Staycation.

Where to begin?! We had a four day mini staycation which spanned from Friday-Monday. Throughout those four days, I planned various activities for Emerson and I around our city. It was really nice, but exhausting! I think I wore Emerson out to the point of him becoming miserable by the end of our last day. Note to self: leave some room for down time!

Day #1: We started the day off at home with a big breakfast. Emerson slept in until about 7am, which was nice for me. We headed out of the house around 10:30am and went to a local dairy place that makes its own ice cream. They also have a small petting zoo with goats/lambs that you can feed, a playground, and mini golf. We utilized all and had a nice time. No, Emerson didn’t really golf. Instead, he tossed his ball into one of the water features they had set up throughout the golf course. He still had a good time running around though.

Afterwards, we headed over to my parent’s house to swim for a while. After an hour, or so, we headed home, so that Emerson could take a late nap. When he awoke, we headed over to the fair, which was set up for our community day. My sister came with us. Emerson rode all of the rides, had a slushy, and I even won him a stuffed animal. He was pretty worn out by the time we got home. I let him stay up later than usual because we were on vacation.

Day #2: Emerson slept until about 8:30am! It was nice because we had all day plans at the water park (Sandcastle). We picked my sister up around 10:45am, then headed down to the park. The gates opened at 11. The weather was already so hot. We had a blast! Season passes was definitely the right way to go. We also bought a parking pass, so now, anytime we go, it is completely FREE. We swam in all of the pools. Emerson went down a few water slides and loved the wave pool! We were there for about 4 hours from 11am-4pm. We certainly got our money’s worth. Afterwards, we headed to my parent’s house. Emerson snoozed on the couch for a bit before we headed home. I let him stay up late again too. We watched a movie and hung out until bath and bedtime. We were both exhausted after a long day in the sun.

Day #3: I wanted to take Emerson around Pittsburgh for a day of fun. My sister came with us. We parked in my old neighborhood in Mt. Washington, then walked up to the overlook to see the entire city. It was awesome. Afterwards, we stopped at little dairy place to get Emerson an ice cream, then headed down to South Side where Emerson played in one of the fountains. He was soaked!  We stopped for lunch on the way home, then headed to my parent’s house to swim. It was so hot out! Em was beat by the time we got home.

Day #4: Emerson slept in until well after 8am. I could tell when he woke up that the exhaustion was really creeping up on him. We had one more day planned of fun. We went back to Sandcastle! We were there for about three hours. Both of us were just absolutely exhausted. We ended up going home where Emerson napped for over two hours. I even laid down for a bit. We finished the day in the yard. I filled Em’s pool up and we just hung out. I put Emerson to bed earlier than usual because he was grouchy from exhaustion.

Overall, it was a really nice break for the both of us. We’re doing this again next month and will be taking two days off during the week (a Tuesday and Wednesday). I think that’ll be a bit more manageable than taking time off with the weekend. It was a lot of days and I crammed in a lot of stuff. I’ll tone it down a bit next time.

This week, we are just getting back into the swing of things. We’re going to the spray park on Saturday and doing Sandcastle on Sunday. The 4th is on Monday, so we’ll be heading to my parent’s to cook out, swim, and do fireworks. Other than that, I just want to save our dollars. We didn’t spend much money over the weekend. Our Pittsburgh day was 100% free outside of paying for ice cream and lunch. Sandcastle has already paid for itself. Swimming at my parents was no cost. I spent $11 the day we went to the creamery for ice cream and golf. I planned pretty well. I am savvy with a dollar. LOL

My nephew comes back from California next month. We’re saving all of our excursions for that time. I’m excited. I have it all planned out. I just want to give Emerson a nice summer. He has been driving me crazy lately though. I’m not sure what is up with him. With a flip of a switch, he will just start crying and screaming. The smallest things upset him. Yesterday, he was upset that I wouldn’t let him drive my car. Really?! You’re 2! No, you can’t sit in the front seat and pretend drive! He flipped for about 15 minutes in the backseat until I finally yelled at him to cut it out. I hate when he brings me out of character and I have to seriously YELL. After 15 minutes of wailing though, I had reached my breaking point. He stopped the second I raised my voice, but I feel bad now. I don’t like that feeling. Granted, I know he can’t be an angel all of the time, but DANG! I think by the end of the four days, we both just needed space from one another. I’ll chalk it up to that. This morning, he wigged out when I left him at daycare though, so of course, I felt even worse.

Alright, guys. I am gonna finish up. have a super week!

This is 2 days old

We had an amazing weekend. On Friday, my sister picked Emerson up from daycare for me and took him over to Luciano’s where my family was for my nephew’s going away dinner. I met everyone there once I was done with work. It was delicious! Emerson sat so well at the restaurant even though it took us awhile to get our food. He barely touched his pizza, but when we got home, I offered him some leftovers and he scarfed it down.

On Saturday, we woke up early and got all of our errands done. Then, we met my sister and nephew at the spray park. Wow, it was adorable! Emerson was a bit gun shy at first. The water was cold, so it was pretty understandable that he didn’t want to immediately run in. Once he got wet and warmed up some, he was all over the place. We were there for about 1.5 hours. Afterwards, we visited my parents, then headed home. Emerson took a nap, while I fired up the grill, and filled up his pool. We played in the yard for the remainder of the day.

Sunday was father’s day as you all know. We woke up early, ran some last minute errands, put my dad’s gift together, then headed to my parent’s for a full day at the lake. We are all burnt, but it was totally worth it and so much fun. Dad loved all of his gifts. We all had such a great day. We brought a big picnic, all of our rafts, sand toys, and a tent to cover our picnic table. It was absolutely perfect. We spent 5 hours on the lake. Em loved it after he got used to the squishy sand in the water. At first, he kept whining and crying to be picked up. I’d pick him up, then he’d want right back down again. It was driving me insane! Eventually, he was fine. He swam in the water with his floaties and in his shark raft. Everyone took turns taking him around, which was nice for me. I got a bit of a break too. The whining was in full force though. I think it was because he had missed his nap and was tired. It honestly was driving me nuts, so by the end of the day, I was ready to go home. Kids! Afterwards, we went to my parent’s house for a bit.  Em was exhausted and snoozed in the car on the way home. He lounged on my parent’s couch watching cartoons for an hour when we got home. His poor face is so red even though I constantly lathered him up in sunscreen.

This week, we’re playing it pretty low-key. I’m so happy to be back to my regular work schedule. We got our sandcastle waterpark passes, so we’re planning a trip for Saturday and Monday. On Sunday, we’re heading down to the water steps, which should be a good time. It’s also free. We’re off on Friday and Monday, so on Friday, we’re just swimming at my parent’s house. I’ll probably take Emerson to the spray park again too. It’ll be an eventful weekend. I’m trying to balance and do enough without spending so much money. Going to Sandcastle twice this week will already pay for the pass itself. The pass was $50.00. One time entry into the park is $34.99, so we’re already getting our money’s worth. It’s crazy how much we’ve already done this summer and it barely just started. We still have so much on our summer bucket list to do.

Alright, I hope all of you fathers out there who actually see and take care of your children had a wonder father’s day. You deserve it!

F this week

This week is shaping up to be absolutely insane. My sister’s car is completely done. The frame is broken, therefore she is getting a new car today. I’m excited and happy for her. She deserves it. I know she’s nervous about payment, but she has a great job and I know she will make it work. She has been without a vehicle for two weeks. She’s driving my mom’s car and my mom has had my car since Monday. Emerson and I can walk to daycare and the bus, so that isn’t a big deal. I am working until 5pm daily for the week, therefore my sister/mom have to pick Emerson up from daycare for me. It just gets CRAZY from there. I’ve been taking the bus to a different park n ride, which means I’m on the bus up to 30 minutes longer than my usual 45. On top of that, the bus has continually been 20 minute late, so I’m getting home even later. At the point that I get to the park n ride, someone has to pick me up and then take Emerson and I all the way home. It is just crazy. We didn’t get home last night until 8pm! I got on the bus at freaking 520pm. It is just exhausting. Work is killing me, but then the additional travel time isn’t making it any easier either. I’m happy to help out. It just sucks that I have to work late this week and that the bus isn’t reliable at all. This week has basically been a wash because we get home so darn late. I rush to feed Em, bathe him, then get both of us to bed. Last night, I had to do laundry, clean, pack lunch, and take the garbage out too. I went to bed at 915pm though. I was wiped!

I have three more days of this messed up work schedule though and I can’t wait to be done with it. I typically leave work at 405pm. It’s insane how much the bus differs from one hour. It makes sense. I’m sure traffic is 3 times worse at 5pm as opposed to 4pm. I will not miss having to do this. If the bus were on time, I’d be able to get dropped off at daycare to pick Em up. We could walk home. That’s not the case. Daycare closes at 6pm.  I’m not even close to making it on time. I appreciate the help this week. It wasn’t without struggle though. I tried picking him up on my own on Monday, but once the bus was late, that was it. I had to call my mom in for reinforcements. Insane. I am basically sick of working 7am-5pm this week and cannot wait to go back to my regularly scheduled program of 8 hours with a 45 minute lunch. Okay, enough about that. The overtime will be worth it, so I should just shut up right now, but DANNNNG!!!!!!!!

On Friday, we’re supposed to go to dinner as a family to send my nephew off to California. He is leaving on Monday to go with his dad for 5 weeks. We’re also taking the kids to the new spray park that was put in my parent’s neighborhood. I don’t know how it’ll be. I half wonder if it’s going to be super ghetto, or end up being ghetto because people don’t know how to keep anything nice where they live. I hope I’m wrong. We’ll go down there for a bit though to check it out. It looks extremely nice. On Sunday, we’re taking a picnic to the lake for Father’s Day. I am so excited! I’m hoping it’s nice weather. I haven’t even checked yet. That’s all that we have on tap this weekend. My nephew will have a nice weekend with us before he has to leave. We planned tons of things for when he comes back too.

Our grass was cut yesterday and my dad came over to cut all of the bushes/trees that were getting long. It looks so nice. We have nothing going on next week, so I’ll clean the pool up, so that Emerson can swim after work. I love when our yard gets freshly cut. It makes me want to be out there even more.

We have so much stuff coming up though. I’ve strategically planned our summer out, so that we get to do a little bit of everything. We’re doing Sandcastle (waterpark) and Living treasure animal park towards the end of the month. I’m so excited. We’ll toss in a couple of trips to the spray park too. I took off a Friday and a Monday, so I planned some good activities for us to do during our mini vacation. Because we’re getting Sandcastle passes, we’ll be going there A LOT. Emerson really enjoyed it last year, so I hope it’s more of the same this year. I plan on at least going once a week. Let’s hope he doesn’t get sick of it by the end of summer. They have so many kiddie pools and water areas that he should be occupied enough. When we take our mini vacation, I’ve actually planned for us to go twice that weekend. The nice thing is we don’t have to go for the entire day to feel like I got my money’s worth. We can go for a few hours and call it a day.

I can’t wait to take an actual vacation though. We plan on taking the kids to the beach next year. We’re just going to do a mini vacation of 4 days. I think that’ll be sufficient enough. We’ll see how it goes and then determine where to go and what to do after that. I still want to be able to do all the waterparks, amusement parks, zoo, etc around our city, so saving money by taking a mini vacation sounds like a good plan to me. We have so much to do around here that if you plan accordingly, it is pretty affordable. We’ve been spending no money at all. No eating out, no coffee for mom, nothing. Nothing additional outside of the necessities.

Alright, I have to get rolling here.

This is two days old lol

Well, this weekend was actually great! On Friday, we didn’t do anything. Our same routine. Work, daycare, then we came home and had dinner. I let Emerson stay up later than usual too. It was nice because he slept in until 730am on Saturday morning. I made us a big breakfast. We had blueberry white chocolate chip pancakes and eggs. It was so yummy. Emerson ate every bite. Afterwards, I took him to Great Clips for a much needed haircut. They have a sale right now for $6.99 for haircuts, so I thought I better snag the deal up now while it lasts. He was so squirmy. I had to hold him down. It was funny because he kept putting his hands on top of his head covering his hair. He looks so cute now. I’m glad we got that done.

After Em’s haircut, we went back home to swim for a few hours. It was so hot out. I think the temperature reached right around 92 degrees. Em had a blast though. He ended up taking a late nap around 1:45pm. The graduation party we had to go to started at 2. We didn’t make it until about 4pm. I waited until Em was done napping first. It was so much fun seeing my family. We stayed for about 2 hours. Emerson had a ball running around with the kids. Afterwards, we went to Walmart for diapers, then home to eat pizza and watch a movie before bath and bed.

Sunday, Emerson slept until 730am again. It was nice. We had cinnamon roll pancakes, turkey bacon, and eggs for breakfast. After breakfast, we went grocery shopping, then finished picking up ingredients for our Sundae Sunday party. We invited some friends over and my sister/nephew to make ice cream sundaes and swim in Emerson’s pool and splash pad. It was such an awesome day! The kids had a blast. I got so much sun too. Emerson has a slight sunburn despite the pounds of sunscreen I plastered on him randomly throughout the day. He is so fair skinned. It is already starting to tan up a bit, so hopefully that’ll lessen as the summer progresses. After everyone went home, we stopped to visit my parents after dropping my sister off. Her car is officially dead, so she has to get a new one. In the meantime, we are all playing car shuffle. Emerson took a late nap until about 5:30pm when we got home. I was able to get my meal prep done and make dinner (spaghetti, meatballs, and garlic bread). We hung out in the ac the rest of the night.

Emerson randomly woke up again around 230am. He broke the doorknob cover off of his bedroom door, ran down the steps, kicked the gate over, then flew into the living room crying. I fell asleep on the couch, so I don’t know if he went looking for me in my bedroom first, or what, but he was in such a panic. It scared the crap out of me! I tried putting him to bed with me, but that was a bust. After I laid him down in his bed, he fell right back a sleep. Poor guy. I hope he isn’t too tired today.

I am working 10 hour days this entire week because someone is on vacation and I have to cover their work. They run a help desk that is open until 5pm, so I need to be here until that time in case any clients call. It’ll be nice to log some overtime. Emerson and I will be able to add in a few extra adventures onto our summer bucket list. I want to take him up to jellystone park for the day. It’s $15/person and I believe he is free, so it wouldn’t be overly expensive. You can’t bring outside food though, so we’d have to purchase there, which I am sure is expensive. Overtime will definitely take care of that.

This weekend, it’s father’s day. Emerson and I bought my dad silicone grill mats and some new grill tools (tongs, spatula, etc). I also want to print out a picture of my dad, Emerson, and my nephew that we took last weekend to have framed. We’re going to the lake on Sunday with a picnic to celebrate. I pray the weather is nice and it isn’t ruined. I’m really excited to go. On Saturday, we’re going to swim at my parent’s house and just play it low-key to save our money. Nothing wrong with that. It was nice hanging out at home this weekend. We made the best of it and had a really good time.

My sister and I decided to get Sandcastle passes though for the remainder of the summer. Emerson and I had planned on going twice, so me getting a pass would actually be cheaper. $50 vs $64. That way, we can go many times. I can probably swap out some other things we had on our list and just replace with Sandcastle days.  I’m excited. It’ll be nice to have something to do when we’re trying to save money. We can pack our own lunch, which is one of the best parts.

Alright, I guess I am going to go now. I hope everyone has a great week

This sounds bitchy

Oh boy. Things got a little soggy for us this week. On Tuesday night, after I bathed Em and put him to bed, I heard water running. It threw me off because I wasn’t washing clothes, hadn’t flushed the toilet, and I didn’t have the sinks turned on. I headed down to the basement to do a leg workout, when I found that the hot water tank was gushing water all over my basement. The water was probably about 3 inches high. It doesn’t sound like much, it was. My entire carpet was completely soaked. I tried turning off the hot water tank, but was afraid to mess with it because I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. There wasn’t an on/off switch either. I ended up having to turn all of the water off to the whole house to get it to stop. Luckily, it was garbage night, so I was able to get all of the boxes that were soaked outside. I cleaned up the water and basement as best I could, while I waited for my landlord to respond to my text.

The worst part was having no water the rest of the night. I hadn’t gotten a shower, or even washed dishes, so that sucked. I didn’t realize how much I used water until I had none to use. I couldn’t even make a protein shake for snack. We don’t buy bottled water because it’s too expensive. I pay for what comes out of the tap, so that is what we use to drink, otherwise, yes, I would have just used bottled water.

My landlord texted and said he’d be over the following day to check it out. I didn’t have my work laptop with me, which meant I needed to drive downtown to grab it, then back home. Well, that only took me about 2.5 hours with traffic. There was no way in heck  I was using a vacation day though. I couldn’t just let my landlord come over without me being there because of the dog. She tried to attack him when he actually came into the house when I was there. I had to calm her down. He was there for almost 5 hours too, so locking her in my bedroom, or something would have just been ridiculous. I was also afraid that he’d accidentally leave the door open and she’d run away. Thirdly, I don’t like the idea of people being in my home without me being there. I don’t know why I feel the need to justify why I wanted to get my lap top to work at home for the day. I am a good employee and didn’t want to miss work. Period. Sorry, I just know some people who read this and I can already hear the stupid comments they’re reciting back to themselves. Eye Roll.

Anyway, working at home with no water really sucked. I couldn’t make anything to eat. I had popcorn and a bowl of cereal. The landlord had to turn off the gas too, so the stove wasn’t operable to cook. Let me clarify a few things too. I don’t buy junk. We have a limited amount of money for groceries, therefore I have to buy real food. I’m talking food that actually needs cooked and prepared. I don’t buy much microwaveable food. I also do not buy snackey stuff that I can just grab and eat (chips, cookies, etc). We are also at the end of our food inventory and due to grocery shop this weekend, so I had even less options. The stuff I had required water. I had some pasta, but I couldn’t boil it. Rice, but I had no water to boil that. I also had no gas to use the stove to cook it either. Same goes with the chicken and eggs I had. How was I supposed to cook this stuff? Again, I just know how some people are and how some things are read. I am not an idiot. Anyway, I had microwaveable popcorn, so I made that. I also had some cereal and milk, so I had a bowl for lunch.

Not being able to flush my toilet was a real delight too. I couldn’t spend money to buy a gallon of water to use throughout the day either. That costs money, and like I said, we are at the end of our rope until pay day on Friday. I didn’t really have extra dollars to spare to buy water, which is something I should have in my home because I already pay for it. I made it through the day though. The landlord replaced the hot water tank. I cleaned up the basement and put a fan down there, so that it could dry. I checked this morning and the floor was dry as a bone. I’m so glad. I just hope it doesn’t start to smell musty. I had to throw away my carpet that I had down there too. It was completely ruined. Taking a shower after two days was amazing last night though!

We haven’t been doing much outside of that. We have a graduation party on Saturday and I am finally taking Emerson for a haircut on Sunday. That’s all the plans that we have. We’re on a spending freeze until Father’s Day. We’re supposed to go to the lake with my family. Emerson and I are getting my dad a gift card for his favorite Italian Ice place, reusable silicone grilling mats, and cinnamon roasted cashews.  Luckily, none of that is too expensive. I’m going to dress it all up and decorate a bag to make it a bit fancier.

I have to work late all week next week because someone is on vacation and I have to cover their job until 5pm. It sucks. I’ll be late picking Emerson up on Monday and Wednesday, which means I’ll be charged $1 per minute that I am late. I’m hoping it isn’t more than 5 or 10 minutes each day. We will see though. I hate this. My sister can pick him up the other three days, but she works until 8pm on Monday and Wednesday. My mom is being the biggest brat right now, so I am not talking to her. When I reminded her about picking Emerson up on Monday and Wednesday, she was super rude to me and told me that because my sister is using her car until hers is fixed, that she won’t be able to help me. I don’t understand that at all. She could use my car those two days. The point is she doesn’t feel like helping me because it requires her to actually have to get off her butt and leave the house. It infuriates me. I am going to just drop that for now though. No sense in getting all worked up about it again.

Alright, I am going to end this now. Have a good rest of the week.

I wrote this 2 days ago...whoops

We had a really cool weekend even though a lot of things did NOT pan out the way I had planned. I guess I need to start making back up plans just in case something goes awry. Anyway, on Friday, we didn’t do anything. Obviously, I worked and Emerson had daycare, but afterwards, we just went home. We did the usual. Dinner, bath, bed. The lawn company came to cut our grass though, which was perfect timing for the weekend.  Anyway, on Saturday, we had planned to go to Strawberry Fest. We got up, ate breakfast, and got completely ready. We headed out around 10:30am. When we got closer to the farm, there was a major detour because the road we needed to take was closed. The road borders a river and a big hillside, so it wasn’t like I could just hang a right/left to go around. We ended up having to turn all the way around. The detour led us nowhere. We hit more closed roads. I have no idea what the heck was going on in that part of town. After 45 minutes of frustration, I decided to just GPS us back home. Emerson was snoozing in the back, so he was none the wiser. I was so disappointed though. We were meeting friends out there.

After the disappointment passed, we had a nice long drive home for me to rethink our entire day. It was pretty early still and the weather was gorgeous. I decided to stop past the dollar store to grab some items to have a barbeque, and some yard toys. I got Emerson some squirt guns, bubbles, and a couple of pool toys. I figured we’d save money from not going to the festival, but we’d still have a fun day in the yard. My sister ended up coming over for our cookout. We had such a good time. I think in total we were in the yard for about 5 hours. Emerson had a bit of sunburn too. I felt bad about that. I made him wear a shirt and sunblock for the rest of the weekend.

On Sunday, the weather was looking bad. There was an 80% chance of storms, so we decided to take a family trip with my parents, sister, and nephew up to the Sarris Candy Factory and Ice Cream Parlour. That place was cool! They had an entire castle made of chocolate. The whole store was set up so adorably. The ice cream was delicious! We all had such a great time and it was nice to be together doing something different as a family. Dad paid for all of our stuff too, which I thought was extremely nice. Afterwards, we went to the park, so the kids could play for a bit. I was pretty exhausted by the time we got home.

That night, Emerson awoke around 230am. I think he had a bad dream because he was FREAKING out. It was unreal. I put him in bed with me, which meant I got NO sleep. I ended up getting so sick around 5am anyway. I have no idea what was going on, but my stomach was like that ALL day. Em and I were off on Monday, so being sick and sleepy didn’t really matter, but I didn’t want that to ruin our day. We planned a trip to the Spray Park with my mom. When we got up there, we saw nothing but dead cicadas littering the entire park. It was absolutely disgusting. The kids were playing in them. There weren’t like 5 or 10 random bugs either. There were literally hundreds of them dead all over the ground. We turned around, walked back to the car, and ended up swimming at my parent’s house. Puke. Hopefully these things are all gone within the next month. At that point, we’ll make a trip back up.

This week, we have nothing planned, which is a good thing because my wallet is crying. We have a graduation party to head to on Saturday. Other than that, our weekend is pretty clear. We’ll play in the yard, hit the park, and visit my parents. That’s about it. I’m saving our pennies for Father’s Day. We’re supposed to head to the lake that day with our family. I am hoping the place isn’t littered by Cicadas! I fear that now. I have some friends who went up already, so I’ll ask around before we decide. We’ll be making alternate plans if that’s the case!

I don’t have much else going on. I’m just trying to make it through the summer and trying to manage money as best as I can, so that Emerson gets some fun experiences. It’s not the easiest, but I am working on it. I don’t have much else to report. I’m still working out, though I assume that’s just a given to anyone wondering about my life at this point. I don’t have any real goals right now either. I’m not killing myself on diet, but I still watch very closely. 80/20 right now.

Alright, I hope you all have a great week

A bit of a rant

My birthday weekend was absolutely incredible. It was exhausting though. We jam packed a lot into four days. Friday was my actual birthday. I worked a half day in office. I had a doctor appointment at 9:30am because I wasn’t feel very well. Someone who had I had been training all week came down with bronchitis and strep throat. I woke up on Thursday morning with a sore throat, no voice, and completely congested. When I went to the doctor on Friday, they ruled everything out, which was great, but I wasn’t feeling so hot, so I went home around 11:30am. I took a strong dose of meds and took a nap. Emerson was at daycare, so I had that freedom. When I woke up, I felt better, so I decided to go shopping. I’m such a big spender. I bought a $5 dress and a $1 romper. Memorial Day sales were amazing! I wish I could have bought more, but I was happy with my $6 splurge.

I had an Olive Garden gift card, so when I got home, a to-go order in for myself and Emerson to eat as my birthday dinner. I also picked up a couple of cupcakes too, so that we could single “Happy Birthday”. After I scooped Emerson from daycare, we headed up to Olive Garden to pick up our dinner. It was scorching hot out, so when we got home, I let him swim for an hour before we ate. Dinner was delicious. Even better, it was free. Afterwards, we sang “Happy Birthday” and Emerson helped me blow out the candles. I let him stay up a little later than usual too.  When he went to bed, I rented a movie and made some birthday cake martinis. Being honest, I wasn’t really into them. I don’t drink much and I definitely do not like the taste of liquor. I’m okay with a glass of wine, or even beer, but I do not do liquor anymore. I ended up wasting two martinis. It was a nice birthday though.

On Saturday, my family had a birthday cookout for me at their house. It was really nice. The pool was open too! We swam for a few hours, ate dinner, blew out the candles again, then had red velvet (my favorite) cupcakes. My parents got me a Target gift card, so that I can buy some new pots and pans, which I desperately need. My sister got me a gift certificate for my hair/nail place, which I thought was really nice.

On Sunday, we had big plans to visit the zoo. The weather was supposed to be hot, so we packed extra water. We went in the morning with my sister and nephew. When we were nearly at the end of our tour, it started to rain, but we didn’t even care. It was so hot all day that it was nice walking around in the rain to get cooled off. We had such a great time! Emerson loved it. We got discounted tickets through my company, so the cost was not bad at all. It’s usually $17/person! After the zoo, we went to my parent’s house for a bit. After a late nap, I let him swim in the backyard for a while before dinner and bedtime.

On Monday, we lounged around for most of the day, then decided to finish the day swimming at my parent’s house. It was nice! I got such a nice tan this weekend. Let’s pray for some good weather this upcoming weekend. We’re going to strawberry fest on Saturday. Otherwise, we’ll be in the pool. We’ll probably make a quick park trip too. I’m all about FREE activities to do. The only thing I’ll be paying for is admission to Strawberry fest, which shouldn’t be too bad. After this, we’re not paying to do anything for a few weeks. We’ll swim at my parents, hit the spray park, lake, and water steps.  That should hold us over for a while. Enough variety without going broke. We’ve been doing a lot lately, but most of it was free, or heavily discounted. Even still, my wallet needs a break. I don’t get paid for another 9 days either, so we need to just grin and bear it with what we have. I’m pretty creative when it comes to stretching a dollar, so I think we’ll be just fine.

I was reading on Pinterest last night for ideas on how to save money on utilities. I began unplugging every single thing in the house. Obviously, I left the refrigerator plugged in, but the television, cable box, microwave, coffee pot, and baby monitor were all unplugged. All these vampire appliances definitely increase your bill. Now that I have the air conditioners running, I want to be able to save where I can. We’ll see how the next couple of bills are and if I sense a change. I won’t be able to compare this month to next month though because we weren’t using the air conditioners then. We’ll see how it is between July and August. I’m also not filling the bath tub as high when Emerson bathes. I know more water is fun, but now that we’re filling the pool up here and there, I can really use the additional savings. Right now, I do laundry two times a week. I’m cutting that down to once a week. We should have enough to get us through the week without needing more than one wash.

I already save on groceries because I buy no fluff. I am just so sick and tired of living like this. I know I don’t complain much over money. Again, I am pretty savvy. I think it just drives me insane when I know we’re missing out on some things because I can’t afford to take Emerson every single place I want to. My hope is to at least take him to the waterpark in August. That’ll be the next and final major thing that we’ll do this summer. We’ve already gotten the amusement park and zoo out of the way. One day, it won’t be so tight and we can have a bit more freedom. I just get really fed up having to live this way. I don’t even need to be rich. I could stand to have a $100 more to float around throughout the month. Two words start to creep up on me and that’s CHILD SUPPORT. We all know I have yet to file, but it’s getting pretty ridiculous. After I pay ALL of the bills, daycare, groceries, diapers, and gas in the car, we’re left with about $100 for two weeks. That $100 is our entertainment, medicine (knock on wood), clothing, haircuts, and household essentials like toothpaste, toilet paper, and dish liquid. $100 for two weeks is not enough at all for two people let alone a toddler who is constantly growing out of clothing and shoes. Again, I am pretty savvy, but I can only take that so far. Did I mention the fee to have our grass cut comes out of that $100 too. That means we literally have $65 for two weeks to take care of our needs. Heaven forbid its snack day, or school picture date, or something additional like a book fair at daycare.

I just am really tired of living this way. It is wearing me out. His dad is going to have to help me. That’s really all that it comes down to. I’ve already reached out to a friend about potentially working in her hotel on Sundays either cleaning, or working at the front desk. I just need to supplement my income some way. It sucks to have to take more time away from Emerson, but honestly, I am hanging by a thread here. I had to buy a stamp yesterday that cost me about 48 cents. It’s a darn shame that I cringed forking over  2 quarters! I just don’t get why some people think they’re exempt from providing for their child. I do everything on my own and I do all that I can. The least he could do is send Emerson a pair of shoes, or a box of cereal. He really is the epitome of a dead beat.

Alright, I am done with this. Too much negativity for one day.