Oh, let's get on with it...

I permed my hair myself this weekend.  Not sure I like it, but I like it better now than I did a few days ago.  It's retro 80's which is the part I don't like.  I wanted big soft curls, not crinkle and frizz.  Meh.  The folks at work like it, and I can deal.  I was wanting something different, and this will work.

Ansel says "cretzels" instead of "pretzels" - not sure why.

Ansel is now getting about 30 minutes of reading time to himself before bed.  I think this is awesome.  Since learning to read, at bedtime, he'd complain that we were turning off the light.  We'd say "it's time to sleep now" and he'd say "but I can't see my books."  It was my idea to just make his bedtime earlier so that after we read him his bedtime story, we can let him sit in his room to read by himself.  I'm not sure how much he actually is reading his books, but I think he's definitely using the time to try and read, or at least browse the books.  In exchange for his 30 minutes of reading, he goes to bed a full hour earlier.  He's cool with this, and so am I. I've often thought he needed to be getting a little more sleep.  Oh, and plus the reading actually gives him an opportunity to calm down before bed, so he goes to sleep better.  Win - all the way!

I love Fage Greek yogurt.  I'm trying to eat healthier and cheaper these days when it comes to lunches, and Fage is helping me do that.  I'd rather eat one cup of delectable yogurt with a piece of fruit or some hummus w/ veggies for lunch than a Lean Cuisine or food from the student union at work.  The yogurt is pricey as far as yogurt goes, but it's healthier, tastier and still less than a frozen meal or food from the student union.

I love LaraBars, too.  Ansel and I often get one to share on our grocery outings.  I love them because they have absolutely real ingredients in them.  Each usually only has about 5 ingredients in them to consist of fruits, nuts, and spices.  Good stuff.

I am getting new glasses.  GREEN ones.  Whoa, yeah, color.  Went to the eye doctor on Tuesday for an eye exam and came out $600 poorer (total cost of eye exam, frames, lenses, etc.) and that's WITH insurance covering some.  I hate picking out glasses because you have to pretty much do it while blind - at least if you have as bad of eyesight as me.  And when you put a new frame on your face, it never looks right because it's never what you are used to seeing.  The frame fitter there is pretty good at helping people pick out glasses and she noticed right off that these green ones brought out the green in my eyes.  I liked that.  Ansel and Kacey thought they looked okay, too. 

Hm, anything else mundane I can comment upon in my life?  This weekend is Easter - we don't really celebrate Easter in our household.  Briefly considered taking him to the city egg hunt tomorrow, but came to my senses soon enough.  That place would be a mad house, and the eggs aren't really hidden, but just laid out on the ground.  That's no fun.

I have the backpack song from Dora the Explorer stuck in my head.  This is NOT a good thing.

Kacey wants a motorcycle.  This is not a good thing either, but maybe I'll warm up to it.  I told him to give me some time to mull it over.

You know, I should be working right now.  I have some contract work that needs to be done by next Friday and I could be using this time to work on it.  I just really don't want to though.  I mean, it's a Friday night!  I'll probably put it off until the last minute and freak out over it like I did the last contract project thrown my way.  I might have to just cut my ties entirely with this job for my own sanity.  The money is nice, but sanity might just be better.

Okay, sleepy now....

I haven't looked at when my last post was, but I'm guessing two months ago - that's usually about right.  It's time now for another, I guess.  I've had two glasses of wine, though, so hopefully, the words I'm typing actually make sense.  Let me post some updates:

About Me:
     Been on Zoloft for a couple of months now to help with the anxiety.  The first month - a really low dosage - didn't help me at all.  The next two months have been double that dosage, with a noticeable difference.  I think my level of anxiety is probably normal human anxiety.  I am, however, finding it hard to stay awake.  Zoloft "may cause drowsiness" so I'm half awake and living off of more coffee than usual.  Or, as I've been calling it - "the elixir of the gods."  I talked to my doctor about it and he said to give it more time.  It's possible that my body still hasn't adjusted to it yet, and also possible that it's just the lack of sunlight in the winter months.

About Work:
     Speaking about anxiety, I did almost had another anxiety attack when I learned that we had 1057 applications in the system for our nursing program for Fall 2012.  That's 250 more than last semester, which was already the highest semester in recent years. These applications have to be processed by the equivalent of 2.5 people in less than 2 months.  Our normal processing rate is about 10 apps a day for a full-time person.  But first, we have to spend at least a week making files, verifying entrance exam scores were received (and are passing), and several other pre-processing duties.  Fortunately, we were able to eliminate duplicates apps, applicants with missing/failing scores, and unpaid applications so that we are down to more like 650-700 that need to be processed.  I am coordinating the efforts again, as before, but this time I KNOW I'm coordinating, as opposed to last semester when I was under the impression that it was someone else's job and I was just helping her.  I am, however, teaching one of my newer co-workers what to do, seeing as how I am the part-time one and probably shouldn't be the coordinator.  (Our boss thinks that my co-worker is taking the lead on it, but she and I have already talked and agreed that she is absolutely clueless about it and wants me to do it while teaching her.)  So far, despite me having a whole lot of faith in my co-worker's skills, I still think that I'm the best one to coordinate it all, part-time or not.  I'm just the most detail-oriented and computer-savvy (at least with respect to the software we're using) person in the group.  I'm not the most experienced person with regard to processing, but that person is a Ludite when it comes to technology.  He's also not big on responsibility.  I'm not the most experienced person with regard to computers, but that person is a bit dated on her computer skills and knows more about background computing, rather than the software we need to use.  Plus, she's our newest advisor and has the least experience.  She's got other responsibilities anyway.   I will make it through.  I think we'll do fine if I and the one to whom I'm teaching the process now work together as a team.    But enough about work.

About Ansel:
     My kiddo is reading - more or less.  There are lots of words he gets wrong and billions of really tricky words that will take him years to get, but still, he's READING.  He read the majority of the Dr. Seuss book "Ten Apples Up on Top" to me a few weeks ago.  It took about an hour at his slow pace, but to be fair, Dr. Seuss books are longer than most little kids' books should be.  He's also gained a new-found interest in his old board books - the ones we read to him and let him chew up when he was barely even walking and talking.  He likes them because they are short, he's familiar with them, and they typically have short words. 
     His drawing has gotten better recently, too.  The things he's drawing now actually look more like what he says they are.  If he wants to draw a flower, well, it looks like a flower.  If he wants to draw a pirate ship, he draws a pirate ship with port holes, flags and people on board.  It's pretty cool stuff to watch his artistic development.

Okay, I think that's all I can manage.  That's actually a lot for a sleepy girl with two glasses of wine.

It is so hard for me to keep up with this journal anymore.  Not that I ever posted very regularly, but it seems like every two months, I get bored enough to actually sit down and type.  I check it daily for everyone's posts, and constantly think about things that should be documented when I do get around to posting, but the urge to spend the time typing things out only comes when I pretty much reached the end of the internet, yet I still want to be one the computer. So, on to what's going on...

In financial news...Kacey and I are now (with the exception of the mortgage) debt free!  Wah hoo!  The last bit of credit card debt that has been looming over us for about as long as we've been married is GONE!  (We paid off our two cars 3 years ago.) Paying off the credit debt is due to a number of things - consolidation to low interest rate cards, regular on-time monthly payments of considerably more than the minimum, tax returns being applied almost in their entirety for a few years, and my amazing parents.  Let me be clear that I did not request money from my parents to do this.  In fact, I'm utterly embarrassed to even mention to them the amount of debt we'd racked up, or that we even had debt.  However, a couple years back, my brother asked my parents for money, and my dad thought it only fair that, if he was going to give my brother money, he had to give the same amount to my sister and me, too.  We each got random $5000 checks in the mail that year.  I almost cried.  I know I was shaking after I opened it, since that was a particularly low month.  You got to understand - my dad never made much, and my mother didn't work.  Dad owns a asphalt paving business that was passed on to him and his now deceased brother from their father, but it didn't make much money.  He's top dog of a blue-collar job in a small town.  He still managed to raise 3 kids in a middle-class lifestyle, take regular family vacations, pay for my college completely, send my mother on the European trips she'd always dreamed of, and pick up the tab for my brother's funeral, which I'm told was about $15,000.  He obviously had a handle on how to manage what little money that he made.  This past Christmas, my sister and I once again got $5000 checks in the mail.  When I called to let them know it'd arrived and profusely thank them, my mom said that my dad just came to the conclusion that we'd ultimately get their money someday anyway when they pass on (depressing, huh?), and that he knew that we needed it more right now than they did.  Wow.  This $5000 check was totally unprompted and just a gift from my daddy.  He even said he didn't care what we did with it - said we could spend it all on a vacation if we wanted!  Half of it paid off the last bit of our last credit card, a couple hundred went to a few gifts for ourselves (leather boots!), and the rest is in a savings account.

On to other things....My child is very close to reading.  He can sight-read lots of small words, and can sound out lots of bigger ones.  He's often asking me what something he just read means, like "What does 'Loop 288' mean?" after seeing the name of the road we were on on a street sign; or, "What does 'DIP' mean?" when he saw the familiar yellow sign warning of an upcoming dip in the road.  Love that kid.   I do feel bad for how much television he watches, but at least he doesn't watch crap.  Just about everything he regularly watches is educational, with the exception of Scooby Doo (his current fav), but even that show has merit.  I mean, each show puts together clues to solve a mystery, and it shows teenagers being respectful and smart.  And I do turn the TV off and make him do other things after I realized he's watched too much.   If there's anything not so pleasing about Ansel right now, it's his inability to listen and do what we ask.  Or his stalling and doing things way more slowly than we need him to.  I'm pretty sure both of these are chalked up to me just having a 4-year old, though.

Ugh, too much typing already.  I'm sure this post is way more than most of you'd will read.  :)

It's about that time - you know, every two months or so, I force myself to sit here and type something.  Sadly, I've just really lost interest in sharing my thoughts via Livejournal posts.  :(   Heck, I barely share my thoughts anywhere - Facebook, Twitter, Google +.  I mean, I've got them all, and I read every last post on all of them several times daily (okay, I haven't touched Google +, but that's because it's pretty much always a duplicate of other social media sites). So, I'm still interested in reading about everyone, but am so bored with putting my own stuff on here.  Let's see what I can throw up here real quick.

Ansel is doing well.  He just turned 4 and his daycare worker called him "brilliant" the other day - seriously!  I told her she was tossing that word around pretty carelessly, but secrety I was happy she called him that.  He can read and write small words and, what impressed her so much was that he uses perspective in his drawings ("that tree is small because it's so far away") and that he drew wind blowing around the flowers in his drawing.  Basically, she was telling me that these are both concepts that most kids his age don't understand.  That's pretty cool.  He's got just under 2 years before he goes off to kindergarten and I'm pretty sure he's going to have the content covered before he gets there.

Work is, um, pretty much just the same as it was in my last post.  I'm still the one that everyone goes to for answers, despite my desire to be just the come in, advise my students, part-time girl.  We are currently processing applications to our nursing program and that takes up all of my time.  We received 808 applications (for 200 spots) and after weeding out applicants who didn't pay their application fee (about 40) and those who didn't submit their nursing entrance exam scores or submitted failing grades (I'm guessing about 75-100 total), all of the rest of the applications are processed by hand.  We download transcripts to check that everything that needed to be taken was taken, that their grades are all passing, calculate a prerequisite course GPA, etc.  And follow a LOT of rules, such as how we can't accept psychological statistics in place of our math statistics unless the student has taken our MATH 1013 and one other math course, or the student transfers in state core complete or has a bachelor's degree already.  I mean, really, COME ON.  Or how we can't accept A&P or microbiology if it is more that 5 years old at the time of application, unless the person applying as a bachelor's degree already in any number of previously approved science or health related fields.  And what do you do if the "expired" course was not taken as part of the degree - should it count?   Ugh.  This, however, is the shit that I remember that makes me the go-to girl, apparently.  I remember all these little rules.  Sadly, though, what gets us bogged down the most are the transfer students and whether or not the courses they are transferring in are applicable.  Total pain in the ass.   We have equivalency charts that students can follow, but that's only if they bother to check our website for the charts or if they are currently attending one of those universities for which we have an equivalency chart.   The whole process needs an overhaul, but I don't foresee how that's really going to happen as effectively and efficiently as the newest advisor, who was hired to help come in and make changes (amongst other more normal advisor duties), would like for it to be overhauled.  She's all "this can all be done by computer" and "we shouldn't have to touch any of this."  Well, yeah, but computers aren't that perfect, my dear.  Good luck getting a computer to understand when it can do a block 90 core transfer to try and make a girl state core complete just so we can use her freakin' psychological statistics class that Houston Community College told her that we'd take instead of math statistics! 

I need to go.  Too much talk about work.  Not enough reading of my magazine sitting right here on the table next to me.

I haven't felt the desire to sit and type anything lately.  My head has been a constant stream of stuff - much of which I think would be great starts to, or topics for, long journal entries, but I know that I'm never actually going to find the desire to sit and flesh them all out.  I mean, in that sense, it's like a research paper, just without the actual research and citations.  And I'm not really in to writing research papers just for fun.  I mean, seriously, I find myself laying out full arguments for how I feel about something, like religion, money, parenting, or the dumbasses and freakshows we currently have trying to take over government, in my head while I'm showering, or cleaning house, or whatever; but, I'm never going to put them all down on paper, er, I mean, type them in to this journal.  So, I then tell myself that there's no reason to write anything here if it's just going to be "I went to work today."   My thoughts are always much more interesting than my daily life.

Nonetheless, here goes some of that basic stuff I think is boring...

Saw Crazy Stupid Love today with my husband - we both skipped out on work to have an afternoon to ourselves without the kiddo.   The movie was really good.  Funny and heartfelt, with a twist the filmakers hid pretty well.  I will buy it when it hits DVD.

I'm currently reading a book (shocker, I know!) called "Bringing Up Geeks".  It's non-fiction, which is my usual genre of choice.  I figure if I'm going to read, I would like to learn something from it.  I'm halfway through and I agree with about half - okay maybe more than half - of what the author has to say.  In general, I think she's a little TOO strict with her kids, but I can take what she writes and adapt to my parenting values.  That's what we all are supposed to do anyway, I think.

Work is weird in that I've only been there a year, and only part-time, yet I get the impression that I'm now the best advisor there.  At least that's what my co-workers make me think.  The two newest advisors and the one who has been there for 4 years now all come to ask me the questions on how things are done.  Even my boss asks me how things are done - she did it just yesterday, in fact.   Part of me likes that I'm seen as the one who knows all, but really, I just want to be a part-timer with less responsibility.  I want to come in, advise the students whose names fill my calendar already (and do it well), then leave.  Instead, I come in, and am often immediately barraged with "hey, can you come help me with this student's file when you get the time" (which, if I truly waited until I had the time, I'd never get to her), "who do we contact for this," "how do I handle this," or any number of other questions.  Oh well.  The price I pay for being good at what I do, I guess.  ;)   I'm really interested to see how my next performance review turns out.  Though, in truth, the performance review process at TWU sucks and doesn't reflect too much of what you actually do.  Weird.

And that's it for now.  :)

I'm not really in the mood to type an entry, but today was a pretty good little family day, so I thought I'd record some of it.  At least a tiny bit.

The annual air show was in town, so we got there about 11:30 to watch the show start at noon.  Ansel got to look at lots of planes before they even had any go up in the air.  We watched several aerobatic planes and then, due to our local airport having been recently expanded (and thus now capable of accommodating larger, faster aircraft), we even got to see a brand new F18 fighter plane fly.  Man, those things are LOUD when they take off.  Holy crap!   It flew in a very tight formation with a 1940's Corsair (I think), which was neat because they are/were both the plane of choice for the military in their respective times.   Despite dousing ourselves thoroughly in sunscreen before leaving, Kacey and I are sunburned.  Fortunately haven't noticed any redness on Ansel, though.

After that, we went for a late lunch at Mi Casita, then headed over to see the new A-Train.  Today marks the opening day of the new train that runs from Denton to Dallas.  Yay for public transportation!   We had thought earlier about taking a ride on it, at least to one of the other stations in between here and Dallas, but after the 3 hours we spent in the sun at the air show, we were actually thinking that a dip in the pool would be better. 

Ansel hates swimming pools.  We had been invited to Kacey's boss's daughter's birthday party today at Water Works Park.  It would have been free for us to go, but I knew that Ansel would be miserable - especially at a popular water park on a Saturday.  We decided instead to go to the nice, never crowded, sunburn opportunity free, indoor pool at the UNT Rec Center.  It's got a ramp in, it's got a small lazy river, a whirlpool, and a hot tub.  Perfect for what we need.   We haven't been members of the Rec Center since the year Ansel was born, but since Kacey's staff at UNT, it was only $10 for all three of us.   At first, Ansel wanted to just hang out at the edge, dangling his feet in the water - nothing more.  But with coaxing and a little smidgeon of trickery, we actually got him to go out with us further and play around.  He never warmed up to it completely, but we still had a great time with him.  And he said that he actually had fun.  Yay for progress!  Maybe someday we'll actually get to go to Water Works Park.

After getting some giant, tasty drinks at Sonic on the way home, we are now all home and tired.

Went to a Memorial Day BBQ today and ate and drank too much. I feel yucky right now.  I'm kind of not in the greatest of moods right now and should probably go to bed.

Yeah, really I'm not feeling in to writing this post as much as I'd thought.  It think I'm off to bed.

It's been a while.  I'm stressed.  I'm no longer working full-time, but it seems like I still have a full-time workload.  Ugh.  I just want it to stop!  Hopefully, it will when students go home for summer and we finally get a 4th advisor.  The most recently hired advisor is still getting on her feet with regard to advising, as it is.

My house is a mess.  In 3 weeks or so, we will have family visiting.  I've already made a list of things that need to be done before they get here - vacuum, clean out guest bedroom, plan meals, clean bathtub, etc.  The list is 22 items long.  Seriously.   

I'm listening to relaxation CDs at night to get to sleep.

Paid off one of our credit cards.  One more to go, which should be within the next few months.  THAT is awesome.

Why can't I organize my thoughts well when I finally sit down to type up one of these stupid things.  Things run through my head all day long, and at the point in time when I sit with the web pulled up to Livejournal's "post an entry" page, I freeze.  Sigh...or my kid calls, like now.

And I'm back...  Let's see, I'm stressed about work.  LOTS of stuff to do, and I'm also having to decide between some really fantastic candidates for the two open positions.  That's a good thing and a bad thing.  I mean, we'll get some great people in the office, but at least one great person is going to be let down.

I noticed that I'm one of those people who like to eat when I get stressed. Stress is also making me not want to cook much, which means deceptive calorie, big portion restaurant food.  I actually got on the scale for the first time in a long time yesterday to find that I am at my highest weight ever.  :(

I'm not Catholic, or even religious, but I should have given up something for Lent, like others I know.  Sweets, meat, social networking - something like that.  Any one of those, or maybe something else, could have made me a little less stressed and healthier.

I need to start exercising.  I'd love to go back to the rec center 2-3 times a week (something I haven't done since I was pregnant), but trying to fit it in when I already feel as if I don't have enough time seems like a logistical nightmare.  I mean, I don't want to be one of those people with every moment of the day scheduled. 

I just kind of need an overhaul, or a long vacation, or work to calm down, or, well, all of these.

So, we had some psychologists come in from the university's counseling center on Wednesday to give us a presentation on professionalism, conflict resolution, stress management, etc.  It's kind of weird to have them come in because we know it's because our boss thinks we need some kind of help (when really, we all get along pretty well and she's a lot of the problem, herself), but anyway, the counselors are really nice and understand what's going on.  They mentioned, specifically for the one coworker who deals our boss the most (her direct assistant), about "being in the moment" - meaning, not thinking about work, and how stressful it is for her, at any point other than when she's at work.  Our coworker had mentioned that she gets up in the morning to shower and just starts thinking about work and all the things she has to deal with at work, etc.  The counselors were telling her that she really shouldn't do that.  She shouldn't think about work until she gets to work.  And when something bad happens at work, she should take a quick break to go outside and think about something else.  In other words, you should always experience what you are currently doing (showering) or where you are (outside) fully and not be thinking about other things.  Well, anyway, I'm sitting there thinking "oh, my god!, this is so me!"  I mean, I absolutely can NOT just "be in the moment".  My mind is always on a million different things, no matter where I am, and it's often about work.  I can't stop thinking about things that are going on in life.  And really, I'd like to talk about work outside of work to someone else, and maybe that'd keep it from taking up so much of my inner thoughts.  But no one outside of work really cares about what's going on there, you know?   But how do you just stop thinking?  I mean, I try to think about what it is that I'm doing, but as soon as I think about what I'm doing, my brain is, like, okay, I thought about it, back to thinking about work (or packing for a trip, or the laundry that needs to be done, or whatever else is going on.)  Maybe I'm secretly ADHD or something since I can't focus on one thing for longer than the length of time it take for me to tell myself to focus on the thing I'm currently doing.  Sigh...