Just cleaning and waiting.

That's it. 

My last paper is turned in.

Now the butterflies/sick feeling in my stomach until I get my grades.

I talked with some of my friends today. 2 out of the 3 of them weren't sure if they were going to pass either. 

Don't know if I should feel better or worse about this.  

But at this point, it's out of my hands. 

I just have to hope for the best. 

I was so busy suffering through that paper yesterday, that I didn't get to wrap up my spring cleaning streak that I seem to be in.

Well, when I went to finish the carpet, our vacuum quit.  

I can say that I am shocked, 

as it is a 20 year old hand-me-down from my stepdad.

So, we got a new one. 

It's amazing.

Like, seriously, amazing. 

It's bag-less, has a HEPA filter, 

and I'm in love with it.

I'm pretty sure our carpets are cleaner than they have ever been.

Ever.

And as for the office (here's the before if you didn't see it)

TA-DA!

I love this room, it's my favorite in this house. 

I have a ton of stuff to do this week, and I'm looking forward to it all.

Tomorrow I get to go meet my mentor teacher, and see the classroom where I will be solo student teaching kindergarten next semester! (if everything goes as planned.)

I'm really excited about that. 

And Thursday I'm off to visit Misty! It's going to be so great!

So I'm determined that it's going to be a good week, despite the school stuff.

♥

Oh the productivity!!

I have had the most productive day ever today. 

It's been great!

This is what I left when I went to work this morning.

hahaha, bums. 

I got off work a little early because we were slow. No one rents movies when it's gorgeous outside. 

Then, I got to work! Here is what I accomplished this evening!

 Updated our calendar (on time for once!)

 Planted Pansies along our walkway, because I'm tired of it being bare! I love them!

 Did a deep clean of the carpet in the office!

 Made time for Starbucks. Love. 

Got all of the dishes done! Yay!

And while I did all this, Jamie worked on repairing the grass in the front yard. It needed it. 

On the agenda for tomorrow:

 Re-organizing the office. It's a hot mess. It became my catch-all during student teaching. 

Wanted to do it today, but the carpet has ended up being a bigger job than I expected. 

Clean up the laundry explosion in my room. This is my #1 bad habit. 

I'm excited that I've been able to focus on the house more. 

I'm one paper away from the semester being over!!

So, so excited.

♥

Happy Birthday Husband!

Today was Jamie's Birthday!

He is now 27.

We slept in until noon, and then went to Elegance, a little restaurant in town. It was awesome.

And then we watched "The King's Speech." Also awesome.

This is where he spent the majority of his day.

I was glad to give him some personal time, he doesn't get to play for fun nearly enough.  

This is his birthday loot, on the counter.

He got some pretty good cards.

Then we went out for dinner and drinks with Amanda, Joe, and Dan, and had a great time.  We went to the Slippery Noodle downtown, and they had some really awesome bands there tonight.

While he was playing guitar for several hours, I was painting. 

Results:

I've developed a newfound interest in painting, and I'm considering taking some art classes in the fall.

Not much else has happened in the past few weeks, other than we've been planning for our garden! As soon as school is out we are going to break ground.  Here is my (to scale) plan. I'm pretty proud of it.

It's going to be some work, but I am really excited about it.  I'm also working really hard to keep them organic, and we won't be using anything other than natural gardening techniques. I'm really looking forward to getting started!

In other household news, the chore chart is working even better than expected! Our house has been perpetually clean for about a week now. It's been so great. 

Probably won't be blogging much, if at all, for the next two weeks.  They will be the last two weeks of school, and I have about a million things to finish up.  

Keep me in your prayers, I'm going to need them. 

♥

Don't believe everything you read...

I am a lover and firm believer in home remedies for things.  One pretty big trend of late is creating serums to improve your hair. 

This is an article I read in a magazine a few weeks ago.

Here is the exact little blurb...

"Need some volume? Lifeless strands got you down? in a bowl, mix one egg yolk, a half cup of honey, two tablespoons of olive oil, and two small, ripe avocados. Apply the concoction to the entire head and leave on for one to two hours, until hard. Shampoo and condition as usual. "This is a miracle cure," notes Goddard-Clark. "And for extra-bouncy, nonfrizzy curls, Drew Barrymore taught me to blot ringlets dry with paper towels." 

I thought this was pretty cool. I love such things. And I have quite possibly, the finest, limpest, wimpiest hair in the world. I have to use a ton of product to get any sort of volume.

So, last night I decided to try this!

I went out and bought honey and avocados specifically for it.  

First off, do you know how hard it is to "mix" an avocado? They are not liquid. At all. The best I could do was little pea-sized chunks.

Second, it was quite possibly the worst smell ever.  You know how pumpkin guts smell when you take them out? Imagine that smell, only this concoction smelled like a pumpkin that had sat out in the sun for a week. In other words, rotten.

So, when I had mixed it to the best of my ability, (and created an AWEFUL mess in my kitchen) I took it to the bathroom to put it in my hair.  

Then all of the little avocado pieces began to fall out of my hair. It was raining pea-sized avocado in my bathroom. So, I decided I had to keep it contained somehow. 

This was the only way I could think of.

I felt like the kids in "Signs." No aliens were going to read THIS mind.

So once I had that, I had to go clean up the mess in the bathroom. Which, I found out when I got in there that I didn't actually have to clean up the floor, because Minnie had graciously done that for me. What a good little helper. So, I got all of the avocado mess off the counter and out of the sink, and went about my business.

About an hour later, I decided I couldn't stand the tinfoil anymore, and had to go wash it out.

This is what my hair looked like at this point.

Eww. 

So, I get into the shower. And with little avocado pieces raining down around my feet, I start to wash it. And then I wash it again. And then I was it a fourth time. After that, it FINALLY started to feel like hair again, and not a grease ball. So I conditioned, and let it dry.

So, after all of that trouble, this stuff totally made my hair...

Oh. Wait. 

It did nothing. 

That's right. 

I did all that crap, made a huge mess, wasted money, and my hair is as flat and lame as ever. 

Lesson learned.

In other news, Jamie and i have been having WAY to many arguments about the house being clean. It sucks to have to deal with such things when you work as much as we do, but it's a part of life. So, we are officially going back to a chore chart. 

After many emails back and fourth, and several revisions, here is the final product.

I even laminated it at school today, so that we could write on it with dry erase markers and then wipe it off, so we don't have to print new ones every month.  Awesome.

There are four things per day, and when you complete something, you initial. This takes the burden of having assigned things each day, and we can help each other out and pick up the slack. 

Lets hope it works.

Got my tickets for Ray Lamontagne and the Pariah Dogs!

Woohoo! July 14th! So excited!

Oh, and I'll leave you with a video of my dog being a lunatic. 

This happened randomly the other night.

She's such a goober.  I love her.

♥

Weekend!!!

Cleaning like a maniac before work today. 

Friends are coming over tomorrow!

We are having a very belated Christmas dinner (as our first date was cancelled due to Emily's ACTUAL Christmas dinner.)

Very excited about this. 

But, our house sucks.

I'm also working on my unit for student teaching,

and it's going to be based on black history month.

I am learning so much about inner city schools already. 

I asked them if they had anything specific they wanted to learn about, and their response was:

"not slavery or dead guys, that's all we ever learn about."

I had never thought of it this way. 

But it's true. 

So, I spent about 2 hours yesterday looking up still living black men and women who had done something important or were heros of some kind. I found a famous neurosurgeon, first black man in space, first woman pilot to fly a fighter jet (that just happened last year, by the way), and the first black primary dancer for the NYC ballet (who went on to start the Harlem ballet company), among many more.

I am so excited about getting to share some positive cultural messages with these kids. 

I'm finally getting a view on what it's going to be like to be a teacher.  After all of these years of classes, and theory, it's finally here.

And I can't remember the last time I was this excited about something. 

It's without a doubt what I was meant to be. 

Oh, and I picked up my bridesmaid dress yesterday!

It's so gorgeous. 

I can't wait to show amanda tomorrow night!

It's been a good weekend so far. 

Which I desperately needed.

Glad it's here.

♥

I've been sick, not pregnant, okay?

Just now starting to feel better.

I think I caught a bug from a friend at church.

Same symptoms, same forever-long duration.
At least now I know that the speculation and jokes of my classmates and co-workers about the "P" word will stop. It's gotten old.

Had Red Mango Tuesday, because my boss and I were scoping out a potential FamVid spot in Broadripple.

It was glorious.

Class on Thursday was pretty cool.  

I get to teach a science lesson to a group of 10, 

and meet with my "focus child" every Thursday.

I really enjoy it.

It feels like I am finally almost a teacher.
That evening I watched a re-run of one of my all-time favorite "The Office" episodes:
The one where Andy finds out about Dwight and Angela's affair.
Epic.

I actually had Friday off! 

It was awesome for me, but Jamie still had to work.

Lame. 

So, I set out to clean. and clean. and then clean some more.

I started on the kitchen and the great room, and I cleaned like a maniac.
I even moved all the furniture out, set the couches on end, and hand-mopped the hardwood.

It was crazy.
But, after I did all that, I had zero energy for the rest of the house, so the bedrooms and baths are still pretty rough.
I will get there though.
Really.

Saturday I worked, and then we went out with some of Jamie's friends from work.
We went to the Vogue in Broadripple, which was the first time I had been there.
It was awesome.
I didn't drink, because my stomach hurt, but I had a phenomenal time dancing my booty off.
Not really, it's still there, but  I can dream, right?
Emily and Karen
(These lovely ladies)

met me there, and we had a blast.
The are so great.

The furry children have been very lovable lately.
Minnie is not a fan of winter. So, she has been taking every opportunity to cuddle with us or under something.

She is so stinking cute.

Emma tried to help me do my homework.
And by help me, I mean eat my computer cord.

It was so cute though, I couldn't help but laugh.

Sunday morning was very bittersweet for me.
First off, Rachel was SO sweet and brought me a box of the tea she knew I liked.

I was so surprised and flattered, and felt very blessed to have such people in my life.

But at the same time, someone who has been with our church for a very long time that I have always respected and loved since I was 15 has made some decisions that I don't understand that ultimately have led to his decision to leave the church.
It makes me so sad, disappointed, and just unsure about what to think. We actually sat down and talked about next steps this Sunday, and it really got to me.
I am still pondering if I want to send him a message, and what to say in that message.
It's just hard.

It was also nice because Tim, one of our pastors, was back from Chicago.
I hadn't realized how different it would be without him until last week when he was moving.
I'm glad he is staying.
But, the lovely, wonderful, awesome Misty that I missed a lot was not there.
=)
But really, I missed her oodles and oodles, and can't wait to sing with her in a couple of weeks.
She is a really great friend to me, and I hope I am half as much of a friend to her.
I really want to maintain that friendship even though she lives in Chicago.

Jamie and I are on fall break, and he took the day off tomorrow, and we are spending the
WHOLE
day together!
We are going to Chateau Thomas Winery to spend the gift card we got as a wedding present, and Jamie says he had a surprise for me.
Really ready and excited for tomorrow.
I love him so much.
♥

Good things!

Just finished watching an old Office episode on Hulu.

The one where Jim and Pam go to Michael and Jan's dinner party.

Laughed my butt off.

Sometimes I miss TV.

I've been really stinking busy this week.

Got my car insurance, title, and cell phone transfered from my mom's stuff to mine.

That was a hassle.

Homework.

and I had to clean my house.

It needed it.

and it does again, now. ugh.

Our camping trip was awesome, though, and it was so worth it.

When we got back, we FINALLY conquered the green room!!

This was the only room in the house that i wasn't happy with.

In fact, I hated it.

Because we hated it, it became a catch-all for stuff we didn't know what to do with.

So...we painted it!

It was glorious.

It is now officially the music room.

We cleaned out a bunch of the junk, and only took Jamie's guitars and accessories, and the piano back.

It looks a little bare right now, but it will be better once we get stuff on the walls.

I love it.

While we were painting, a door-to-door salesman.

Strike #1: He strongly resembled someone that I don't trust.

Strike #2: He asks "Are you the woman of the house?"

I answer "yes."

He says ".....really? you look really young."

Strike #3: He made dirty jokes about the product he was selling.

Really??

It was ridiculous.

I get really irritated when people see or find out my age, and then make a big deal about the fact that I am married.

So? You don't know anything about me other than my age.

Stay out of my business.

On a fabulous and awesome note...

JAMIE IS NO LONGER ON SWING SHIFT STARTING NEXT WEEK!!

This is SO many answered prayers.

We were both so tired of him having to rotate from days to nights every week.

It was awful.

But...now he will only work Monday through Friday, and during set hours!

I am so happy.

♥

happy feelings

Feeling good this morning.

Had a really good night's sleep.

My house is spotless.

I cleaned from 2 to 8 yesterday, without stopping.

Scrubbed the bathrooms top to bottom, picked up, dusted, and swept every room, and cleaned the kitchen like there was no tomorrow.

I was exhausted afterwards, but felt really accomplished.

Oh, and I also got all of the dishes, and all of the laundry in the whole house done.

Turns out it was a really good thing I did. Jamie's brother and sister-in-law called this morning and said that they are staying here tonight so they don't have to drive home between the visitation and funeral for Nan.

I feel that he is very critical of me as a wife, and was just making comments the other day about how he "hoped that I was keeping the house fixed up."

Well, ha.

It's clean.

On a funny note, it stormed during my cleaning. Minnie is super afraid of storms, and typically stays right under my feet the whole time. While i was hanging clothes up, I realized she wasn't with me anymore. I started looking for her, and this is where I found her.

hahaha, i guess she missed her dad.

I Love her.

We have a busy week ahead of us.

Taking Jamie's other brother to the SS office to become his registered payee.

Don't ask.

It's a long and complicated story.

I am also going to be Natalie's official payee.

That I am happy about, because we both really want to start spending more time with her, and helping her out.

She needs all of the positive role models she can get.

I am getting my hair cut too.

Excited and a little nervous.

It's going to be a big change, but I am feeling the need to do something different.

I will probably just grow it back out over winter, though.

=)

I changed my mind on the cookbook.

I am getting this one instead.

It looks like the recipe's are much simpler, and will take less time, which is what I need.

Can't wait until it gets here!

For real this time.

=)

Excited.

Still haven't done any homework.

Not good.

♥

Haven't had much time or desire to blog the last few days.

Jamie's Nan died around midnight on tuesday night.

We have the visitation tomorrow and the funeral on Saturday.

I had to fix my work schedule, because i was scheduled to work during both.

but luckily, two of my co-workers stepped up and agreed to help me out.

She was truly the rock in his family. Everyone always went to her, and she was always able to say or do something to fix it, even if it wasn't what the person wanted to hear.

She was incredibly wise, and i will always be grateful to her for putting my mind at ease about whether my dad is in heaven. She will be so very missed.

She is also the sole reason that Jamie's family has such a deep faith in God.

She was an amazing woman.

Jamie hasn't really let it sink in. I'm kind of worried about him, but he just keeps not thinking about it. I am afraid it is just going to hit him at the funeral.

At least I'll be there for him.

It's a little easier knowing that she is in heaven. She was truly one of God's gifts, and I know he is happy to have her back in his arms.

I am having a much needed lunch with my momma today.

I love her.

I am also trying to clean the house up, and do dishes and laundry, because I have neglected all of that for about the past week.

I have homework that was due tuesday, and that is due today, and i haven't done any of it.

That is really, really bad.

Jamie is going to be ticked, but i have just had zero motivation, and I have had bigger things to worry about.

I guess I will just email the professor, and hope that she understands.

I can't stress about that now.

Oh well.

I will be glad when this weekend is over. Hopefully things will get easier after that.

♥

Bored

I was on call today, but didn't get called in.

WooHoo!

However, Jamie did have to work today, so I am by myself until 9:00 tonight until he gets off.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my down time, but it makes for a long day to be at home by myself. So, I ran errands, did a tiny bit of shopping, cleaned up around the house, worked on my thank-you's from the wedding...and now I am watching a movie I rented from work before I start dinner.

Emma was cracking me up this morning. She is obsessed with bags of any kind, and after looking for 15 minutes, this is where I found her this morning. =)

My furry children crack me up.

They are so funny.

I know you are all probably tired of my talking about my critters, but I love them.

I also got a new shirt and purse today!

The Shirt was 20% off and the purse was 50% off.

Score.

I also got some bracelets and a headband for $1 each.

It was a great day for shopping apparently.

I thought I would throw this picture on here for Misty. This is the amazing (vegetarian) soup recipe that I found, and It looks just as good as the picture! (Well, at least I think so.)

Either way, it tastes amazing.

I have to start class tomorrow. Ugggghhhhh.

I am so not ready to go back. I want to be done with school so bad. so very, very, bad.

I actually had to print the syllabus off today, and it was almost painful.

And then after my first day back to class, I have to work a 7 hour shift. I may not be too pleasant tomorrow.

But, that is tomorrow, and tonight I am going to have dinner (Crispy Cracker Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, and Steamed Broccoli) and watch a movie with my husband.

It is going to be wonderful.

♥