Harry Potter

It is done, only took me a total of approximately 12 - 12 1/2 hours. But it was good enough that I got grumpy at Bryan from interrupting me from time to time. :) He is reading the last 50 pages, right now. :) I'm excited to talk about it. However, my hand has unfortunately lost feeling in my thumb, index finger and middle finger from holding the book for so long....That good. :)

Monday monday

Well here it's Monday again. *whew*

I'm excited for this week just because I will start working again this week. I start my new job on Wednesday, at that point we'll be able to get a better idea of what hours I work. Nonetheless, I'm excited not to be at home all day long to the point that I get cabin feverish. 

Today however, was just interesting. :) For me anyway, probably boring for you guys


Bryan and I went to our spinning class today and it truly HONESTLY kicked our trash today. We came home and slept for about 3ish hours. We were just THAT tired. I start feeling sick during it, and was still feeling sick after. When I woke up from the nap, I had a HUGE headache (I would say migraine, but it my WHOLE head, not just one side like migraines normally are). It hurt so bad that I could feel every heart beat. I tried sleeping again, but that didn't work. Then my ears started ringing so I took both hearing aids out to see if it would help. I already have an open sore in one ear that's been there for QUITE some time, so I try to leave my hearing aid out for that ear anyway. So I really was completely deaf all day. 

I started cooking green beans at 3:30 in order to prep for dinner. I started dinner at 4:00, I looked at the bottom of the recipe, and realized that it will take an HOUR LONGER than I had planned on. This is important because Bryan only has 30-40 minutes in between work and night class tonight that he is at home, and that's when we eat dinner. So dinner was no longer going to be ready on time. I was already using all of the pots and pans that we have, but I somehow managed to switch them into bowls and pots and pans, back and forth to be able to make spaghetti as well (with meat and heating up the sauce in a pan). So that was...hectic. I realized as I was cooking that if something was smoking from one of the burners, the smoke alarm could very well be going off. I really need to get a flashing light smoke alarm, since I don't know if I would be able to hear the smoke alarm without my hearing aids. It is loud, but...loud enough? Right as I was finishing up the spaghetti, Bryan came home, but I didn't hear him. Scared the crap out of me when I saw a body right next to me as I was pouring the meat sauce onto the pasta. I thought I was going to drop the hot pan. 

We eat dinner, he leaves, I do the dishes once more today just because I used so many bowls and pans, it was a HUGE pile. Then I go to take some empty milk jugs and soda bottles out to the garbage. As I'm walking back in, (note our apartment has a TON of diversity, hardly ANY white people, this means a lot of people who don't speak English that well). This African guy is standing there with two HUGE duffel bags that are full, and a jug of Tide. He gets my attention, and starts talking to me, but it's not English, he's actually telling me he doesn't speak English. But he wants to know something. Me, not wearing my hearing aids, and not able to understand him because A - he doesn't speak English and B - his accent makes his lip shapes entirely different than what a English speaker would make for different vowels and such. He's saying one word over and over and I just can't get it. Feeling horrible because he probably thinks that his English sucks and there's no way I can understand him, I say I'm sorry, I can't hear, and I point to my ear. He says ok, and nods, and obviously understands. I walk two steps, then it hits me. WASH! I turn around and say "wash?" he said YEAH! So I led him tot he wash room, but it just makes me feel so dumb when I can't understand people, and just what a day to not wearing my hearing aids...

I'm now just sitting and taking a break while I'm waiting for the ORIGINAL dinner to finish cooking (we'll eat it for dinner tomorrow, so that means no dishes or cooking for me tomorrow, YAY!). I'm reading Harry Potter 5 (order of the phoenix) to try and catch up before the book comes out at midnight friday night/saturday morning. I'm excited, but I've got a lot to read if I want to finish book 5 and 6 before reading 7. 

Off to reading I go.....

Jobs

So I have been granted a work study grant for working during the school year. I've applied to a few jobs since then. I had my first interview today, and it was the one I wanted the most. After about ten minutes, I was hired on! YAY! Granted, it's 20 hours a week and data entry, but that's exactly why I wanted it, so I can focus all my energy on school. The hours are quite flexible she said, and I may be able to start this coming July. So that's nice and really good to know. :) 

I've had very few interviews in my life since I've worked mostly family based business or was trained into the job, so I was quite nervous. Now I just have to do the paper work with them next week and I'll know from there when I can start, hours, and such. I'm excited. :) I know it's not a major career job, but I couldn't handle teaching during grad school, just too much energy and creativity for me. :) 

YAY!

Saturday

So we had a nice date last night. Bryan finally made decisions as to what he's going to do and it's put him in a really good mood. So we went out to Indian last night (yum), then drove by the pharmacy tech school he's looking into to see what it looked like. Afterwards we came home and watched Somewhere in Time, cheesy but cute. :) Christopher Reeves was a hottie in that movie. Afterwards we went to a Belgian Waffle place for dessert. We came home and went to bed. It was fun, and a nice time to finally have together time. It's not the same as sitting int he same room while one is reading and the other is watching tv or doing computer stuff. It's just not the same, so it was nice to go out. 

Today we slept in (11ish), got up and watched a little tv. Then Bryan went to study while I made bacon and crepes with nutella and powdered sugar. It was yummy. I then finally convinced Bryan to go swimming with me in the pool, we were out there for a couple of hours. It was fun. Now we're in, I'm watching Teen Witch while he studies (I'm also working on a cover letter). 

I applied for a job last week through a work study grant. It was a simple online application (tutoring elementary kids in reading and math). Literally within 5 minutes I got an e-mail back saying that the lady would like to interview me after looking at what my experience was. She just got out of surgery, so she'll e-mail me again sometime next week to set up an interview. I haven't applied to other jobs yet as I'm working on a cover letter. I've never made one before, so we'll see how that goes. One is for data entry with research on autism, which I would definitely be fascinated with. If I don't get either one or something doesn't work out with either one, then I'll also be applying for a library book repair job. The last two are on campus, and the tutoring one is at one of the many partnership schools that is no further than 15 minutes away from campus. So it's all looking good. Just nervous about writing a cover letter, I've never had to before. 

Anyway, was having a great weekend and wanted to talk about it. I'm happy and enjoying life. :)

Health

So I have some pretty bad hypothyroid going on that's been affecting pretty much every aspect of my life. It's pretty bad. The doctor wants to make sure that that is all that's wrong, so I'm on medication for 6 weeks then I go back and do more blood testing (all the same ones as before) just to make sure we're going in the right direction. I much prefer this over celiac or ulcers. :) 

In other random news. My mother just gave me a whole bunch of files. When I was in school, k-12, I had special education for awhile and IEPs since I had a hearing loss and had a lag in language because of my hearing loss. School districts, by law (at least here), are required to keep them for 8 years after the student has left, then after those 8 years they either give the files to the family or burn them. My mom works in the school district so they gave everything to her, and she gave it to me to see if I wanted to keep them. I don't, but it was fun to go through it and see all the changes that were made and such. Brought back a lot of memories and things that I had completely forgotten about. I have test results from various language and listening tests from Kindergarten all the way to 8th grade. I stopped receiving special eduation services after 8th grade since I had improve significantly from 6th grade after having transliterators in the classroom (similar to interpreters). 

It was just incredibly weird to go back and look through all that stuff and see the different mistakes I made. One common mistake that I made in Kindergarten...I still make now. :) I have a very difficult time distinguishing between s and z sounds and sh and zh sounds and thus have difficulty producing them correctly. For example, resist, I said both s's with an s sound instead of the first s being pronounced as a z and the second s being pronounced as an s. I even have tests result sform when I was a pre-schooler when I was only 2 years old. A note that was put down was that I had a hard time focusing. That made me laugh (I'm FREAKING TWO!!!). 

Just makes me think about what I'm about to venture into with my masters and when I'm teaching deaf/hard-of-hearing kids. 

Anyway...told you it was random.

Long overdue update

This is probably going to be more like alist than anything. :) 

I finished teaching my second grade class on May 31st. It's weird to know that I'm never going to see those kids again since I won't be back teaching next year :( It was hard, but expected. Not seeing them again is what hit me the hardest. I had a bunch of kids ask me why I was moving and asked me to stay and teach. One even estimated how long I would be in grad school (3 years) and asked if I would be back to teach while she was in 5th grade so she could see me again. It's nice to know they liked me after all. :) I loved their little good bye notes. Sigh, I'm realy going to miss them. I still have pictures of the masks they made forever ago, just haven't gotten around to posting them. I want to post our class picture, but am too afraid to do so due to privacy, security, etc.

Big old ramble behind the cut, probably boring for all of you :) 



What have I been doing since then? well, heh, surprisingly quite a bit. I had a workshop to teach for four days last week. That was fun, and well worth it. :) My parents are remodeling a bedroom in their house. IN that bedroom was my hope chest. So they had to box everything up and send the hope chest here. It was weird going through all my stuff again and deciding what to keep and what to throw away. I threw away about two kitchen garbage bags full of junk. I still have a lot of junk there. Going through it all reminded of how much I did when I was in junior high and high school. I really am quite the overachiever. :) Tons of certificates and trophies everywhere. I didn't realize I had that many. I just received another plaque, so I now have 4 plaques. I'll be receiveing another one soon with my diploma on it (thanks to mom and dad, it's my graduation present to have it preserved). 

My parents just sent me my teacher's certificiate. I'm a level 1 certified teacher by the state of Utah for the next three years. Meanwhile Ineed to take my second praxis test to get my second level teaching certificiate. This will also be while I'm in grad school (for the next three years). After grad school I'll also have a special education license as well as an endorsement for teaching hearing impaired children. I still have a ways to go before I acheieve my dream after that though. Though Washington state may be the place that I acheive this dream. :) (we'll see how hubby does with school and where we end up). 

I know I'm good to go on teaching should I decide to teach now. My principal at the school I worked at for the last while, kept asking what I was doing after this year of teaching. He wanted to see if I would be able to stay there if I didn't get into grad school, but lo and behold, I got accepted to grad school. I also got a phone call to my parent's house from another school district asking if I would teach there. They were sent my reusme and letters of recommendations and evaluations and wanted me. It's nice to know that I'll actually be ok no matter wha thappens. I could have a career now, but it's not what I want, and it's not fully what I'm meant to do. I need more. In time though, in time. 

It's been nice to have a break though. I've never really taken the time to take off time. And this weekend alone and this week will be enough to make me feel refrshed and ready to go again. I've been laying out by the pool, reading Shell Seekers, playing video games (harry potter and pinball mostly), cleaning, cooking, jogging, and vegging out by the tv. I still have more of everything that I just listed to do, especially the jogging part. Just found out that I'm actually 60 lbs over my goal weight, wow, and just last year, I was only 30 lbs over it, eek. 

Gonna have to take care of it now before I really let go. This is especially frightening since I'm going to the doctor on Wednesday, and I know she'll tell me part of my health problems lately are due to being overweight. However, I think there's more to it. It at least as to be a more severe lactose intolerant condition. Though, it could possibly be celiac. Two of my cousins (my mom's side) have been diagnosed with celiac in the past couple of months. They are from two separate families, but still blood related to each other and me. I also have a cousin who has type 1 diabetes which is closely related to celiac, and is also from another family, but still related to me through my mother as well. So we're pretty concerned that might be what is affecting me and everything I eat. (I'm gassy and have nasty indigestion EVERY day, no matter what, this wasn't happening two years ago at all). So, we'll keep our fingers crossed, but it seems to be that no matter what, I'll hav eto change to a special diet, which I am not looking forward to just because I leave cheese and carbohydrates so much. I love cheese more than chocolate, yeah, I'm that insane. 

I've been keeping busy with stuff from being on a national board and with research and homework to collecting information for my scholarship for grad school. I have a federal grant that will pay tuition and books for the whole time I'm in grad school, but I'm also working on another scholarship to prove that I have got to have this masters and endorsement in order to do what I want to do. THis way, the scholarship will pay for at least a good portion of tuition and books and we can use the grant to help with living expenses and make it so that both of us won't have to work as much and put more focus on school. It's a lot of work though, I stared this in March/April, and I'm still working on it (yes I have been actively working on it). With all this work, I REALLY pray that I get the scholarship or else all this grief for nothing. 

Other than that, (gee that's all, that whole list...gosh I'm not doing anything with my life at all!!!) life has been ni ce and easy. I hope to get some harp and piano practicing in this summer as well as some cross stitching and shuttling (not sure what it's actually called, but you use a shuttle to make doilies or fancy edges for blankets or watever using a single thread and making it all pretty). I miss doing that stuff (yes I am domesticated, believe it or not). 

Hope everyone else is doing well, and yes I do read your posts, just been busy for the past 9 months :) 

...complaining again

I really hate being frustrated lately. I've been overly stressed to the point that when I'm in bed at night, I get either really emotional or really delirious with giggling. My class has been reviewing the past week or two to prepare for the state testing this week. We did the first session in both language arts and math yesterday. I was so mad and frustrated with the test because of how things are worded. It isn't developmentally appropriate and my kids are missing it just because of how the sentence or written or the order of choice of the answer choices. I'm not allowed to read the answer choices out loud, but I can read each question out loud, and I do. I just can't read the answer choices, which makes the test harder for just a couple of my kids. Just frustrates me that I can read the question, not the answer choices (I don't give them the answer). I was also frustrated because even my highest kids were tricked or wouldn't read all of the answer choices. SO SO hard not to say "hey so so, double check your answer make sure it's right." I'm not telling them the answer that way, but I am hinting that their answer is wrong, which is obviously against the testing ethics (and I totally agree with, just frustrating too). I can't even say "make sure you read the answer choices CAREFULLY and that you read EACH ONE." All I can say is what's written in the book. :( Just so frustrating. 

The end of the school year is coming up. I'm done teaching 3 weeks from Wednesday, and that last Wednesday is only a half day. We also have a Monday off for memorial day, so taht means I only have 16 more teaching days. It's crazy, and I can't beleive that's all taht is left. At the same time, I cannot wait and say heaven forbid! :) Mostly because of the stress from the testing and reviewing lately alongside with the commute (45 minutes each way). I also have tons of papers to catch up on to correct. That's my biggest problem right there, it's a huge mountain of papers to correct. Bleh. 

I start ballroom dancing with Bryan a week from Thursday. I'm very excited for that. I've taken ballroom dancing before, but never with Bryan, and it'll be nice to learn the same techniques together and learn how to work with each other's styles. 

One of my students has been gone since April 12th and just returned today. he had a chance to visit where his family is from as well as another country. He brought me back a nipa hut figurine from the Phillipines. It's really cute. I missed him a lot, even if he is one of my talkers. :) I just hope his family really did do the schoolwork while he was gone so that he could prepare for the state testing. (he was gone for 22 days!!). I'm pretty sure they did based on past experiences and conversations with the parents. Nothing like having parents who realize the value of their child's educaiton and support him as well. 

Anyway, this has gone on long enough :) hope everyone is well!