Stupid Stupid

Now I want you to imagine me saying this as I hit my self in the head. Man, death would have been preferable. Prepare for a Read.


So in the never ending task of getting out of debt and trying to save up for thanksgiving in Wyoming and for Christmas with the kids I came up with a brilliant plan...

"Trevor you know what I think we should do"

"No I don't know what you think we should do"

"I think we should get a paper route to make some extra money, the pay is pretty good and it would give us that little bit more to work with each month"

" sounds good why don't you send in an application"

That was the beginning of the end.

So We got the job, Trevor went one morning at 3:15 with the old carrier to do the route... no problem, quick painless, easy. Mind you this guy had been doing the same route for 10 odd years.

Lets go back a little bit to earlier this week. Trevor has not only been working days but also nights. His company does maintenance on malls in the city. So they have been do renovations and setting up new kiosks at night when the malls are closed, so he has to be there to give them power. So getting up early to work, work all day, work at night, little bit of sleep, and one extra early morning to do papers. I haven't had it nearly as crazy, now that Sam sleeps through the night, but I don't sleep well when Trevor isn't home so I have been staying up later.


Back to this morning, early early this morning.

1:30 I am still up going over the maps on mapquest trying to get an idea of what I am doing.

Go to bed

3:15 wake up "we have to go"
" it is Saturday we have another hour"

4:15 wake up again, did I really even get back to sleep??

Trevor is going with me to help me out on my first morning, so we get the kids up, Sam goes back to sleep with a quilt over the car seat so the light doesn't bug him. Lizzy is up

We pick up the papers, the man gives us a funny look. We have a huge pallet of papers, will they even fit in our little versa?? barely

Drive to Elgin. Feeling good, not to tired, I guess all those nights of getting up with Sam every hour pays off. Running from house to house... fall in a hole...ouch.

Walking from house to house, well actually driving, but running to the doors.

Has anyone ever tried to see house numbers at 4:30 in the morning, let alone the paper that has itty bitty print with the house numbers on them. Yeh great fun and who forgot her glasses.

Well that wouldn't have been to bad if all the houses had numbers on them to see... I always thought it was required to have a house number. So I am looking for house 48, well lets pick a house out of the line of 7 that doesn't have numbers. Find the closest house with a number, figure out if it goes by 4's or 2's count down, cross fingers that this is right. On one such attempt we ended up counting from opposite ends, our conclusion was that they were counting by 6's now.

So we are looking for house 256 and 255, 255 no problem so 256 will be right across the street right, wrong, how about down the block around the corner and halfway up the next block.

Dogs barking

Lizzy from the back seat "a sleepy momma, a sleepy" bad mom moment, 30 minutes later she passes out even with the car starting and stopping, the light going on and off, the doors opening and closing, the trunk opening and closing, windows up and down, mom and dad complaining bitterly.

Next problem, condos, finding the right buildings in random order with the papers, running along the rows trying to find the right ones and get through all their gates.

Get lost... my map studying sucks and we didn't have printer ink. Can't find the street.

Trevor and I start to hit hysteria, laughing so hard as we discover how badly this is going, I think we were laughing to keep from crying.

I take over driving, oh did I add that we had to roll our own papers at the same time. I go to get out, forgot to park it, take foot off break car starts to drive away, and I am already out the door... nuff said. at least we were in the richer area and the streets weren't as narrow so there wasn't a bigger problem.

Now what the heck was I thinking??? These are the thoughts that went through my head prior to this morning.
**Food drive, 150 houses no problem, drop off bags, pick them up, I love doing it every year. The difference, every house verses random houses spread out everywhere.
**Hollywood image of a paper route. Young kid on a bike, peddling along merrily, hucking papers that are already tightly rolled over a fence and them landing nicely in just the right spot. BAH!!

I would compare this to when you are little and your dad says "I'll pay you a buck to shovel the walk" SWEET a whole buck, so you take it. then halfway through you realize that it is SO NOT WORTH IT!!

Well if that hasn't convinced you about the title of this post I don't think anything will. Needless to say we called our boss and quit, 1 great day. We got home at 7:30. We decided even if they don't pay us we don't care, we NEVER want to do that again.