Almost the End

...of summer that is. I'm amazed that it's today already, which pretty much marks the beginning of the last month of summer. June was a nice month, pretty relaxing for the most part. Every morning when I left for work I'd leave a short list of one or two chores for each of the kids to do, and every day when I got home they were done. It was great and I think they actually kind of liked having something to check off as done. Nothing was too overwhelming. I never wrote "clean your room", but instead would write "clean off your dresser and dust it" on one day and "clean out under your bed" on another. Things that wouldn't really take that much time, but would get stuff done.
During that month, we found ourselves up against a wall, of sorts. We've been living paycheck to paycheck and JUST BARELY making it every month for too long and in June we had to use the direct deposit advance feature at our bank to pay some bills. This was a wake-up call that we couldn't keep living like that. And although we'd talked about one of us getting a second job before, we hadn't followed through on it. So as much as I didn't want to, I put on my big girl pants and applied to a couple of places that I thought I wouldn't hate having to work part-time at. Three days after applying online at big-box pet store, I got called for an interview. Two days later I received a call offering me the job. I've been working there for 2 weeks now, and I really like it. I get to talk to people about their pets and when they bring them into the store, I get to pet and give treats to them. So far, I've worked two evenings a week plus both weekend days on both of the weeks I've worked. Next week I'm working 3 weekend nights plus the weekend days, for a total of about 25 hours. I'm very grateful for the hours I'm getting, but I am tired on the days I work 9 hours during the day and then another 4 in the evening. But I do like it, which makes a world of difference.
Since my nieces got here at the beginning of July, there has been a lot of drama. Things have been tense between Shell & I, mostly because the younger of the 2 girls is pretty much the same age as my kids and so she has spent the vast majority of her visit at our house. The addition of another kid in the house coupled with the extra mouth to feed has not been easy. My sister (not the mom of these nieces), drove from Missouri with my niece last weekend for the week. My nephew (her son) flew in a few days before her and is staying through the 10th of August. These 6 kids haven't all been together in 2 years and want to spend lots of time together. But there's a catch. Everyone is "officially" staying at my parents house (which is less than 5 minutes from my house by car), but my mom shows preference for my oldest niece which all the kids can feel. So if CaNiece1 is there, everyone else wants to be at my house so they don't have to deal with it. So now there's a 15 year old boy in my house along with my 12 year old niece and my 2 kids. My sister is tired of the BS from our mom and wants to spend time with me and her nieces and nephew, so she comes over with her daughter. Who is 3 and naturally acts like it. There have been confrontations and blowups, and I'm not referring to the kids. There is still 1 1/2 weeks before my nieces go home and 2 1/2 weeks before my nephew goes home, yet I think that if they all went home tomorrow, nobody would feel incredibly heartbroken. We'd miss them and be sad because we love them all and don't see them often enough, but it's been a rough month and I think we'd all be relieved to get back to our normals.
There's so much more...but I'll get to that soon enough. I need to end this post on a lighter note, sooo....
Today is my best friend Eric's birthday. I get to see him in 3 weeks. I couldn't be more thrilled, well except if I had more money for while he's here but at least I'm not working at either job for the 4 days of his visit. Yahooo! I can't wait! :)