Lately it’s been work, work, work. 16-hour days aren’t natural, but unfortunately happen during release periods at most software development houses. During these times in previous years, the girls usually go with their mom more, allowing me to fulfill my bread-winning duties and show more face time at work, but this year has been quite a bit different.

The ex-wife had a baby (not mine) a few weeks ago and the ex-in-laws all came down. So I let the girls stay with her longer over the past few weeks to allow them to see her family more, since they don’t get to so much. Now they’re all gone, and she’s (ex-wife) is having to cope with the new baby and the two girls by herself, added to the fact that I haven’t seen my girls much over the last couple weeks, makes me want to take them now. But can’t do that when work expects me to put in some hours supporting the pending release. Even when I have had them over the last couple weeks, I’m expected to put in extra hours from the house. I at least get to see them, but don’t get to do much with them.

But it should all be over this weekend, and I’m taking them, and we should be able to do something together.

The hectic work schedule has also been the cause of a “budget blowout” for me.  I’m at about 200% over-budget for the pay-period, and I’m not happy about it.  Some causes:

  • The hellacious work schedule has caused me to forego cooking, and visit McDonalds and Subway more.  I didn’t even get to try the spaghetti sauce I was going to try this week.
  • Girls needed clothes.  I knew these things would crush my budget, causing my snowball to eat up the expenses, just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.
  • The damn speeding ticket.

I needed to just stop, backup, and regroup over the budget, but everything else seemed to take priority.  Fortunately, this Friday work should have slowed, and it’s a new pay period.  I’m still showing progress over last month as far as the debt reduction, but I am a little bit behind the curve of where I wanted to be.

Anyone else get caught by April Fool’s? I did.  First, walking into work, I overhear boss talking about how several of our key developers have quit and moved to the competition.  Since I obviously wasn’t one of them, it means I was staying, and if they “key” people were leaving, that means my job was at serious risk.  All this went through my head in the matter of about a minute, and then I realized the day.  Not too bad on that one.

As the day progressed, I forgot completely about it being April 1st.  We had a meeting with the president that didn’t go well, and the project manager had met with us to tell us our schedule was about to get more hectic for the rest of the week.  All this was on my mind… then the ex-gf starts txt’ing me.

She informs me that she took the “P” test, and tested positive…

Schreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech!  What the…..!?

My world ended!  It’s not that I’m against kids, I’m just against the thought of me having more kids.  I’ve done the whole infancy stage, three times (my two, ex-gf’s one) and I’m not ashamed to admit I don’t like it.   Besides, it’s not in the budget for another kid.

Anyway, I was visibly shaken.  When she dropped that bomb on me, everyone was over by my cube eating pizza.  My co-workers were asking me if I was alright, saying I was red and visibly shaking.  I just kept saying I was cold.  I didn’t want to say anything.

Then after her and I txt a little more (because I wasn’t going to discuss this at work), I’m sweating bullets, she starts calling me.  I ignore the calls because, if you haven’t heard already, I wasn’t going to discuss this at work.  But finally, after about 8 attempts on her part, I take the call…

 Me: uh Hello?

ex-gf: APRIL FOOLS!

I couldn’t do anything but break out in hysterical laughter.

You know the kind… HAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHA… hahahahha… hahah.. hah… ha… eh… hmm….

In 30 years, I cannot ever remember being “got” by someone more than the silly little “look over there, ha! April fools!” type jokes.  This was my first, and man, was it a ride.

Anyways, I was able to break for a few minutes to hammer these thoughts out, but now it’s back to work.

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