Here she is, already for beads:


"Christmas Flourishes" designed by Nora Corbett, Copyright marble Designs

I started on the beading for her over the weekend. I put her down in frustration. The gold beads on her are just too big. I don't know if it's the shrinkage on the 32 ct hand dyed or the beads themselves but they are HUGE and require a bit of fiddling and leaving some out to make them lay right. I suspect it's little of both...The greenish and red beads don't seem as large. I'm wishing now that I had bit the bullet earlier in the year and just replaced them all with Delica's. It would have been an $11 investment but I decided to go with what I had on hand. I'm too far along in the process to change now so the HUGE gold beads it will be. I'm making good time though and I think I will make my goal of Christmas(though I secretly hope to be done by Dec. 1).

Today is Billy's first day officially as pre-press manager. What happens? He has to work overtime of course. He had to wait for a rush file. When asked how long he was expected to wait for the file to come in, he was told, until it got there. In this case that meant it didn't arrive until nearly 7pm along with about 2 hours of work after that, which means he gave them 4 hours of time....No wait, 5 hours of time since he works a 9 hour day. They need him there by 8am to set the press schedule. Since neither Mary nor Joe will work until 5pm Billy has to so he has a 9 hour day. He has been taking a lunch and leaving the building but they are in kind of an out of the way place without a lot of places to go.

Billy was a bit annoyed since he was being ordered about by the one owner in charge of the sales department. Billy is going to make sure the owner and head of his department realizes that salary does not mean "free" work, whenever they want.

He will miss putting the boys to bed tonight and G is bummed. He has a bunch of stuff he did at school today that he wants to show dad. It will have to wait until morning. I'm just trying to be thankful he has a job and take the bumps along the way. It will all iron out while everyone gets used to Billy's new position.

On the bright side they have decided to put in a new bonus plan. I don't understand it all since it's technical based on supplies sold but it's another chance to for Billy to earn some money quarterly. Initially it wasn't going into effect until July but they are going to roll it out at the first of the year. Billy says he has more of an opportunity to make the money instead of the other plan which depends so much on the whim of the other two employee's. This is more in his control. I hope he's right. I'm already worried about money and this might relieve some of it. I feel like I owe everyone in the world and I'm worried about Christmas. Are we going to be able to do for the kids, at all? Me, I've given up the idea of getting anything or getting anything for Billy but I'm worried about doing something for the boys. G got a lot at his birthday so he wants for very little but Donovan has a lot of *big* wants. Hopefully we can eek out something for them. I just have to have faith.

This weekend was only so-so. Saturday I felt yucky so I didn't do much. Billy had to go to the lodge for a degree so he was gone from 4pm until a little after Midnight. Since he was also gone Friday night I felt really lonely and the house was really empty. I'm really sick of him being gone so much but I do understand how much fun he has at the lodge(and at hockey). Me and the boys could have gone for the dinner portion of the evening but we couldn't really afford to buy dinner for all 4 of us. We could of asked for help with that or they probably would of waived the charge completely but I didn't want to do that. Billy is trying to keep our financial woes to ourselves so he just told them I didn't want to drag the kids with us and couldn't find a sitter.

Sunday was grocery shopping...UGH! I hate that chore....Especially since money is tight. I worry over every cent. It's also hard because I have this internal debate between not wanting to buy anything and wanting to buy everything so we have food in the house. I'm glad Billy is with me and can help me balance the two thoughts.

After that we went ice skating with the boys. I found my old skates, they still fit and off we went to the rink. It was only $4 for the 4 of us to skate for 2 hours. I didn't fall once, of course I only went around the rink about a dozen times, and not very fast at that. The boys are really good though. Donovan never fell, G only a couple of times.

I was really surprised at how good Billy was. I know he's been practicing at the Hockey clinic but he looked really good at it. Most importantly he was having a blast with the boys. The exercise he says has been good for him too. There won't be a hockey clinic this week because of the holiday so he hopes we can go to the open skate both days. I'm not sure if I'm up to two days worth of skating but I'll go along and watch.