This is John out with me at the Westfield Ice cream festival - it was my weekend to take pictures, so he tagged along with me. It's one of those living museum places. He had fun! He saw a horse for the first time, and kept waving to it - or maybe he was waving to the driver, who tipped his hat to John every time he passed.

John's nearing the end of his first week in daycare. I feel kind of obsolete - he LOVES it! I mean he REALLY LOVES it! Liz is awesome. We took him to meet her the day before he started, so they'd have a chance to get to know each other. It took a little while for him to let her touch him - he peeked at her for a while, playing peek-a-boo by poking around my back, with big, big belly laughs each time. But eventually - after half an hour, he went to her and let her carry him.

Now, the second he sees her, he grins from ear to ear. He's so happy - he giggles at her when I go pick him up, and he smiles and lunges for her in the morning. It's great - one less thing to worry about in life. He still crawls to me when I walk in at the end of the day, so I'm sure I'm still #1, but it's nice to know he's with someone he really likes. He loves the other kids, too. She says he watches them all day, and tries to do what they do. Today, he decided he was going to use the chalk board, so they gave him a piece of chalk and he drew! I wish I could have seen that. She gives us a little write-up every day, stating what he ate, when he slept, and what he did. We really appreciate that - it's nice to feel like a part of what's going on.

Beyond that, everything else is pretty cruddy. I just cleared my first business publication. What a nightmare. I was supposed to get the pages to work on over the weekend - I didn't. I can do it without, it just takes a lot longer. But I had to make do, because it was a short week, and the paper was short-staffed, so I had no choice but to do it over the weekend. I spend my whole long weekend working, and still wasn't able to get it all done - it was a last minute scramble to get it out, with my editor glaring at me, and everyone in Burlington passing the blame for why the dummies weren't to me in time. It was very frustrating.

Money is, in a word, disasterous. Whatever could be going wrong, is going terribly, terribly wrong. I think it's on everyone's file that Mike is back, and they all want to be the first paid, so they're playing hardball. But they just don't understand that it's going to take a while. What reserves we had are exhausted. My pay is spoken for - mortgage and daycare, and that's it. The rest needs to come from Mike, but his first pay isn't even a full pay, for starters. We were counting on a full pay, in addition to the signing bonus, which he's now told may or may not be on the first cheque. We were also planning to gut his vacation and banked overtime hours, but he can't. Turns out, the union still hasn't signed the contract, and weren't scheduled to until the day after the cut-off to request vacation and overtime. Convenient.

As well, this partial pay is his only pay before the wedding, so it has to stretch like you wouldn't believe. We not only have all the wedding and travel expenses, we have the gas company, who's sent a letter stating the gas will be shut of on Tuesday, unless they're paid in full - he won't even be paid by then. The electricity won't be far behind - they've been sending threatening letters for months. The water, I believe, is already a lien on the house. The credit card companies,who've been pretty patient, have all threatened to take our cards away - not that they're any use to us now anyway. One just called, threatening that they'll lock my debit card, unless we send them some money. Our water heater rental company has just sent us to collections. One credit card is being revoked on Tuesday - again, before he's even paid. Don't these people listen? Our mortgage company keeps stealing money right out of our account - luckily, there's never a bean in there, so it keeps getting bounced back to us - minus a few service charges.

Peachy. How long until we can look back and laugh at this one?

Sorry for ranting - it's just so frustrating. These people phone, and we're so close to getting out of the hole. They just need to hang in there with us for a few more weeks and it'll get sorted out, but they don't care - they won't listen. They won't accept arrangements, nothing - we have to pay in full (before we're even paid) or else. Even if they were willing to wait until he got paid, there's not anywhere near enough in Mike's pay to cover it all. Not even close. It's just so horrible.

Oh well, at least John is happy!

Gotta go and finish making dinner...