left for vacation last year, this year I will have just a little more than half that (If I’m lucky & If I crack down on myself & do some real overtime, not just an hour here & a half hour there) Of course, we went for 14 days last year, we’re only going to be gone 10 days this year. It will be interesting to see just how this goes, mr 9 & ms 13 are getting $100. each on the day we leave, they requested this instead of birthday gifts & I’m complying, I wonder how long they’ll be able to make their money last with purchases of fascinating things they can’t seem to find in VA.