Midnight Blogger

It is 12:21 as I begin my blog. I hope to stay up for some number of hours more. Tomorrow night, for the first time in my life, I work a night shift. I will be doing that for three weeks. I volunteered for the Bed Bath and Beyond inventory team. It pays overtime, and still allows me to be home when my kids are here--most of all it is only temporary.

I was hired part time, but I will have been paid overtime for two consecutive pay periods already because they need a lot of hours for inventory prep. I have been waking up at 4am for nearly 3 weeks already. I either work 5-3 of 6-3. I actually advocate 5 because, to me, there is no difference. 7 is a much better deal, because then I get to wake up my son for school. 8 is great because I get to wake him up AND take him to school, and make it to work with time to spare.

Extra hours and extra money is critical at this point, since Mike is still unemployed. We are excited however at some of the prospects that are developing. He has had a whole series of successful interviews with Microsoft. The benefits there are awesome.

For the first time since New Year's all the kids were here together. Speaking of New Years, Christmas was a disappointment to me. My kids were here until Christmas eve morning. Mike and I spent Christmas eve alone--which was actually really nice--and then his kids were here Christmas afternoon. New Year's eve I wanted to have a party for all the kids, including some friends over, but I didn't have time to organize it. By that night I was absolutely exhausted and we let the kids celebrate while we slept. The previous night, he and I had been up until 3am at a 25th wedding anniversary ball, put on by Theresa who took me on the cruise last spring. Mike and I had a fabulous time together. We laughed and he got along great with the rest of the cruise gang. We will certainly be joining them on future cruises. More than anything, I love falling in love with my husband. I was dancing like a crazy woman--forgetting that I was not 17 at a church dance. When they started playing Footloose, and my husband joined me like a fool, everyone knew we were a match made in heaven.

This weekend there was a primary activity. After that, we tried to get the kids to watch Superman Returns with us (11:30am) because it had to be returned. Nobody wanted to. They all wanted to go to the park, or a friend's house or skateboarding. It was a gorgeous day, so we didn't force them to watch TV. One child asked to play the xbox, another asked to play world of warcraft. Both were denied. We finally watched the movie at 6:00. Two of the kids were out before the first 1/2 hour of the movie. It was a nice weekend.