Summer

I was really planning on taking pictures of my new place and posting them on here.  Unfortunately my camera's internal memory is full (whatever that means) and since I'm spending $150 to fix my car so that I don't lose control of it on the highway, picture taking will have to wait for a while. 

Instead I thought I'd tell you a little bit about what my summer has been like.  In case you didn't know, I spent the month of June living in a very run-down house in Haverstraw.  Ray worked like crazy - painting, rebuilding a window frame (with the help of our friend Michael), and fixing a ceiling fan.  I cleaned the bathrooms (they were disgusting) and helped remove paint off one of the bedroom floors.  It seems the last tenants didn't understand the purpose of using a drop cloth.  All of this was done to help the woman who owned the house either sell or rent the house again, as well as keeping my rent down to something I could afford to pay.  Even though the house was in bad shape, I actually really enjoyed my time there.  The house was built next to a mountain, so it was quite common for deer to come right up the driveway.  The neighbors were friendly and the neighborhood was conviently located by a Shoprite and CVS.  Plus, once I started seeing the house transform, I began to see its potential and I was rather sad when I had to move again.
The move to New City was hard on many levels.  The apartment was much smaller than I remembered and the hallway was so tight that I couldn't bring my couch.  There were ants in my living room, a screen missing in the bathroom, lightbulbs that needed to be replaced as well as fixtures that needed to be repaired, and another bathroom that wasn't cleaned.  We started moving at 2pm (I had been up since 8:30am) and I didn't get home for the night until midnight.  I was an emotional wreck.   It was also July 4th weekend, which meant that instead of working on my apartment, Ray and I decided to go to a BBQ/fireworks.  Not that the relaxation wasn't much needed, but I have to admit that I was less than enthusiastic to be relaxing when my apartment (and by extension my life) was in such chaos. 
Thankfully most of my boxes have now been put away and my apartment is slowly getting more organized.  It's been tough because this summer I've been working almost 40 hrs a week.  It's been a blessing financially, but it does make it harder to get things done.  Usually I'm up by 7:15am to be at Huntington Learning Center by 9am.  I generally tutor for 4 hours.  My "lunch" consists of running around trying to get whatever errands done that I can do.  By 2:50 I'm on my way to pick up the boys from camp.  Their bus comes in @3:30 and both kids are hot, hungry, and tired.  As soon as we get to their house we take the dog out for a little while, have some snack, and wait for their mom to come home.  Most nights I leave their house by 6:30pm.  Then I meet up with Ray for whatever we're doing that evening.