You Know Times are Hard When:

• you come home from Wally World with the cheapest set of frying pans they had (3 for $16. Okay for eggs, but decidedly not sturdy enough for rodent killing.) and everyone in the house acts like it's Christmas. Ma even held up the tiny, omelet sized one and danced a jig in the kitchen this morning.
• you finally get to put 40 hours on your time card for the week, without using any of your hard earned vacation time and you feel compelled to write a tiny "yay!" beside the total.
• when you present your time card to your emotionless, smiley face challenged Bossman, he not only grins at seeing the tiny "yay!" he circles it then adds his initials and the date, making "yay!" official.
• you call the Big Headed German the day before payday to see if you're getting a whole paycheck, only to find that you're going to have to wait until the end of the month. I hate this twice a month bull crap. I never know which check they're going to deduct hours from.
• you feel guilty, giddy and a wee bit naughty when you spend part of the grocery money on polymer clay and supplies. Toys still make me happy. (I saved $18 by splitting my purchases between Michaels and A.C. Moore and using the %40 and %50 off coupons they had in last week's Sunday paper. I am still the coupon Ninja.)

It's going to get better soon. If you stop listening to the media and just take a second to look around.. you will see it too.

Ya'll have a good one!

Later Taters.