Play Dead! Good blog!

So we just haven't put anything at all on the blog since before closing on the house.  A couple of things have happened since then. 

First off, if there's still anyone who cares who doesn't know, we have moved back into an apartment.  My hours at work got slashed.  Ironically, my hours got cut because business picked up, not because business was lousy.  Instead of running 2 shifts for 10 hours per day, we started running 3 shifts for 8 hours per day.  When we first started up 3rd shift, we didn't even have to work any Saturdays for a while, so we weren't getting any overtime at all.  I went from working 55 hours per week on average to 40 hours per week.  On overtime, I get paid nearly $30 per hour, so after taxes and everything my pay got cut by over $1,200 per month.  This was added to our utilities costing us much more than we anticipated.  Suddenly, the fact that we were living beyond our means was glaringly obvious.

I'm actually not angry, despite my deserved reputation of having a short temper.  Seriously.  I'm not angry at my employer for cutting my hours.  I'm not angry at the bank for foreclosing on us.  I'm not angry at the credit card companies.  I'm not even angry at the utility companies charging more than we were prepared for.  In the end, none of them were the root cause that lead us to this point.  The root cause was that we were spending too much money and not saving enough.  It has taken me some time, but I have actually reached the point where I'm grateful for the lessons learned.  Would I have preferred to learn these lessons in a less-personally-painful way?  Yeah.  Anyone who says they prefer to learn in the most painful way possible is lying.  Nevertheless, we have learned a lot, and if we decide to buy another house in the future we will be better prepared for the entire experience.

On a happier note, it seems almost ludicrous to me that we haven't made one single blog post since Joseph was born.  Yes, Joseph will turn one year old in less than two (2) weeks.  We're having a party and everything.  We are getting professional pictures like we did with Julian, even using the same photographer.  So in a couple of weeks we might post a couple of pictures of Baby Joe.  Unless we end up going for another year and a half without posting anything.