Girls, girls, girls

Here's a quick update, mostly because I just bought a new camera over the weekend and I wanted to look at the new pictures that will no longer have that annoying black dot floating in the middle of all my photos.

It's a quick update because I started my third session of school today. I'm trying to wrap my brain around the homework assignments, which seem to be numerous and scattered throughout the calendar in a way that makes me think my teacher sorta hates students. But I'm wading through it all, doing my best.

Speaking of wading, the girls finished swim classes last week. They are super cute in their goggles and swim caps, especially when they're hugging. Don't ya think...

Penny took her first leap off the diving board and said it wasn't scary at all.


She and Carolyn are both doing awesome at the pool. I seemed to have gotten a couple of guppies. Carolyn's favorite game is to swim to the middle of the pool and just sort of hang out. I'm terrified the lifeguard is going to assume she's struggling, even though she's just pretending "I'm a fish in a pool."

Here's a couple of more, just because they're so darn cute. Also, it reminds me just how lucky I am. A former co-worker of mine who is just 40 and has a young daughter died over the weekend. It is so, so, so sad. I'm hearing she had cancer, but my heart goes out to her and her family. It really makes you take stock of the important things, which happen to be:

B's get degrees

In nursing school, we say this to ourselves a lot. On particularly bad weeks, we change it to "C's get degrees."

But secretly, we all (most of us because I'm sure there's at least two non A-type personalities in this program) feel like failures with anything less than an A. At this time, I'll stop using the word "we." When I got straight B's this session, I didn't feel like a failure, but I did feel like I would have liked at least one A. I also felt a huge relief that I passed because this session was a real bitch.

So it was sort of like Christmas morning today when I got an announcement that some lost extra-credit has affected the grades of two students and I saw one of those students was ME!!! I got an A in Adult 2, totally the hardest class I've had yet. And it's 7 credits! That's huge.

I'm enjoying my four-day holiday by not doing much of anything. Well, I'm carting the girls off to swimming practice, taking them to the pool for some fun, hanging out with my mom who's come to visit and then going to T-ball practices. And I finished my fun book already ("The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night," which I really enjoyed). And I went running. Had a picnic in the park. Going to the pool again later today.

But other than that, I'm taking it easy. Gotta enjoy these days off, right!

One down, two to go

I love finals week. You'd think it would be incredibly hard, but comparatively speaking, it's pretty much cake. No lectures. No clinicals. No homework. I go to class to take a test for two hours and then I'm done for the rest of the day.

And by done, I mean I sit in the basement for six hours looking through my 2,630-word Med-Surg textbook looking up stuff I'm pretty sure I've never heard or read about before today.

See... Cake!

To make this week even better (and it really is pretty awesome, actually), I found my missing netbook. Well, not me, but the lovely custodial staff at Illinois State University. I guess I left it in the classroom on Thursday (yes, I know today is Tuesday) and they turned it in to the university police. Awesome! I know some department that's getting a big old Thank You e-mail later this week.

I'm back... sorta...

Summer has made it abundantly clear that life is very quickly passing me by. I don't record my always insightful thoughts anymore. I don't take pictures of my girls. I didn't even go outside today. All day....

But there is so much going on right now that it would be sinful not to try and get some of that down. And because I believe in the very depths of my heart that the worst of school is now behind me (just three finals before I'm half a nurse!!!!) I feel I can devote some time to recording this insanely crazy year.

For instance, I watched someone escape from a state-run mental institution last week. Scaled the fence and all. I have finished my first rotation in a hospital and I got to see a surgery. It was super cool. School was very, very difficult this last session. It was either test after test after test, or 16 hours of homework every weekend. Sometimes both. I still run, but not a lot. I ran a very slow 4 miles this weekend and thought I was doing pretty good.

And then there's the family. Where to begin? Well, Penny got in Metcalf, which is this super cool public school (experimental school, actually) run by Illinois State University. We're going on a family reunion in a few weeks. Texas! In July! Yes, this really is the plan... Carolyn is reading!

Here's just a sampling of the rest.

• We put a swing in the backyard.


• We turned on the sprinkler and put up the hammock.

• Carolyn is signed up for T-ball. She had her first game Friday. She's not really very good, but she's very fast. Penny is playing Wee Ball. She is both good and fast. I love the no-nonsense look she gets on her face when she practices.

• We go to the pool.... A LOT...


And there you have it. All caught up.