Stevie Pic #5! And Updates Galore!
Posting to stay in the web site game today. Trying to get hits. It’s a total head thing. Posting because Stevie takes good pictures. Posting to use up all the ideas that are rattling around in my head and driving me crazy. While, in between, doing laundry. That damn laundry.
I have actually had 2 days off. This is my third. Third. (!) Why am I not all posted and getting tons of new followers? Why do I have a giant pile of crappy clothes and never worn shoes on my bedroom floor that are supposed to be purged? Why have I not seen my new little nephew in person?? Why is the laundry NOT done yet???
I have been doing things. Things like, helping my kids with this last week of real school. The boy’s last final is today. He is stressing big time too, trying to finish without any D’s. It’s been a tough and lazy year for this kid. His XBox is riding on this last grade. All he needs is a C. Seriously. And the girl has Algebra and her state Constitution to worry about. Math is killing her, but I told her to focus on the Constitution and forget the rest because at this point 8th grade is all about getting out and moving into high school. She needs to pass the Constitution, everything else, realistically, does not matter. No one EVER asks for your 8th grade transcripts. It’s all about the high school now. Fresh start. I may not be the best mom on the planet today, encouraging my kids to do mediocre, but at this point, on this Friday, with nothing left to lose or gain, passing is going to have to be good enough.
On a more “me” note, I exercised. Yes. I said, and typed, ex-er-cise. I did a workout AND ran a 5K. Yes. Ran. (Jogged. Shuffled. Walked a little. And maybe missed about 1/2 mile of the course…for a total of about a 3.9K) Two and a half miles at least. The course was kind of confusing and didn’t have clear markers at every point, but that’s not too bad. It wasn’t an official timed race, mostly fun. I finished in approx 40 minutes. Not a record breaker, but not last! And it was exercise. Outside, with other people as witness. My daughter helped organize a charity/community run for her school and I took the day off to participate. It was actually quite fun and I feel extremely proud and impressed by my daughter and her school and the whole event in general. There was about 60-70 runners and 100’s of spectators. That may not sound like a lot, but it is pretty damn good for Jr. High. My girl came up with the name and the theme and even designed the facebook page to promote it. Of course it helps that her aunt is a professional event planner and fixed all the details, but hey she’s only 14. Today the little village, tomorrow the big city! Check out the site here, if you like, just to get a feel for the kind of thing it was, and maybe next event you can come too! Here is my number bib as proof:
And holy poo-poo, my legs are killing me! The tops of my thighs seem to have taken the brunt of the exercise fall-out, and they are not allowing me to walk properly, or sit and stand with any kind of grace or fluid motion. I have to push myself up and lower myself down using my arms as brace so I just don’t fall over. So stupid.
The other thing I have been trying, “trying” being the key word in this sentence, is a new exercise craze you may have heard of called: Hip Hop Abs. More like Hip Hop Flabs for me (Sorry, that’s my one joke I keep repeating. It’s not the most original, but it usually gets a laugh.) and Hip Hop Jiggly Butt. (On another rambling side note, I have to say that when I was running, the most distracting thing was my jiggly butt. I could feel it moving. Yuk. So gross. I need to use this burst of exercise rejuvenation and keep doing it. It’s bad when you can feel all the flab actually moving. Yuk again.) My friend at work is like the new spokesperson for Hip Hop Abs or something, and texts me everyday harassing me about this shit. So I finally did it. I have discovered that I may be too old for the hippity hop, or any form of exercise that requires me to dance like a young person in a club and jerk my body all over, and into weird contortions that I probably couldn’t have done even when I was younger. My hips and shoulders don’t necessarily hip and hop in those directions. I just don’t have the rhythm or moves and ability to dance and exercise at the same time, and I never really did. Butt. I am going to try and continue anyway. If you are following along on the body pain tally, this particular tape set hurts my shoulders and arms. My abs are actually fine with this. They have probably just given up and are like, whatever lady, the layer of fat you kindly blanketed across our middle will protect us. Nice try though! Stupid abs. One day I will have a sort-of six pack and a non-30-year-old-ass. That last sentence is all for you Amanda. One day Vegas will see us again and we will ROCK that pool. We will cut through the water like sharks in the ocean. Although I will have to upgrade to a non-40-year-old-ass. Eeek. Time is a ticking.
I will continue now, to update my exercise status, again. I just re-read that, and I didn’t mean right now, but in the days and weeks to come. I even have a plan. I mean, I always have a plan. I just need to carry through. I even have a goal. Fer reals. Wanna see? I might as well just post it now, since this is already long anyway.
It’s a pair of jeans. That’s pretty much it. My entire weight loss/get healthy plan around a pair of Hollister Laguna Skinny 9L’s. I can almost squeeze my ass into them. Literally. They go right on up, and over my legs and thighs, but then stop dead at the ass portion of my body. I can almost tuck it in but then my front poochy area tries to make a stand and it’s just all-around ugly. There is no way I could zip them up and I feel bad for anyone near if I did. The pants would suffer, my flesh would suffer, anyone who has eyes and was looking at me would suffer. The jeans seem to be made of very high quality, strong denim and fasteners, but I don’t know, wearing these right now would require a lot of tensile strength that might be asking too much of a simple pair of pants. But that’s the ultimate goal.
The goal was also to have these on by my daughter’s graduation party in, oh, 22 days. I had a slim-down plan, like I did a few years back. The category heading is still over to the right there. 34 Day Summer Slim Down. Obviously I was going to modify that to account for my new timeline, but guess what? 34 days came and went and now I have 22. I aimed for that date so I could impress my whole family, current, new, and old, with my skinniness, because that’s healthy, right? Like my daughter’s teacher just said to me at the race when we were talking about it, “Oh well as long as you are doing it for the right reasons.” HaHaHa. We laughed. No one loses weight to impress themselves. Anyhoo. I am also trying to grow out my bangs. Which is taking way longer than I want. But I was using her party as goal for that too. I figured if I could keep them longer, and survive the bad stage where they poke at my eyes, without cutting them, at least until then, I could probably make it the rest of the way to the long stage again. So far so good on that goal! I use headbands at work. I feel weird about my open face but half my patients can’t see me clearly anyway so who cares. As I always say, I look much better blurry.
Well I should wrap this up. Hours have been spent here. I swapped a few loads of laundry, but I need to fold all that crap and put it away and try to clean up this house a bit. I defiantly told the BF that I would have all the laundry done by the time he got home. I am so stupid sometimes when I am trying to be all smart. I think I hit all the major updates. No, wait…
Thursday was my daughter’s Spring Band Concert. Done. Today is the 8th grade dance. Exciting! We had Mother’s Day. I had to work. There was the annual Crawfish Boil my sister and her hubby have every year. Fun! Here’s a pic:
I have GOBS of bird pictures and wildlife in the backyard. The bird feeders are back. The fat squirrels are eating everything and making me mad. The hummingbirds are back too. I saw them. I have street money that I am still collecting. My niece graduated high school!! Congrats Jesse!! I have new things involving trucks with crazy stuff on them. And tires. Lots of tires. I don’t even know why. I probably have more random things that I can’t even think about because now I am trying to hurry and finish so I can do a fast clean sweep and get back to the computer. My son just texted. Geometry final is over. He’s one class away now from sophomore year. I need one last picture though to end this mish mash. And there are always more pictures. In my phone and on my desktop. Hmmm. How about superheroes? My kids are a daily reminder that you are never to old to build a blanket fort in your room to keep out the bad guys:
Or too old to goof around in Target. Hurry up mom, and take the picture!! Come on now…
I. Am. IronMan.
You won’t like me when I’m angry.
Saving the world one word at a time. “Mommmmmmm.”
“Come on already.” Later.
As usual though, it will only be inanimate objects
My face is NOT conductive to picture taking. I do not know why the camera hates me!! Plus my skin is all jacked up! Blah blah blah….
Look!
Pretty flowers!
Graduation! Anti-climactically followed by MORE school!
I spent two hours, apparently looking like a non-stop-grinning-photo-posing idiot, at my first formal graduation ceremony, preceded by two hours of standing around in very high, very painful shoes (but looking sexy–winkity wink), waiting for said graduation. I will say that I greatly disappointed my mother by not attending my high school graduation, (although our recall of the reason why differs–another wink there)….but…. hopefully, this kind of makes up for it!
After the ceremony…we took some pics, hung out for a bit, talked and laughed, remembering the good times and the bad, exchanging well wishes and promises to keep in touch….one last look around….and we left the school, tears in our eyes, painfully hobbling toward the car (my shoes were REALLY killing my feet!!) to my future….
For one whole day!! HAHA. I know my sissy was probably reading that, like, “WTF?? What the HELL is she talking about??!!??” Hee hee…As you can see I am still just as funny as usual. Anyhoo…we went to a restaurant with my family and had lunch. Then we all went home. I have never wanted to sit on my ass and do absolutely NOTHING more than that moment. I think I said that after my finals too. I think I probably say that alot. Hmmm. So I did. It was a nice night. The BF went to hang with his friends and play poker and I watched terrible movies with my kids. Like really terrible. Sharktopus. Dinoshark. Mongolian Death Worm—kind of a Tremors rip off but who are we to complain when we willingly pay money to rent them?
I just got home from my extended class, that I voluntarily registered for so I can prepare for the Nclex. Graduating is good, but it doesn’t get me a job. I need a license for that. So please hang out with me four more weeks!! It will be fun! Less pressure, more downtime. I am just making sure that I know all that I need to know, and everything I don’t know I won’t feel so stressed about because I did what I could to prepare!
So anyway, I want to put a few more pics around this site but my phone doesn’t want to cooperate. High tech photography is what I rock over here! But this is some of the loot…Flowers!—More flowers!—(Mommy and BF and children!) Shiny, helium, Mylar balloon! (Sissy!) A box of chocolates! (Sissy!) A card that tells me I cannot talk about school anymore for at least 2 family parties! (Sissy!) A beautiful angel figurine with a “don’t kill anyone” message—but much more poetically phrased! (Other sissy! And my almost-driving, little (?) bigger than me, niece!) A big, fat, check…cha-ching! (Other mom!) T-shirts with RN on them (Beth and Wayne!)—that I can never actually wear in the general public! They tell us that advertising is not always the best option. And it’s not because we don’t want to help people—of course we do! I would not have gone through all this stress just to ignore people! The problem is that I am still just a person, without a medical degree and without access to hospital type stuff when I am not at the hospital! I would LOVE to think that I am so smart and so brilliant enough, that I can diagnose or answer any and all questions anyone might have about anything! Sadly, I am not. Not even close. Bummer. But I do LOVE my t-shirts! They make me so proud to be just who I am! Another nurse! It’s awesome!
I only listed these things, not to brag, but because I want to say thank you. Again. I appreciate the time you spent with me Saturday, and the gifts are nice, but I would have been cool without anything!! So thank you for the “extra” stuff! You guys are all awesome! Love you!
Alright that’s enough. I never mean for these to be soooo long and they always are. My goal during (my last—forever) “pre-job summer” (besides study for nclex, prepare a resume, write letters, fill out apps, go on interviews, get a job, get a job, get a job) is to stream line this website again. Get it back to quick and mindless, BUT amusing and relevant, posts, that I can handle WHILE working a 12 hour/day job! High goals as usual. Especially since this may never have been considered amusing and certainly not relevant. But I have a degree now! I am one piece of paper smarter than I was last week! See?
ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?! (c’mon that was the PERFECT segway…no??)
Alright look for some pics and some “found money” updates. I have about a year and a half of dirty, crusty street coins, sitting in little bowls waiting to be tallied. And I have to do a little reading for tomorrow….so how about this…abrupt end. Bye!
Next up, GRADUATION!!!!
What?!?! Already??!! HA!
Despite all my attempts to thwart my meticulous study habits by posting here way too much when I should have been pouring over nursing textbooks, I have somehow managed to pass every single test set before me. And on Saturday of this week they are going to let me walk across that big stage, with all my school friends, and family in the audience, and graduate and move onto the NEXT BIG THING!!
TWO YEARS! (and two years before that just to get to these two past years) I could cry. And I do. Every single time I think too much about how I got here. Where I was and where I am and where I am going.
Life is extremely unpredictable and I would advise anyone who feels like it won’t ever change, to wait. Wait one more day and I guarantee, it ALWAYS changes! We steer our own ships. We do. Talk to me and I will tell you. I am proof that any plan can be changed. I’ve had 5 year plans, 3 year plans, 1 year plans, 1 week plans, ONE DAY plans and they all have one thing in common: They have all been completely and totally “F’d” up, thrown out, re-planned and revised into unrecognizable versions of their original ideas, many times over. And here I am anyway at the end of the latest 1000 day plan. And guess what? Tomorrow I will have ANOTHER plan. It just goes on and on…
You have to excuse me, I am feeling even MORE mushy and sentimental because the hardest thing I have ever done is finally over. I reached for the dream and I didn’t fail. And I am never afraid of failing, because I always try 100%, and I never give up, but, I am always terrified of failing, because I always try 100% and I never give up! One of my school friends posted on her page today:
“Fall down seven times, get up eight.”
I say get up every single time you fall. It’s true that you can’t fail at anything if you never try anything, but you can’t win anything either.
So that’s it for tonight. I will go back to silly stuff later, but I have to say thanks now that it’s over.
Thank you to my family. My kids rock. They have been counting down all these days with me. We made it. All those days that stretched before us. All those days behind us now. And soon, we get to start a new count! Life is just that. Living. Every day. Keep moving and at least you are DOING something!
Thank you to my other family…mom and sissy’s and brother…listening to me talk for 2 years about lots of stuff that no one else cares about….thank you. I’ve said it before. Lots of times. And I promise, I will stop now.
Friends, school folk, family of my family…same as above! Even if you thought I was full of it, you let me talk and for that I thank you.
Fans, strangers, readers, people who accidentally stumble on this looking for something else more interesting…thank you for following the journey. This whole little blog thing started out kind of pointless and random. It has morphed from my general thoughts on different unassociated topics, to more of a place that I can record the things in my life that I can go on and on about and no one can stop me! Unless you click it off! Hopefully you find it as fun and interesting as I do when I write it! And if you don’t…thanks anyway for reading it and probably hoping it will get better! It’s like a car accident right?? Can’t. Look. Away.
And finally…most importantly….and my last bit of mush in high gear…thank you to my BF. That’s boyfriend. You are the most patient man in the history of the world. You have no reason to put up with half the crap I do (or don’t do…haha) and still you stay. I’m glad you stuck it out and like I have been saying all along…it is almost over! The future is here! Well mostly here…you know I still got that one, last, little test to take, that the state requires, eye roll, before I go working on real people! But hey…easy peasy lemon squeezy….we are as good as there! Anyway, to sum up: I love you. Thank you.
Ok. This is way longer than I wanted it to be (as usual). Tomorrow I get fingerprinted! I will be forever on the grid now. More importantly, I have to go and watch my son get inducted into the National Junior High Honor Society! We are a family of smarty smarty pants! The future IS here!
Dream big and do something awesome! For yourself and anyone else in your world! From the bottom of my heart….to all of you and yours….thank you. Have a great and wonderful night.
just shy of pretty 