Normal Life?

Thursday night was my last night working 10-7!! It came a week early and I didn't know about it until Tuesday morning! As much as I wanted and needed both a better position and humane hours, it was also a bit sad. There are people I will miss, people I've gotten to be very good friends with. This is my first job since Charlie was born in early 1996, so it was a little scary and the people I met and befriended on 10-7 are special to me! I actually had to go in the bathroom and have a good cry after lunch. They got me a cake and a card and one of my best friends got me a card and a very pretty bracelet. It's not like I won't ever see them again, but I won't see them 5 nights a week!

I hope working 7-4pm m-f will normalize my life some. It's a very hard thing; sleeping during the day. And days off are confusing- do you sleep away one of your days, or do you stay up and completely run yourself into the ground? Same with weekends- it stinks so much to come home Saturday morning and have to sleep until 2pm (which would be a whole 5-6 hours of sleep) when everyone is home- then have to start getting ready for work at 8:30pm... Yuck! So glad I'm done!

I still need to down-size on my dog numbers a little, but I'm not sure how. I don't think anyone is looking and I'm not sure if I should lower the price on a couple of my very nice dogs just to get them moved on, or if I should hang on to them... Ella's coming this morning to take 5 of the sheep home with her. She's really excited! That will leave me with just 3 ewe lambs and the ram. Not sure if they're going or staying. I might be better off just letting them all go and depend on Carol, Ella, and another friend's place to work sheep. My yard is too small to work the trial dogs and I'm sure they'll be turning the field over in the next 6 weeks or so.

My parents are helping us out on our credit card debt and the way it looks we should have $27,000 worth of debt paid off in about 30 months. That will leave us with another $20,000. Credit cards should be illegal! It's insane what we let ourselves get into and I know we aren't alone. It will be a very tight 3 years, but it's necessary if we wish to ever get out from under it. $50,000 is credit card debt- wanna guess what we're paying on that and not getting anywhere with? It's crazy! The super low interest and super low monthly payment my parents were able to get is going to save us probably 10 years of payments! (because we'll be able to pay about 3 times the required payment)

Gotta get outside. I have a normal weekend and start 7-4 on Monday!

10 More Nights!!!

Glory Be!! Ten more 10pm-7am shifts!! I got the Dept. Manager job I interviewed for last week! It comes not too much before nights would have gotten to be un-doable, both because it's an insane shift for someone still trying to have normal life, and because when Ben goes back to the ship in June, I will not be able to be gone during the night because he will have duty days, be out to sea, possibly have some shift work schedules etc... The boys are now old enough to be alone during the day if needed, but we would never, ever leave them for 10 hours during the night. The boys proved their growing maturity the last 2 weeks, getting up, getting ready, and onto the bus alone. Ben had to be at work at 6am, so the kids had to set their alarm and do the morning routine alone. I will get a raise (somewhat small because I lose the 50 cent shift differential) which is nice, (I'll get an additional .40 or .60 in April after my review- which should result in .60 since in less than a year I've had 3 different positions, had a 90-day "exceeds" review, was given an associate of the month award, and now, have been hired as a dept. manager) but more importantly it's 7am-4 M-F!! Wal-Mart may be a lot of things, and one thing it is is a company at which you can "grow". Never in my wildest dreams did I think at this time last year that I would have a job, let alone a dept. manager position in a year's time!! Even when I started work, I only anticipated to go to work, get paid, and that'd be that. Funny how that happens. Now I'm seriously thinking about salaried management! The bummer is I can't do any further stuff with that until I'm 6 months in my current position. If I had stuck with nights until about March/April I would have been able to go forward with stuff- but I'm surely not going to pass up dept manager because of that.

Economy And It's Effects

Mary Jane and Kit are both for sale. Kit (split face) is a 2006 female out of my Deal and by my Toss. She is an affectionate girl who would fit into any home that is BC savvy. She is very, very fast and athletic. She is lightly started on stock. She is okay, not stellar, but not bad either. She is straight forward like her sire and will need to learn a proper outrun. Somewhere she got a fair of amount of softness, so I have not ever pushed her in fear of lowering her desire. I think she would do very nicely for someone who would not have hard core demands. What she would excel at is agility. She has the proper drive and focus for such a sport. She loves to play and interact with her handler and she is not distracted by her surroundings. She is an easy dog to own and although she does not live loose in the house, I have no doubt she would transit into that life style easily. The few times the kids have let her in, she simply hopped up on the sofa and laid in their lap- she was not at all restless. All my dogs are crated at night, so house training would be a snap. Because I don't think she is cut out for me as a herding partner, I am asking very little for her to go to a good home. If she went to someone as a spayed female I would only charge the spay price (which is around $45 at the Surry Co SNIP van). She would need to be spayed before she left my property in this case. If someone wanted her intact her price would be $500. She is ABCA registered. Info on Toss and Deal can be provided to serious inquiries. My time right now is VERY, VERY limited, so if you are simply browsing, please do not email me asking me questions that will take me an evening to answer! If you're serious, I am more than happy.

Mary Jane is also for sale. She is being worked weekly by a friend of mine and trialed at the novice USBCHA level. (my friend is new to herding) She has several middle-level AHBA titles. She is well bred, going back closely to some of Emil Luedecke's dogs, as well as Joni Swanke's Belle, and many other well known western lines. She is very natural and easy to work. She would be an outstanding farm/chore dog and perfect for someone just getting started in trialing. She is trained to roughly the PN/Ranch level, although she is not yet on any whistles. She has a nice outrun that came about very naturally. Off sheep is a fantastic dog- never met a stranger type and always happy. She would become an inside/outside type of dog very, very easily. She would be equally happy working sheep or simply being a pet- she could go either way. Because she has such nice potential, is well started, and is bred so nice her price remains at $2,000. Additionally she is OFA good and DNA normal. She has produced and raised one litter in which there were two females and one male. They were all tris in various degrees, from only brown under the tail to being heavy tri. She was bred to my Toss (black and white smooth) and there were 2 smooths and 1 rough coat. There are several videos of her on my youtube account- www.youtube.com/alinbcs These videos are from quite some time ago, but it's still a good showing of how she works. Like I mentioned in Kit's profile, please do not contact me out of curiosity- I simply do not have the online hours available for that right now! If you are quite interested and would like to talk with me, email me your phone number and I will give you a call.

Thank you!