Would you porch that for me? NOW!?

So, this project that Mark and I have been losing sleep over is not really a project at all. It was a paper route. And we were thinking it was an early morning, nothing overly exerting, just a paper route. HA! It was nothing like that, it was not easy, it was not early morning, it was middle of the dang night and it sucked!! It was not me or Mark on a bike with those double shoulder bags with loads of papers rolled up with rubber bands. No musical or singing people working with us, wearing newsboy caps, they weren't even friendly. I was at least hoping for Christian Bale, but nope, my Newsie dreams were shot down when I realized the only music we would hear would be AC/DC or Journey from the radio or from the guy who raps to music in his head on Sundays. Yeah that was about it. But wait, there is really more!! Not only was it not early morning, we were thinking it would be at 4 or something that it, and they would drop the papers off at our house, heck, we just thought they would count the papers first! NOPE! We had to get up at 1:30 AM-2:00 AM, and go to the warehouse (here in Brighton) and then fold the papers, and then go throw the papers. We had to be done throwing our papers by 5:30 AM weekdays, and by 7:00 AM weekends. Paper count? M-W : 143, TH-F : 215, SAT : 270, SUN : 343. Now, really that's not too bad, but we had the 2nd largest route in the district, and we covered 3 large neighborhoods. So, it's not like every house got a paper, some places only have one house on a street that gets one. Usually, Monday-Wednesday we can throw the route in an hour, or an hour and a half or so. Sundays, it takes 4 hours, 1.5 to fold and the rest we throw. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the dang porch requests. (Mark has sworn to me, that even if he is hobbled up so bad he can hardly walk to the garage, he will still hobble his old bones out to the driveway to get his paper, if we get one.) Because for most the porches, we have to stop the truck, get out, throw the paper on the porch and then get going. And then there are the occaisional roof throws, Mark climbed up there and got the paper down, we only had 2 of these.

Then there was the crazy stuff we saw. In the past weeek, we've seen 2 vehicles that were destroyed. Not just totalled but destroyed!! It seriously looked like a T-Rex had done thru the neighborhood and torn into 2 cars.

We did get a bunch of free stuff which was pretty cool. We got a cooler, some frames for my crafting, some end tables with magazine racks, a world map that's huge, and a washer for some friends. It was pretty awesome that we got first pick of the FREE stuff.

We started the route on the 17th of August, and tried it out for 2 weeks, but Mark had already signed the contract, so in order to get out of it, we had to hand in a 30 days notice, so that 30 days is today! Yayay! But it sucked so bad. Mark and I have been losing sleep, losing friends (we need all the ones we can get!) and getting sick! It's been awful! And at least 3 times, the managers have been like, We're trying to get someone in here to take over your route. It always falls thru, and this last time, we showed up on Monday and Tuesday to throw the route, and one manager said, "I wasn't expecting you two to show up, I thought you assumed the route got covered, I was going to throw the route for the rest of the time." Now, really? Why would we assume the route had gotten covered, nothing was said to us, we were told it fell thru and no one was able to take the route this week, so we figured we'd just come in until the date on our 3o day notice. UNLESS - You wanted to charge us the $250 early termination fee as stated in the contract! UGH! Really?!

I talked Mark into signing the contract and taking the route, however, I only had to say that I wanted to quit ONCE and he was on board! I figured we'd take the route, get the $450 every 2 weeks (that's SO not what we got paid!) and pay off the debt we've got. Pretty much, all the pay from the route took care of was the gas to throw the route, Bandit's puppy class, and our family pictures. Which really is not too bad.

We're very excited to be done with the route, it means we get our friends back, and we can stay up and watch late night football, without having to worry about going to bed at 8 so we can wake up at 2am. I think it was a good learning expireince, it taught us to be grateful for what we have, and that things could always be worse. I'm very grateful that we don't NEED that job, and that it was just for extra money. It also taught us that budgeting is so very needed and it finally pushed me into budgeting everything, which is what I have been wanting so bad! We're also glad because we can spend more time with the puppy, which means he won't be starved for attention and won't tear up the house like he did on Wednesday. :) Thank you to everyone who put up with all of this paper route nonsense. We didn't tell everyone, I wasn't sure how my work would take it, so I decided to tell them after I had quit. Better to be safe than sorry. :) IT'S FINALLY OVER!! Woot woot!

Love to all - Bry and Mark