My baby is home!

It was a long week, well atleast the second half. Wyatt left on Wednesday afternoon to go on a 4 day fishing trip with 5 or 6 guys from work. Needless to say, I missed him a lot!!! Mom came over Wednesday evening because we had a funeral to go to on Thursday morning, so atleast she kept me company for part of it. I've gotten used to coming home and having someone here, other than the dogs, so it was really weird to come home to a dark house (and a little scary!). It definitly made me appreciate the companionship I have in Wyatt. Even though we aren't always talking or doing something together, just knowing he is here or in the other room is a great comfort. I gave him a big hug and kiss when he got home and told him I didn't think he was allowed to go on another trip like that.... he just laughed. I'm sure I'll let him go again if another trip comes up... if he's good!

On a different note.... I worked A LOT last week! For those of you that don't know how my job works, I'll explain it. I am a flight instructor at Spartan. We aren't on salary, instead we get paid hourly, and only for those hours we are in the airplane. For example, each flight we schedule is a 2 hour block of time. Within that 2 hours, we have to brief the student on what we are going to do that day, then go fly, and then debrief when we get back to let the student know what was good and what needs work. We are paid off the hobbs meter in the airplane, which is only ticking when the engine is running. So, what usually happens is you only get paid for about half, sometimes a little more, of the time you actually work. I usually try for 25 paid hours a week, which usually requires 40+ hours of work. The ratio of what you get paid for to what you work can be helped by having students that go out on solo flights while you are flying with another student. Unfortunatly I only have 1 student who is at that stage in the curriculum. Another thing that helps is when you do a ground lesson because you get paid for the whole hour, but there are only so many of those in the curriculum. So, when the weather is bad, like today, I don't get paid unless I do something like a ground lesson. Also, when the weather is beautiful, you become a workaholic because you've gotta work while you can. It makes it hard not having a steady paycheck, so I've gotta save any extra I make for literally "rainy days". With all of that being said, I get paid for 37 hours last week!!!! Yippee!! That's probably one of the best weeks I've had since I came back from the airlines. Of course, it did require me to work 6 days and many of them over 10 hours, but I am thankful that I was able to get it in. Well, hope everyone has a wonderful week and hopefully these thunderstorms will clear out and I'll be able to have another good week!