The Divine Ms Charity

I started a new job today. Well, I suppose some don’t call it a job, more of something to do that pays me, but I call it a job because I get income from it. My new job? Paper carrier. Yes, I got myself a paper route. Two actually.

The newspaper here has two routes that are easily done together in about 2.5 – 3 hours from the time you pick up your papers to the time you deliver the last paper. I started with the bigger one this morning (the district manager for my district is showing me the route) and tomorrow morning he’s going to take me around the route again, but this time he’s going to have me do more of the deliveries than I did this morning. This morning he had me deliver 4 of the papers. One to a bank (get it up by the doors), one to the porch of a house, one to the hooks on the bottom of a mailbox, and one through a mail slot. I really hope the Sunday paper isn’t supposed to go through that slot because the Thursday paper barely fit – I can’t imagine getting the Sunday paper through there!

There is one house I’m not sure how I’ll handle it. The person lives in the upstairs of a top/bottom duplex. Her porch is on the back of the house and the district manager says just to throw the paper up over the railing onto the porch… but that it’s difficult because you have to aim right. The gate isn’t locked and she has steps that lead up there, why not go through the gate, up a few steps, and toss it from there?

Other than that, the bigger route doesn’t seem too bad. I think I’ll spend the most time trying to get the papers rolled up and banded to be honest. But we’ll see how this works out. At least I’m usually up when this is going on, so it’s not like I’m having to get up to go to work, I go to work before I go to bed.

Oh, and both routes combined net me a little over $600 a month – which isn’t bad considering  I’m working about 70 hours a month – I made about the same working 80 hours a month at my last job. I mean, I’m not rolling in the dough or able to pay for an apartment or anything, but it’s income and it’s pretty easy money.

Ok, so I don’t hate it, but I’m tired of it. And I realized it’s hard to read the text on my blog with the text being a slightly darker gray than the background. But I didn’t make the theme. I plan to though. I honestly do plan to make my own theme – just as soon as I get done blogging. I made a theme for one of my other blogs. It’s simple, straight forward and I love it.

Sometimes I think blog themes are kind of like car covers. You put it on your blog and hope no one gives you crap for having the one you chose on there. One of my blogs is running the default “Twenty Twelve” theme and honestly, I kind of like it that way. It’s a clean, simple, easy to read theme. Granted, it is a theme that every beginning blog on the planet is probably using, but still. I like it.

I find it kind of funny that people are so hyped up about theme-frameworks like Genesis and Thesis. People keep telling me I need to use one of these frameworks. But I’m sorry, I don’t have money for that kind of thing. Not every blogger can afford to pay $60 or more for a theme framework. And in looking at the demo for Genesis, I could code a theme that looks like the demo myself given enough time to figure out a couple of things. So why on earth would I pay $60 for that?

In any case, I am not satisfied with this current theme and I will be working toward creating a new theme shortly – meaning as soon as I get myself off Facebook and my blogs.

It took Broadlawns Medical Center 2 months to get back to me, and they didn’t call like I was told, they sent a letter, but I finally got an appointment at the Otolaryngology clinic. I’m scheduled to be there at 8AM on July 15. I suppose they didn’t pay attention to the fact that I live 200 miles away in Sioux City, or they might have made my appointment for a bit later in the day.

Now comes the fun part. Getting there. I’ve been told a couple of times to ask people at my church for help, which I mostly likely will end up doing. However, I don’t like that prospect as it would require that someone either take time off work or take time away from other things and we’d have to leave here at 3 or 4AM just to make it down there in time. Not something I really want to ask someone to do for me.

Barring that, even though that would technically be the less expensive route (gas & food is all I’d need to pay for), my other option is to go by myself on a bus to Des Moines, spend what is left of Sunday night in a hotel, and go to my appointment Monday morning, and then bum around somewhere until 11PM so I can leave. Either that or spend Monday night at the hotel as well and leave early Tuesday morning. Either way, it’s more expensive to take the bus ($98 round trip) plus hotel room ($60-100 per night) plus food (I can probably get by on $40 for food) plus cab fare ($50-100 depending how for it is from bus station to hotel and hotel to hospital).

I’ll find some way to get there and if I can’t, I’ll call the number and just tell them that while I need the appointment, I simply have no way of getting to Des Moines for the appointment. I’m going to be disappointed if I can’t make it, but if I can’t I suppose that’s life.

However, if anyone would like to help me out on trying to make it to this appointment, there is a donation button to your left – there is no set amount, so if you can only donate $1.00 or only want to donate $1.00, so be it.  If you don’t want to donate anything, that’s fine as well. I understand, times are tough. Money is tight. Believe me, I get it. I’ll be saving every penny of my blogging income that I can to be able to make this trip. I just know it won’t be enough. So if you can/want to help – great. If you can’t/don’t want to – great.

Now I am off to try and earn some more money to be able to make this trip and pay for it on my own as much as possible.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the business I own and run with my best friend. Part of this is probably because I’m taking classes to learn how to manage small businesses. Part of this is also because we aren’t making any sales and we just can’t afford to keep going the way we have been. I’m still trying to figure out what our options might be (other than closing the business down) and will be talking with my best friend about this soon.

I mean, on the one hand, it would be relatively easy to save up some money (maybe from disbursements or something) and get into buying things like wholesale dance gifts and then re-selling them on eBay or in physical stores. Another option is to see if anyone would be willing to give us a “pop-up store” in an existing store. Like a pop-up store for Stitches N’ Ruffles (our crocheted/knitted wearable items) or Gamble & Korb (candles/bath/body). But to be honest, as far as I know, to get a pop-up store, we’d have to pay the store we were getting it in, and I can’t do that.

I’ve been told to try consignment shops, but I’m not sure I want our items being sold on consignment. It doesn’t feel like it is something we should be doing. But I suppose we could try that if nothing else. Although honestly, the consignment shops here would probably sell them for much less than what they should be sold for.

I really dislike figuring out what to do. It can be such a pain in the rear.

As some of my readers know, I’ve been rather chicken of driving my truck ever since the lovely “tire flying off in traffic” incident. I know I shouldn’t be afraid to drive my truck just because it had one issue, but that issue was rather odd and kind of frightening. So I’ve been a bit wary of driving the truck very much. Of course, having a cracked radiator (according to the shop who did the repairs after the tire came off), doesn’t help either.

So today I wanted to take Panda out to Bacon Creek Park for a bit of a walk. I wanted to go even though we just went yesterday because the weather is supposed to turn nasty tomorrow and Thursday, and I wanted him to have some fresh air and a nice walk. I noted my keys sitting on the dresser in the hallway next to my bedroom door and I thought about taking the truck to Bacon Creek. The thing is, I haven’t driven the truck that far since I got it home from the repair shop.

So I decided to brave the truck and brave the drive to Bacon Creek. I learned two things. A) I can drive the truck from the trailer to Bacon Creek without having a panic attack. B) The truck doesn’t overheat, so I’m not entirely positive it has a cracked radiator. Of course, I had the heater on slightly the entire time, so it is possible that kept the truck from overheating. (I did have a jug of water in the back end of the truck just in case.)

LaShawn and her mom followed me to Bacon Creek and back in their car, just so I’d have that added layer of protection in the event something happened. But nothing happened and I’m learning to relax while driving my truck again.