You don’t know how thankful I am that the weather cooled off a bit today. We’re still in the upper 80s, but that’s much better than the upper 90s with what has felt like 100% humidity we started the week with. I’ve been so afraid to take Ellie outside for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time because it’s so hot. The pool and sprinkler have definitely been a staple!

We went outside for a few minutes this morning, and it felt great out there with a nice cool breeze blowing. We walked down to see the horses, and we spent a few minutes feeding them carrots before we came back inside for nap time. Hopefully she’ll take a nice long nap, and we can go back outside and play in the pool this afternoon before the storms move in tonight.

While she naps I’m going to get some stuff done around here. I got caught up on all my work yesterday, but I got a couple computers to fix in this morning. I’m going get those fixed, do some research on a problem my Dad is having with his router that I can’t seem to fix (after spending hours on the phone with tech support & their fixes not working either), and hopefully Ellie will sleep long enough to allow me to make some phone calls, too.

I need to call Verizon today…again. I’ve been calling them every few days for a couple weeks now, and my problem hasn’t been fixed. I pay them way too much to be having a major issue with my phone. I’ve been having an issue with us not being able to make calls between phones on the same plan. I can make and receive calls to anyone else, but we have trouble calling each other. It’s only the first two phones on our plan that have been active for years, too. The other three phones on my plan are my in-law’s phones, and we have no problems calling them, but if I try to call Ben or he tries to call me we have to repeat the call 3 or 4 times before it will even ring once! I don’t know what’s up with it, but Verizon needs to fix it! I wish it were as simple as buying a cell booster antenna, but I don’t think signal has anything to do with it. We can both have full bars and not be able to make calls to each other.

I called Charter yesterday to see if we could lower our bill. I call every 2 or 3 months because that’s when they normally release new promotions. Honestly I’d drop the cable TV all together if I could, but it doesn’t benefit us financially. I’ve had plenty of people ask me why we still have cable tv while we’re struggling financially, but the answer is simple. I have to have internet to work and make a majority of the income that’s keeping us going right now. It’s more expensive to have just the cable internet than it is to have cable and tv. Without a tv package we wouldn’t qualify for a lot of the promotions I’m able to get, and the promotions allow us to have both services for less than or equal to what we’d be paying for just the internet. We don’t have any other options except for dial-up, and I don’t have the time to sit around waiting forever to things to load. I have limited time to work as it is, so keeping the cable is the best option for us. Yeah it takes remembering when a promo ends and making sure we call to find a new promo before it does, but it’s well worth it in my opinion. Yesterday I was able to drop $40 off our bill without changing much at all. I only dropped one thing, and it was a $5 package for channels we don’t really watch anymore. I could have gotten an even lower price if I had agreed to lock into a 2 year plan, but I refuse to do that right now. Another thing I will be doing is purchasing my own modem. Our promo is about to run out for the free modem lease. Currently that is a $5 credit each month, but when our promo runs out the monthly leasing fee is going up to $7/month. I can buy a us modem that will support speeds much higher than I currently have (and be useful for more than a few months) for $29.99 thus saving us money in the long run. That’s something else I need to take care of today!

Anywho I don’t hear babbling coming from the baby monitor anymore, so it’s safe to say Ellie has finally fallen asleep. I need to get my butt in gear and get to work before she decides to cut her nap short!