Runnin' on empty

Well hello friends. It seems I've been away from here for awhile! I do have good reasons that I will share now...

The past few weeks have been very busy. The biggest part has been that I have changed jobs. I had been kind of casually looking (you know, dusted off the resume on Careerbuilder and checking craiglist here and there) but then an opportunity kind of dropped in my lap. To be honest, it's still no dream job and definitely not doing marketing like I had hoped but it was more money and, well, that was pretty much enough for me.

So I've been busy wrapping up loose ends at my old job and starting my new one. I took a week "off" in between (and that totally deserves "" because I was busier that week than when I was working!). During that week, I took Lainey to the doctor; the cats to the vet; did a marathon shopping day with Lainey, my Mom and sister (Lainey does love to shop!); got this house in order; thoroughly cleaned and then topped it off with a massage. Man, that was a good week. I could totally do the stay-at-home mom thing, especially when Lainey spent two-and-a-half days of it in daycare. ;) Hey, I needed to get stuff done and didn't see how I could handle two cats and a baby at the vet...don't judge. But it was so nice actually cleaning the house to my old standards, being able to plan and cook meals, run errands at a leisurely pace and play with and enjoy my family. Ah well...like I said, this new job is more money so there's no way I can get out of working now! Troy is super excited (he already has plans to order a new engine for the jet-ski). In all seriousness though, we really did need the extra income...my increase will basically cover daycare costs to put us back where we were before having Lainey (which was certainly not luxurious but definitely comfortable and not having to struggle and scrimp and save). It couldn't have come at a better time too because we had just done a budget after the New Year and realized we had like $40 extra a month after bills and groceries. Not really...but kind of.

So I have a legitimate excuse for my absence this time! But I will try to be better (I feel like I've said that before...). I've only been at my new job a week but I like it so far. Everyone is really nice and I stay busy, which I like. The biggest downfall though...the commute. Because of Troy's unpredictable schedule, I handle the drop-off and pick-up for Lainey every day. My new job is 8-5 (my old one was 8:30-5:30) which I thought I was so excited about because one of my gripes with my old job was the fact that I got home so late. Well now I get home about 10 minutes earlier than I did. Wee!! I now get up at 5:30 and leave the house at 7 to get to work at 8. Say what? Well, you see, Troy doesn't get up until around when I am leaving for work and lately Lainey has been waking up for the day when my alarm goes off. So I have to juggle getting ready in the morning with entertaining her and getting her ready. (And before I get the comments that he should be getting up earlier to help...it really wasn't his fault this week...he has worked 3 weekends in a row and last weekend got a total of 9 hrs of sleep for the whole weekend so I was trying to be nice and let him catch back up. And, yes, he will start getting up earlier to help!) There just really aren't enough hours in the day. How do people do it? And have time for other stuff, like blogging or TV or washing their face before bed? And dang it if Troy didn't break my crock pot (Jaclyn, I was totally going to try out your recipes!).