Fuhgeddaboudit: My Brief Foray Into The World Of Newspaper Delivery

In an effort to boost our income until our business takes off, I began cruising the employment ads in the paper…much to my husband’s dismay. He’s of the “old school” thought that my job is at home with the kids and his job is to bring home the bacon.

And I am SO completely grateful that he supports me in that.

But I believe so much in the business and I know it’s just a matter of time before it can supports us, so I thought I could take one for the team and try and bring in a little extra income to keep us afloat until the business could take over.

So I came across the perfect job. It wouldn’t take away from being at home with the kids or our various commitments in the evenings and would rake in about $1300 dollars a month.

It was a job delivering newspapers on a rural route in the wee hours of the morning.

I figured if I went to bed early I could get a few hours of sleep in before my route and then a few hours after. It sounded so simple for what they told me was only three hours of work, seven days a week, and the pay was pretty darn good.

So a few days ago I called about the job, and they worked out someone to train me on the route.

After much convincing, begging and pleading with my husband, he gave in and decided to let me give it a shot.

And last night I set my alarm to ring at 12:30AM and went to bed by 9, hoping to catch a few hours of sleep.

But I seem to have forgotten that I have lots of variables in my life. Oh, say, like a four year old that just happened to halve 12 bazillion nightmares last night, all between the hours of 10pm and midnight. So when my alarm rang in the wee hours of the morning, I had amassed a whole 30 minutes of sleep.

But I was riding on that $1300 high.

I tiptoed through the house, brushing my teeth, pulling my ratted hair back in a ponytail, and slipping on some sweats. I slipped out the back door with my bottle of water and headed down to my “job”, glad to be helping out and dreaming of the check I would write to get the mortgage current.

But I can tell you this…driving around in the rain for nearly SIX hours, (instead of three) with my window open…in the dark… in the middle of nowhere…with a stranger…needing to pee REALLY bad…and completely lost wasn’t quite what I expected.

And by 6:30 this morning when we dropped that last paper in the last mailbox and I had returned my trainer to her car, all I could coherently manage to say to myself all the way home was….

Fuhgeddaboudit!