An August Update!

Holy Batman, it's me again! I got a few complaints about my lack of posting and updating about my life, so I thought I'd share a bit-- especially since a fair amount is happening at the moment!

The biggest and most consuming news in my life at the moment is that I was unexpectedly hired for a teaching job here in Gainesville! I will be teaching 6th and 7th grade language arts at a private Catholic school, and I'm so excited to start. However, because I was hired literally the evening before pre-planning, I'm a teeeeeny bit busy and stressed as I attempt to get my classroom together (as well as plan curriculum for a subject that I haven't thought about in awhile due to my special education background). Everyone has been incredibly nice and helpful and tolerant of my overwhelmed-ness, if that's a word. Overall, my stress right now is a good kind of stress, and I hope to plan and organize in such a way that I can have a little downtime each evening and have most of my weekend to play. I'm not naive enough to think that will always happen, but it's a major goal of mine. Keep me in your thoughts this week, as Open House is on Tuesday and school begins Wednesday.

I've been making new friends in the area and going out for lots of lunches and dinners lately! It's nice to get out and experience some of the local places in Gainesville. As for other recreation, Tracy and I are planning to go swim with manatees at Crystal River sometime in the next few weeks; plus, we have plans to go race high-speed go karts in nearby Ocala.

Speaking of Tracy, he's doing just fine. He has finally moved on to anesthesia now that he has started his second year of residency, and from everything I've heard, this is much better than intern year. I'm so glad he enjoys what he does and feels it's something he could do for the rest of his life-- it makes him a much happier person to be around!

I visited Oklahoma a few weeks ago, too! (Told ya lots has been going on.) After over a week with family and great friends, I came back to Gainesville feeling relaxed and happy. It was fantastic to see my college friends and hear about their new jobs, additions to their families, and just life in general.

That's about all I have for now, but as you can imagine, life is keeping me pretty busy at the moment. Good luck to all my new and returning teacher friends as the new school year begins!

Another Update

Two blog posts in one month?!?!?! It must be the apocalypse. Or something. Anyway, another week has passed in humid, sunny (when it's not raining) Gainesville. While all my friends in Oklahoma have finished with school by this week, Alachua County public schools still have TWO. MORE. WEEKS. For the first time in my memory of school, I'm not absolutely dying to get out-- probably because I'm being paid to be in school this time! Ha. However, the kids are acting nuts, and that makes me want school to end for their sake.

Tracy has another 24-hour shift tomorrow, and I work in the morning at Sylvan, but we both have Sunday and Monday off! I was about to comment about how excited I am to have two days in a row off, but then I realized that's called the weekend in real-people world. My goal this next school year is to have a weekend every weekend. Ready go.

In incredibly vague-land news, I lost my mind tonight and did something I said I didn't want to ever do. No worries! It's potentially beneficial and kind of makes me excited/nervous/optimistic. I'll post more about it later, but just know that exciting opportunities are presenting themselves here, and send some positivity my way por favor.

The only other random thing I want to say is that Tracy and I are going to Ft. Lauderdale and St. Petersburg in less than a month and you're not! Ok I'm sorry. That was rude. But we are. And you're not. I just didn't mean it in a rude way.

PS-- Still working on an Oklahoma visit soon. Special ed friends need to send me some sort of documentation of when they're going to be in Norman so we can all get together. Deal? Deal.

Boom. Posted.

Long time no talk, blog world. I done been busy. Buuut now I'm back, so get excited. I need to update more than once every couple of months so I can remember what I blogged about the last time. Such is life, I suppose...

Life continues to be just lovely in Florida. Believe it or not, Tracy and I are approaching the one-year mark of living in Gainesville. As Tracy says, fun flies when you're doing time :). We both continue to be incredibly busy with work... he's on a 24-hour shift at the moment, just like he has been every weekend for the last month and a half or so. Neither one of us are really big fans of the 24-hour shifts, but it's fun to bring food to him (and sometimes, other residents) at the hospital and see him for a few minutes. The rest of the week, he's working 12-hour days, and my days are usually 11-12 hours as well, so the couple hours we have in the evening together are quite appreciated. We do a lot of eating, watching American Idol, being stupid, and talking about how much we don't want to go to work the next day. It's a reeeeeal nice routine haha. We're very happy here, although we both miss Oklahoma (oh my gosh though, one of the Sonics in Gainesville has reopened!!! A moment of silence for the Sonic, please...).

The weather here is... interesting. It's been unusually warm weather for Gainesville lately, with highs in the 90s for the past few weeks, and it hit over 100 degrees the other day. Right now though, it's raining. What?!?! Today has just been really confusing in terms of weather. Woke up and it was sunny. Late morning, it starts raining. Starts to taper off a bit. Early afternoon, it's absolutely pouring. Late afternoon, clear and beautiful again, 75 degrees. Now? Thunder, lightning, loud rain. Make up your mind, Florida!

As for grad school, I received notification that I was on the waiting list. This didn't really surprise me, because even though my test scores and grades were well above their average acceptance standards, I didn't have a lot of documented shadowing of speech pathologists or anything. What did surprise me is that this year, they didn't even touch the wait list. Every. Single. Person. Accepted. While I was pretty upset about this originally, I've come to accept my fate, and my plan is to continue gaining more experience this summer and fall and applying again next year. From everything I've heard, the program is really competitive, so to get in I shall have to "up my game," so to speak. Or, you know, break into the computer system, change their acceptance list, and show up for class in August like nothing happened. That's an option, too.

As it gets warmer, Tracy and I are looking forward to him having some weekends off once he starts anesthesia. We have big plans this summer. We want to visit the natural springs around here (crystal clear 70 degree water, yes please), spend some time in Ft. Lauderdale with friends, visit St. Petersburg, go to the ocean a million times, and I may be taking a trip back to Oklahoma at some point. If anyone wants to come say hi and join in on the fun, you just let me know!

Last One, I Promise

Finally, a general life update post.

• I started work at Kanapaha Middle School a couple weeks ago. My job is to work one-on-one with a boy in a wheelchair as he goes about his day in the general education classroom. I help him stay organized, get his books, and generally just keep him on track. It's really a pretty easy job, but it's enjoyable and gives me employment during the daytime before going to Sylvan, so it works out well right now while I'm waiting to hear back about grad school.
• This coming weekend, Tracy has a medical conference in Weston, FL, which is basically Ft. Lauderdale, so we're taking a little road trip! He'll be in classes part of the time, but we're both excited to get away for a few days and see some ocean. We'll also be visiting some lovely friends from pre-Florida life down there; it'll be nice to see some familiar faces.
• The weather here has been gorgeous the past several weeks. It was a little above 80 today, and it's supposed to be in the low 80s and high 70s for at least the next week. I actually had to run when it was close to being dark outside today so that it was cool enough. Truly can't wait for a few weeks from now when it's beach weather and we can drive over to St. Augustine for the day. This is the part of Florida I will miss when we move back.
• That's about all I feel like saying for now. I'm attempting not to get sick, but the tickle in my throat is telling me that my efforts may be futile. I have tomorrow off from Kanapaha but not from Sylvan, so I plan to relax for another hour or so and then hit the hay. Hope everyone has a good week!

Valentine's Day

Let's see, what else has happened in the past month? Oh yes, Valentine's Day. Tracy and I celebrated in a pretty low-key way. I thought I was going to be working till 7:30 that night (work got canceled), and he had no idea how late he'd be working because it was his first day of a new service, so we didn't have big dinner plans or anything. We both ended up being done with work around 4:00, so we decided to just hang out, watch a movie, and relax. It was a really good Valentine's Day-- unconventional, but much enjoyed. As for gifts, I gave Tracy a gift certificate to a place in Florida called Ocala Gran Prix, which has really cool high-speed go-carts and a big track. Last year, I paid for him to go skydiving, so I figured I'd find another present that substantially threatened his life to keep up with tradition. This year, Tracy got me a Nike+ iPod thingy, which has one part that plugs into your iPod and one part that goes on your shoe, and it tracks the distance you run, calories burned, and your pace. I've been in a bit of a running funk, not finding much motivation to exercise at all, but this little gadget has helped a ton. In fact, I've run for 7 straight days (every day that I've had it). I was perfectly happy this year to have a non-cutesy flowery over-the-top Valentine's Day in favor of some quality time and gifts we actually enjoy. I think our gifts sum up our relationship beautifully-- I want to kill Tracy, Tracy thinks I'm fat.... Wait. No no no, they're simple but good. Yeah, that's it. Simple but good.

Cream Cheese Doesn't Melt

Hello blog world, it has been awhile. I'd like to say I've missed you, but I've truly had no motivation (or time, really) to write. Alas, it's time to update those of you who may care about my life. I think I shall do it in multiple posts so that nobody's computer crashes when it tries to access a ridiculously huge post about what's been going on for the past month in Florida.

• Cinnamon Rolls- I set out to make Pioneer Woman cinnamon rolls awhile back. A few friends requested that I blog about the experience, as cinnamon rolls aren't the easiest of fare to make. I was gonna do a picture-by-picture PW-style cinnamon roll post, but let's just say in the middle of making my first ever batch, I had enough going on that pictures kinda went by the wayside. The whole endeavor actually went pretty well, up until the end. See, I did the cinnamon rolls from one recipe, but I wanted to do her cream cheese icing, rather than the maple icing, and I neglected to see beforehand that the cream cheese icing recipe requires an electric mixer to make. Unfortunately for my cinnamon rolls, I do not own a KitchenAid mixer (much to my disappointment). I don't even own a cheap electric hand-mixer anymore-- mine is still at the house in Oklahoma. Soooo I did what any resourceful person would do, and I attempted to make it anyway. Even after whisking it together a lot, the mixture was really chunky and lumpy, with bits of butter and cream cheese floating around. Did I give up? Of course not! I had come this far, I had spent literally hours creating beautiful cinnamon rolls, and I was not going down without a fight. I pulled out my potato masher and tried to mash the crap out of the butter and cream cheese. That sort of worked, but it still wasn't smooth and creamy. I started to despair, when I realized that the bits of stuff are pretty much fat and should melt when heated. I poured the whole stupid thing into a pot and put it on low heat. This finally got rid of the butter, but (who knew?) cream cheese doesn't really melt the same way. At this point I was exhausted and the rolls were out of the oven, so I said screw it and doused everything in lumpy icing. They still tasted really good, but they didn't look too appetizing. Plus, the recipe made a gazillion of them. I have 2 pans in the freezer, but I think I'm gonna buy a cheap hand-mixer and re-make the icing for those. I ended up eating about 3 cinnamon rolls total, and Tracy ate zero because he said they looked gross. Cinnamon rolls? Success. Cream cheese icing? Fail...

Ten Hairs

So I did it. I went and chopped off several hairs in the front of my face to make them shorter than the rest. Yes, I got bangs. It's amazing what a new haircut can do to your outlook on life. How can cutting "ten hairs," as Tracy said, make your attitude so different? I don't know if I'm the only one, but the morning after a haircut, I'm scouring my closet for an outfit a little more stylish or interesting than the usual t-shirt and jeans I reach for on a day off. I'm doing my eye makeup differently, now that there are a bunch of hairs pointing straight to my eyes. I stand a little taller, take a little more pride in my appearance. If someone could tell me what kind of magic confidence crack they put in a haircut, I'd really appreciate it.