My life...as I see it: August 2011

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

School is in session

This post should be a short post cause I'm tired and need sleep!

School is officially back in session. Our first class online was last week, our first on campus class was today. Both of my classes have 13 students in there (including me) so they will be smaller and more open to discussions that most of us will feel comfortable in. I'm not sure how I feel about the readings and assignments yet, but I have a couple more weeks to make an opinion on those completely.

I start my new practicum tomorrow morning. I'll be there Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 8am-4pm. I'll be working in a Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility. I won't put the name due to confidentiality. I'm not 100% positive what I will be doing, but it sounds like I'll be learning intakes, assessments, group therapy, family therapy, individual therapy, maybe some equestrian therapy and stuff with the ropes course. The first few days/weeks will be spent doing orientation type stuff, but hopefully it picks up quickly and I learn quickly. I'm terrified, yet excited at the same time. Wish me luck!

Baby Shower From HELL

August 6th marked the day of the baby shower that I spent all summer planning for my cousin, Sara. Well the girl is quite frankly just crazy, so as you can imagine the pregnancy hormones don't make things any better. The night before the shower she got into huge fight with her husband (not going to go into details) and the police were called. Essentially she refused to allow him back in the house....so my hubby, Kyle, drove the 45 minutes one way to pick him up and let him sleep on our couch. Well because my cousin thinks Kyle is the devil (don't really know why either), she decided she was not going to show up at the baby shower....her own baby shower. This sparked huge fights and a lot of pissed off people. Eventually she showed up 30 minutes late and ignored me (because I'm a dumb bitch--her words not mine). The shower was kind of fun, but I think ultimately she was only there for the gifts and didn't want to do anything else. Her husband and Kyle came back after it was done, as they were going to help me take everything down. She flipped out on her hubby for being around Kyle and stormed out of the church cursing at him. By the time we made it their apartment with all the gifts and stuff, she was in the parking lot screaming at all of us, much 99% of it was toward him. This was my first hand experience of this crazy woman who shares the same bloodline ad me. Gosh I hope I don't ever get like that.

So Long, boring story later. I am officially over baby showers. I spent way too much money and time working on it to feel this unappreciated. Sorry about the boring post!

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Everything else in July

As you could see, my months of June and July were kind of crazy with the things I had going on...but the days I didn't have anything going on meant I sat at home on my couch. The end of July marked the end of my summer class. I got an A (high A) in the class and loved that it helped bring my G.P.A up from that B I had last semester. I LOVED the class and wish that instructor taught more classes. I would make the 3 hour drive just to have a class with him.

The end of July also meant the 2nd birthday without Crystal. She would have turned 27 on July 30th, so we had a birthday party for her. I made some rum flavored cupcakes...okay there may have been a LOT of rum in them! We had a little BBQ with family and friends and had a good time for the most part. I stayed sober because I was driving and on new medication. We left when all the drinking started because I don't have a desire to be around drunk people. I'm over that phase of my life. I don't mind if people have a few beers around me, but taking shot after shot after shot....on top of all those beers...just not my thing. I guess someone has to be the grown-up. Unfortunately Crystal's oldest son, Jaydan, wasn't able to make it to the party. His dad had some car trouble up in Ohio and couldn't get the car fixed in time. We missed seeing him, but understand the situation. The following day my mom and I took flowers and a cupcake over to Crystal's grave site and left them there for her. It's definitely gotten a lot easier to go over there and see her...if I have someone else with me. If I go alone, I'm a sobbing mess. I think the family needs to go visit her more often though because her grave looks crappy now that things have been taken down/stolen/etc. Sadly my grandma is buried at the cemetery right down the road from Crystal, but I haven't been to see her in a while. I need to start making a plan to go see them both more often.

Okay so that marked the end of July (that I can remember). Oh wait, the last day of July we got decent news. Kyle finally got a rating from the VA. He got a decent rating for a first try, but we found some discrepancies in the VA report b/c the doctor wrote incorrect information. Now the VA is telling us that the information cannot be amended by the doctor and will forever be in there incorrectly. We are going to meet with someone about everything next week to see what we can do and to see how to file another claim since they are saying his hearing loss and respiratory issues are not service connected. Ummm pretty sure the hearing loss came from having an IED blown up right outside the door of his vehicle...and the respiratory issue is why he was medically retired to begin with. Ugh I hate fighting the black tape to get anything done. He's still not on PTSD meds because his psychiatrist went on vacation and apparently has decided she doesn't want to return phone calls or send the meds now that she is back. I don't understand, but I know we have to keep fighting all the bullshit. Oh another note, we are trying to get Kyle in to see his primary care doctor on post. His liver enzymes are really high still and they are saying the ultrasound showed signs of fatty liver disease....therefore meaning someone needs to check it out. The VA is the one who found all this stuff but they won't even address it or treat him for it. Pretty sure I might sue the VA if my husband dies from fatty liver disease and nobody was willing to treat him for it. Ugh. I'm trying to stay positive though. Lord knows he seems to be in a permanently bad mood about things. He doesn't think he's acting different, but I can see it as clear as the words I'm typing right now. He is also not sleeping well. He tosses and turns so much that it keeps me awake half the night. I just wish they would prescribe the medications and that they help him because he can't sustain himself on this level of anger with the world.

So that was July....I'll move on to August in another post.

NKOTBSB

I know I said a month ago that I was getting back on track with my blogging, but I am for sure doing it now. I still need to go back and talk about things that have happened this summer, but I have to read my last post to do that.
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Okay I read it and realized where I left off! Ha ha I'm lame! Essentially I left off waiting to talk about the best night of my life...YES it was even better than my wedding day! On July 16th one of my amazing friends, Alli, and I drove the 2.5 hours to Kansas City (she's pregnant mind you) for a concert....but not just any concert. The concert of the decade...aka NKOTBSB. For those who do not know who that is, it's New Kids On The Block & Backstreet Boys. The concert was AMAZING. We had floor seats, directly in front of the walk out area of the stage....eh the head of the penis stage. Yes the stage truly was shaped like a penis. We got awesome pictures, some video, and got to touch some of the boys! :) Alli and I almost got to go on stage, hand selected by Nick Carter...but the girl right in front of us was wearing a homemade shirt that said "Future Mrs. Carter" on the back. Lame way to catch his attention...but it did and she went instead. Alli got to squeeze his shoulder! So jealous! We did get to hold hands with Jonathan Knight though. Alli was got a brief hand squeeze, but I got a good 30 second hand squeeze! He's not even my favorite New Kid...but he's still a New Kid. We got to see the fabulous Donnie Wahlberg taking his shirt of and I got a video of him doing the "air humping" as I call it! I'll post some pictures just to show everyone how fabulously close we were to the stage. Well worth the $115 for the ticket! I do have to credit my girl, Alli, for one of the reasons the show was soooooooo amazing. She and I are both diehard New Kids and diehard BSB fans, so the concert would have been a little lame if she wasn't there with me. Back when we both work in the same child welfare office together, we'd always run to each others office just to dance and sing to some of their songs! By the way...Nick Carter has a new solo album out called "I'm Taking Off"....I highly recommend it if you are a BSB fan. Okay end cheap promo there! Okay one more cheap plug for the guys...I highly recommend everyone watch Blue Bloods on CBS on Friday nights this fall. They have recently started filming for their second season and it's an awesome show.

I'll leave you with a few pictures from the show and then finish my updating in another post (that I'm about to do)!