Yep. We are going to my parents' house for supper tonight. Obligatory family stuff, and Allie and I have both expressed our lack of desire to do this tonight, but the kids enjoy it and my folks enjoy it, and, by the end of the night, we have usually enjoyed it, too. It's that whole ambivalence about the level of family involvement that I deal with. Tonight, I will tell them about calling my sister last night and we will commiserate about her situation.

Now for the good stuff! I got a call today from a lady who does drug studies in affiliation with the "other hospital" where I work part time. A lady who works part time where my real job is, works with this woman full time at the other hospital. With me? So she recommended me to help with a study coming up. Here is what that means for me. I will help by working occasional 12 hour nights over there, where I will assess the patients in the study every 4 hours and help in administering the study drug. Then, I am free to sleep till the next assessment 4 hours later, repeat till shift ends. In other words, I will be paid $20/hour to mostly sleep, because they need reliable, competent nurses to accurately record the data for the study. I can do this in addition to my regular job shifts and my extra shifts at the other hospital; so, more pay without suffering through more sleepless nights and flip-flopping my schedule back and forth from days/nights. If you could see my bank account, you would realize the significance of this opportunity. It. is. huge! I will probably only do this once or twice a week and it won't be every week, so I plan to take every shift they offer me that I can.

Baby needs a new pair o' shoes, ya know.

I grow more and more hopeful that we will actually overcome the burden of our undisciplined debt in the next couple of years. When that happens, our life will take on a whole new sense of freedom. I get excited just thinking of that day. This is one lesson I will make sure my sons get a lot of instruction on; NOT going into credit card and other revolving credit debt. I wish my parents had focused on this and taught me the perils of debt, but alas, it is a lesson they haven't even fully learned yet.

Sigh.

(Note to gallery: that was more of a "moving back to the positive" sigh, as opposed to a "dwelling in the negative" sigh.)