I was sitting on the fence today, about getting any work done or not. If I hadn’t had a personal stake in it, I probably would have vegetated my Sunday away as usual. But I need money. And I’m not saying that in the sense that if I don’t work I don’t get paid. What I’m saying is that part of my job is writing my own payroll check. Funny that a person would get paid for paying himself, but there you go. I sign my own name on the check, too.

As previously discussed, without any money in the company checking account, writing myself a paycheck (and signing it) does little good. It could even do some harm, if I should happen to try to deposit a check that I know isn’t covered. The good news is that I had a desperate message on my answering machine when I got home last night. Some of the guys didn’t get last week’s paychecks in the mail. So I know there’s actually some money in the account, at least until the post office gets things straightened out.

I think I was expected to panic when I got that message, but instead I got annoyed. Tim arranges things so that I can’t mail each week’s payroll before Wednesday, and if there’s a mail hang-up somewhere between here and there (a distance of about a hundred miles), it’s not my fault. I get blamed anyway, and I get desperate phone calls, as if there’s anything I can do about it. I’m not driving to Sacramento to do the post office’s job for them, I can promise you that.

At least I know I’m not the only one desperate for money. I’m just the only one who can do something about it, and that’s why I spent my Sunday afternoon writing checks, one to the company account and one to myself. There will be high living here at the cabin tomorrow, at last. I can finally afford a carton of ice cream. I just have to learn how to make it last a month.