Mid month check in

Lots of things going on in my life, wrapped with crappy access to the web from work and little time for updates from home.

The first thing is that I got a small raise this week. This is exciting because I did not think I was eligible for a raise this year. However, the whopping $40 isn't going to make a huge life change like my husband's raise did. At this rate, I will be back to my teaching wage in 14 years.

Work is keeping us super busy. There have been a lot of layoffs, and as a precausionary measure, my boss has started giving us all extra work to do from other departments to make us more integrated, invaluable and necessary. I don't believe any of our positions were at risk in the first place, but I appreciate the concern. I love having work. The problem is we all feel overly swamped now. And all the new stuff seems to be WE NEED THIS DONE RIGHT NOW!!! So my normal duties seem to be shoved to the side. I am a couple months behind on some bank recs because I just haven't had time to look at them. I want to ask who was doing all this super important need it now stuff, but it seems the answer is nobody, and that is the problem.

Today they informed me that I am going to start doing payroll for some of the employees. Uh... isn't that HR? Don't get me wrong, I am actually excited to do this, it just seems really random to me. We have two HR people. People have been getting their paychecks. So why does HR suddenly need to move this off their sholders? I hadn't noticed them seeming that swamped til recently (but our number of employees is going down?) but like, I'm not. Well, as I have been here now for 9 months and still haven't had a 30 day review, I take all this as good signs, at least.

On the home front, my husband and I are offically TTC (trying to conceive, for the non-baby minded). This is our second month, and I am in the "I don't know one way or the other" part of the cycle. Being the control freak I am, I have taken a very scientific approach to it all. I am charting, temping, taking ovulation tests, and a lot of other stuff you don't want to know about. Getting pregnant is not as easy as young virgins are led to believe, it turns out. And, it isn't cheap either. I have bought: a miracle baby making lube which my husband turned out to be "allergic" to, ovulation kits, pregnancy tests, a fertility bracelet, a thermometer, a subscription to a charting website (it has a cool iphone app! There really IS an app for everything!), all kinds of vitamins and medications, I have also heard geritol or robitussin work, but haven't tried those yet. Yeah....

I also have 16 million spread sheets going based on when or if we get pregnant. I am really praying we can do this on our own. And trying not to worry about that part too much yet. I am giving it til January. So I am rethinking our payoff schedule. As we are paying off the little student loan in a month, I have to know now which of the two big loans we are going to attack first. Initially, it was going to be the student loan, because that was smaller. But the payoff to my dad is bigger, so that one is smaller now. Plus, I really wanted to have him paid off. However, if we do get pregnant, our debt repayment is going to grind to a halt. We are going to have to save up til the baby comes, and after it is here, most of that money will pay for daycare and baby expenses. (This is why I really wanted to be debt free first). I feel like I want to try to pay off the student loan in this case, because if we get in a bind or have a baby, my dad is going to be a lot more understanding and forgiving than Direct Loans.