Okay, I'm in a quandry. Here's the deal:

I've been tutoring my mom's neighbor for almost a month now. He took his test today, and passed. Now he is going to the fourth grade. We had to take all of the work he's done up to this point to his teacher, and she said that she noticed marked improvement in his work, especially his writing (which I pounded into his head). However, he did not pass with flying colors. Overall, he really wasn't on grade level, and was actually closer to second grade level on most of it. Since he had made so much improvement in such a short time, though, they said he deserves a try. If he fails the fourth grade, though, he fails the fourth grade, no contract and second chance this time. Therefore, if he wants to pass the fourth grade, which WILL be hard for him, he was sternly warned that he will have to work equally as hard as he did this summer (with me) during the school year so he can keep progressing and hopefully do much better this year. Thus begins my problem.

As you may know already, I've started to work at Pizza Hut with Julia. It's fun, for the most part. It has its positives, like discounted and sometimes free pizzas, working with Julia, and only having to work four days a week. It also has some negatives. For instance, it's going to kill our cars, and it will get costly in gas. My schedule will probably change around here and there, so I'll never know exactly what days I'll be working each week. Even when I do work, I don't know when I'll be cut, and consequently, I'll never really know how much money I'll be making and if it's enough, also since I'll be working for tips. As well, there's the whole safety issue, which is why Trey and my mom didn't want me to do it to begin with. This is stuff I already thought about before I started, but at the time I just really needed a way to make money while I'm prego, and it's not like too many places want to hire someone six months pregnant, and there aren't that many jobs I can really do right now.

Then there's my other job offer. It's to keep tutoring my mom's neighbor kid, and a family friend's kid, and watch them after school everyday for about 4-5 hours. The pluses are that I would know how much money I would be making each week, and basically what hours it would be. I could work it out to where I watch them and keep my kids around, so I wouldn't necessarily have to get my mom to watch them. These kids would be a little easier to watch b/c they are older, so it wouldn't kill me as much as it did when I was watching kids in Columbia. Plus, it's later in the day, so I wouldn't have to wake up at the crack of dawn, either. Then, of course, there are the negatives. The mom is, ummm, how you say...pushy, and pretty demanding, and, like my mom said, could very easily turn this into something more w/o even a thought. I don't know the other kid, and he could be Satan. It would be five days a week I was committed to, and that's a lot. Plus, there would likely be teacher workdays, which I could probably handle alright, and school breaks, which would suck.

So I don't know what to do. Now, of course, the latter job would all depend on whether or not they agreed to my price and specifics. I have decided that if I go along, they would have to have a back-up plan for when one of my kids is sick, or when I want to go out of town, and when I have the baby. They would have to pay me more for school breaks if I watched the kids all day. Stuff like that, and I'm sure there's more I should say. I just know that as annoying as these people are to me, it really excited me to see that he had made progress in such a short time working with me. I won't deny that the kid is hell to work with, but the thought of being able to teach him more kinda excites me. It's the whole reason I went into teaching, special ed. even!

I'm so torn. What do you think? I just don't know what to do. Trey seems to think I should, but shouldn't. My mom and Bo seem to think I shouldn't. I just don't know.