Almost wordless Saturday

Pete running the Brooklyn Half Marathon this Spring, nearing the finish in Coney Island.

Micro-Rant: English 101 again??!!

I am thinking of doing something crazy. CRAZY. Probably, it is dumb, so much so that I have already almost talked myself out of it in a couple of sentences in this post. The deal is that I am an LPN. I got this license while I was in the military reserve and I actually just took the class to get out of regular drill weekends. Regular drill weekends had been spent hiding out from my superiors, trying not to get roped into some horrible task. My reserve unit was gigantic, so many people, mostly officers. So for the enlisted folk it was tough because everywhere you turned there was an officer trying to throw his or her weight around saying, "come here private, come here specialist....wait right here (for the classic hurry up and wait) and when I get back with some more enlisted peons, I mean people, you can move that couple of tons of sandbags over about 6 inches to the left....."

You get the picture. I made more out of my drill weekends by doing the nursing class. And I got my license, but I didn't really work as a full-fledged nurse until some ten years later, after my son was born. The great part is that I love being a nurse. The other part is that I need to get my RN so that I can get paid more and have more flexibility about where I work. And I also have a secret dream to become an RN and work for Doctors Without Borders one day.

The crazy thing I am thinking of doing is taking Microbiology and Anatomy and Physiology next semester. At the same time. Even now, I am saying to myself, just take one, you nut. I can take the core nursing courses from home, but it seems that A & P and micro require me to be in a classroom. I feel pressed about time because I want to get as much out of the way as possible before baby sister comes.

Here's another rub. I just do not want to go back to school. I have done that, lots of that. In fact I have a Master's degree. And I read yesterday on the college website that if the classes I need to complete the associate's degree in nursing are more than 10 years old I would have to take them over. I'm sorry, but no f'ing way am I taking English 101 again. As if it's not bad enough that I am already a nurse, but they want me to become a freshman in college again, too!! Maybe that is why I am trying to hatch this crazy plot to do micro and A & P all at one time and do the rest of the courses at home.

Just a small micro-rant for the blog.

Crack

It's November.

Blogging every day this month has been a challenge. I kind of feel like my posts over the last week have been weak, it is probably a period when I would not have written on my blog at all. It feels like I put in a lot of filler over the last week. Wait. Let me NOT write about writing. I know I read somewhere that blogging about blogging is one of the top ten most annoying things about blogs ever.

I think I am PMS'ing. I read an article here. This is November. It is Adoption Celebration Month. The article talks about how this month feels to her as a birthmother. For her, a feeling of wanting to crawl into a hole, just wait until the month is over to come up for air. I was very moved by her words and I found her blog and became a follower. It does seem like this month of celebration is intended for adoptive parents and children who are adopted. There is no social awareness of birthmothers, no common ideology in our culture as to how they feel, how a month of celebration around adoption might make them feel.

It makes me feel selfish. See this post as I sometimes refer to it as a guide to my feelings about adopting a child. Adopting from anywhere, domestically, internationally, you name it. Even now as I have gotten through that feeling of greed for another child and have considered more (though surely not all, I mean, my consciousness about adoption comes about incrementally) about the implications of adoption and what it means to all involved, I sometimes have days like this, feeling selfish. There are stages, I guess, and I go back and forth through them at different times.

It seems that others come to awareness about our adoption process incrementally, too. I was talking to my mother the other day about the cost of adoption, I mean the financial cost. It seems that my father has been somewhat out of the loop about just how much it costs and what we have gone through to get the money together. In fact, the last time he visited he was shocked when I explained to him that it cost anthing at all. He, in all seriousness, thought we had to jump through a few hoops, but that it was free. I don't know who was more in shock, him or me. I mean, it's partly my fault, we don't get into the kind of detail that my mother and I do. The interesting thing was that the next time I talked to him, I could tell that my mother had spoken to him more in depth about the subject. He had this sound of something in his voice. Plainly put, I think it was love in his voice. And that was sweet. If you knew him, you would understand how sweet I think that really is. But, in his voice, I think I heard empathy, too, like he just got it a little more.

All hail snapfish

If you have tons of digital photos laying around your harddrive or clogging up your memory card of your camera, check out snapfish and let those photos have a reason to exist. (besides your blog) I am having 540 photos printed and all our Christmas cards and it was mad cheap. And there is a free ship coupon code if you google it. Digital photos are my husband's pet peeve, he likes something he can hold in his hand. There goes my idea for one of those digital photo frames I was considering as a Christmas gift. Back to the drawing board.

p.s. I swear I will write something meaningful again one of these days.

Wordless Monday

By my clock

I am making it under the wire of NaBloPoMo to have this count. It's measly for real. But I had a very full day. We:

*had alternating traversing of four miles in different fashion (Pete ran and I walked).
*took the dog to a park where she could frolic. (I so intended to bring the camera and catch her in all her circus-y ways, but I was lazy, lethargic, sloth-ish and, therefore, no pics of the whole day not just the park).
*made a nice sauce with meatballs.
*came home, watched the Jets, Pete and Manny made steaks on the grill, we ate.
*friends came over, we had a fire in the new outdoor fireplace.
*roasted marshmallows over the fire, watched Fetch!
*and I contemplated whether or not to post anonymous posts on my previous entry. I posted them and may respond at a later time. I have never not posted a comment before so why start now, but something about anonymous posters bothers me. Everyone has their opinion, the world is full of them.

Goodnight, to friends.