Mondays...Blegh...

Well, it's been quite the draining day.

What's that? Your car could use a jump?
How sad....

I started off my morning with more dead car battery excitement...luckily, I have an awesome neighbor whose daughter is in kindergarten at the same school as my son...she saw my car dilemma and offered to take my kiddo to school so that he wouldn't be tardy. [Seriously, she's awesome!] And as I've mentioned before, I've got some terrible neighbors...and the rest of my neighbors were exactly the same as before. They're just.../sigh...can't say anything nice, so I won't say anything at all.

Work-wise, it was a pretty typical Monday. Catching up on things that were leftover from last week and dealing with the influx of new orders and revisions...

The whopper was my kiddo's 'report card.' His marks didn't improve since his progress report ['marks' is technically correct, right?] In some categories, he's done worse than he did before...

Right, right...Darth Vader is awesome...

Now I know this isn't a tragedy...but I do also realize that this indicates that something needs to change otherwise he's going to think that it's perfectly fine to be the kid that doesn't pay attention in school.

So, yeah...

I'm sure it'll all be fine...it's just the getting to 'fine' that's not fun. At all.

Oh...still haven't tried the marmite or vegemite...they smell so terrible!

Help Needed...

I don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone...but being an adult sucks!!

[I guess I should rather say that being a responsible adult sucks...I guess adulthood wouldn't be so bad if you could float through it Peter Pan style...]

I've just about made up my mind to start looking for a second job.

It's simply expensive to run a household, even on the minimal level! Start adding in 'luxuries' like health insurance and you're looking at tacking on right at $500, easy. Then there's school stuff for the kiddo and everyday nuances like groceries and gas.../sigh... I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir...everyone knows that everything's expensive.

Looking at my monthly income and expenditures...there really isn't much more I can do with my current situation. [Just in case you're wondering, the Marvel Live! stuff from a few posts ago was all made possible by a tremendously generous grand-parental birthday gift...certainly wouldn't have been possible if it were coming out of my pocket...] I don't have any exuberant extras that I'm just dumping money into and there really isn't anywhere that I can make significant spending cuts.

[Wouldn't it be great if I could pull a US Government move here and just invent more money in my bank account? Call up my apartment's property manager and tell her that I won't be paying rent anymore because the funding needs to be used elsewhere and hey! /shrug/ there's nothing you could do about it! No hard feelings, right?]

/Sigh

Tangential government griping aside...

How do people do this?

I know that there are people with circumstances that, relatively speaking, are far worse than mine...I know that there are other single parents out there that work two or maybe even three jobs to make ends meet, but how?!

How am I supposed to have time to work two jobs and take care of my son??

I mean, it's just me. [Sometimes my dad will help out and pick him up from school for me, but it's usually because he's in the area doing work stuff and I'm at the office drowning in work stuff...] My son is not old enough to stay at home by himself yet, so looking at getting a night-shift job is really out of the question. And I can't really just drop the appraisal stuff to pick up something else...I'm pretty darn sure that there aren't any entry level jobs that I could get that would pay enough to keep my bills and rent paid and still leave me any money for food stuffs.

Here's the problem with being 'good' at a lot of things, but not good or experienced enough to get a job in any of those things.

Kids, do yourself a huge favor and never, EVER major in psychology. Never. Not even if you're planning on going into medical school. Pick engineering, pick business...hell, pick teaching! Anything that will give you a desirable, marketable skill...and not a piece of paper that amounts to virtually nothing despite the years of study and tens of thousands of dollars spent to earn said piece of paper.

Anybody out there have any ideas or advice? I'm in over my head here and could certainly use some help...