Good idea: doing the whole edit copy/edit paste thing to your diaryland entry when your computer begins to act up. It's happened before, the internet was messing up on me, so I knew if I rebooted the computer, all would be fine again.

Bad idea: forgetting to paste what you wrote into a document before rebooting your computer. Because of that, I lost a huge entry, that I can remember, but couldn't begin to retype if I wanted to. Because of that, this'll be brief.

A local radio station is giving away $1,000 a dad for the next few weeks just for being the ninth caller. Now you know where I'll be every morning at 7:20.

I've been taking baths instead of showers everyday lately. They're much more relaxing than showers. I figure that once everyone in the family is home for the summer, it'll be back to showers for me.

"I hope you had a fun time, because it's never going to happen again" were the first words out of my mom's mouth after my sister returned home from the weekend after spending it with her boyfriend. She should've been smart enough to realize that things wouldn't be back to normal, and there'd be tension when she got back. My parents can't look her in the eyes, which means I have to give her rides. I feel bad because I've been treating her the same way. She'll start talking to me and I'll eave, she'll walk into the living room and she'll stare at me to try to get me to look over. She even talked with me on the phone while riding in the for far too long, likely not wanting to look at mom and dad in the front seat. Still, she knew what she was getting into, and she kind of brought it on herself.

There are many bad things about having parents as teachers, but at the top of that list is the fact that they're home all summer, as well as the days that come before and after Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter that most people have to work. Plus, they've never even gone out of town once.

Unlike some teachers, they don't work during the summer. It wouldn't be a bad idea, as my mom took an $800 per month pay cut in August for switching from one Head Start preschool to another. She has always refused to work the summer though. If she stayed at the old Head Start, she'd have the money, but lose most of the control over her classroom. By leaving, she's just as miserable, her new classroom is a trailer, she doesn't like her co-workers, and the only traditional teacher-like school holidays she gets are Christmas, New Year's Day and Thanksgiving. So if you're going to be equally unhappy at both jobs, do you take the one with more pay?

The whole family has felt the crunch. It means grocery shopping has gone from every week to every three weeks. Food has to last a lot longer. I think that's why I've been gaining so little weight this year. I've only been eating one meal a day (two at the most and that's rare) since September. I've actually lost a few pounds since October while my sister has gained twenty. Is she hiding food? It's gotta be the fast food she eats. Dad won't be working this summer, but it's not by choice. He's a computer lab teacher at a year-round elementary school that will be torn down this summer in favor of a new building. Normally, he'd put in about six weeks during the summer, but now this year. He did buy all of the computers in the computer lab for a good price, and he's on his way to making a $5000 profit. Just enough to last us until September.

And you wonder why we're buying an old Caprice to replace the van instead of a new car? Not everybody's family can afford an Oldsmobile Bravada, B. :)

Jason

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