Yes, I'm still in existence, although I think I've forgotten how to blog. It's been about 2 months, hasn't it? Ah, well, I have good reasons. Reasons like moving and finals (in the same week! Egads!), the kids' many end-of-year engagements at school, me starting the summer term, getting accepted to nursing school and then the nursing program shutting down. (Yes, they really closed it. Grrr.) So that's what's been up.
First things first -- we got into the new house. It's awesome. The open space has become the kids' new favorite place to play. We have the second (or fourth, depending on how you look at it) unit in a row of 5 so there are neighbors on either side of us. One of the units is empty and the other has a very quiet, very nice family living in it. I can only hear them very faintly on the rarest of occasions. And it's never screaming swear words and such. I'm growing some flowers in the front yard and trying to grow some vegetables in the back. Paul and I are planting my herb garden this afternoon.
Speaking of gardening, our massive veggie garden in Paul's backyard is doing quite well. We have no actual food yet but it's getting there. And it's a lot of work. A whole lot of work. But it's rewarding and we are having a good time with it. We're also taking notes so we can do this better next year because we have learned a lot in the short time we've been working on this.
The kids have left to spend the summer with the ex-husband and the step-mom. Solomon has completed elementary school and will be going to middle school next year. I can't believe it. Miriam will be in her last year of elementary school next year and Samuel will be half way through, in the third grade. It's shocking that this has happened so fast. I swear, just a few days ago I was changing their diapers and sitting through marathon nursing sessions.
I finished microbiology with an A. Woot! That turned out to be a really fun class. My professor was terrific and our experiments were a lot of fun. My unknown specimen was Proteus vulgaris. At least, it was, until it became contaminated with something else (I suspect E. coli since all three of my lab partners all had E. coli. Someone -- maybe even myself -- was not perfect with their sterilization technique.) and messed up my last few test results. No worries, though because the professor said that happens in all her classes to someone. Our grade was not based on maintaining a pure sample, but rather on testing appropriately and demonstrating that we knew why tests were performed and what the results meant.
And algebra ... well, I'd rather not talk about that. We'll just say that I ended up passing but I hated every single second of it and I'm not proud of my grade at all.
Nursing school in general is a huge mess and I'm still trying to sort out how to reach my goal. It's all being reworked and will probably take a very long time. Ugh.
So that's what's going on here. I'll try to keep up better for the rest of the summer.
