Anybody have a shovel?

Ok, if you're not a CB, you probably don't know what that means. If you are a CB, can I just tell you that I LOVE YOU!?!

My life has been a bit crazed lately, as many of you may have noticed. I have gotten all of your e-mails and blog comments. Thank you, Christina, for your concern. Thanks Char and Kim, for your well wishes. Thanks, Jen-t for your comments. And THANK YOU, Penny, for that wonderful e-card. You are all so great, and I get teary just thinking about the amazing group of women that I can call "friends". Really, your strength, lent so lovingly, helps me make it through the days sometimes, even when I can't be around to tell you.

I'm still on nights at work. I have to rant about this a little bit. I'm closing every night, 4 nights a week. I've stopped doing extra shifts, so that's a blessing. Still though, the place closes at 10pm, but I don't normally get home until midnight. On Fridays, it's later, since we close at 11pm. Frankly, the money has slowed down, since the summer travel season is over. That's not the problem though. The real problem is that I am surrounded by young people that seem so very lazy. They start whining to leave around 7:30. Usually, the manager will let them leave just so nobody else has to hear them whine. It's very frustrating. Plus, they like to take tables and make tips, but they don't seem to actually like doing the work associated with their tables. We wear pagers that vibrate when food is ready for our tables. The food is not supposed to sit in the window for longer than one minute. If it's not your food, you should still get it out to the table, because, well, nobody likes to eat cold food, right? A favorite thing to do is to either NOT wear the pager, thereby never getting notified that your food is "up", so you don't have to actually take it out... OR, just not showing up to take out your own food to your tables. This seems like a small thing, I'm sure. But it really sucks for people that really want the guest to have a nice dining experience (that would be ME), and get warm food, served the way they ordered it. Generally, I end up 'running food' all night, or getting biscuits or cornbread, or re-filling ice, or getting salads. Now, I wouldn't mind this a bit, if EVERY OTHER PERSON were doing it as much as I do. However, that's just not normally the case. Usually, there are about 5 or 6 people that have 4 tables, that constantly take tables away from other people (like me) because "you were busy". And I just want to scream: "Yeah, busy running your damn food!" Can you tell that I just can't stand it when people are unwilling to do their jobs? Then, at the end of the night, they brag about making $130, while I go home with $70. Their sales are over $500 while mine are around $250. It gets old after a while. It wasn't like this on days, and I really can't wait to go back. PLUS, I really miss my husband.

I have hardly touched my computer in a week or so. I was at the old house getting it ready for our renters every day last week. Shane took the day off on Wednesday to help. Then we spent all day Saturday over there. It was actually kind of fun. So, I'd get up and head over there, do manual labor for a few hours, then head back home to shower and change, then head in to work until midnight, then get up and start all over again. It was a VERY tiring week. But the good news is that I don't have to do that anymore. YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!! I know we're not out of the woods financially yet, and won't be until November (we're taking a LOT of vacation in October, or it would be sooner!). Still though, knowing that we're keeping that house is great. I mean, it's an investment and we may never get another chance to own two homes so easily. The goal is to have a house for each kid, with the hope of the rent paying for their college. Right now, we've got Gret's in line. In a year or two, we'll be looking for something to buy to help with Michael's education. We'll see how this goes. Wish us luck.

We had Gret's boyfriends fam over for dinner on Sunday. That will take a whole blog to tell you about, so you'll have to wait. Right now, I'm headed into the family room to watch "The Graduate" with the kids. Gret has wanted to watch it since seeing "Rumor has it" a few months back. I'm not all that sure it's appropriate for everyone to watch, but then again, it's a dark, cold rainy day, the popcorn is popped, Jo brewed coffee for me, and I haven't spent any really good time with the kids in over a week. So yeah, I'm pulling the Mommy card on this one and calling it a classic, and we'll talk about it during our "Music and it's effects on Standard American Classic Movies" class that we're going to do...tomorrow. (yeah, great, now I have to come up with a class plan for that!)