Yellow Wallpaper

I am now totally done with school--and it feels weird. This semester I had to complete the last requirement, which was creating an electronic portfolio. The portfolio had to include fourteen sections based on the program's learning outcomes; for each section I had to write a short essay describing my understanding of the topic and provide examples of my learning from assignments I'd completed. It was both harder and easier than I had anticipated. Once I did a few sections it really became easier to write the rest of them, but the writing and revising took a long time to do. I'm so happy to be done, and yet it's taking a while to sink in. I think that's because I don't really change my routine much--it's not like I was actually going to class or anything. However, over the last two weeks I've really felt a burden lifting off my shoulders. I no longer have to fit homework in during my free time or worry about completing assignments. It's amazing to rea...

The middle of winter is actually not a great time for starting a new year. It's too cold and dark for me to feel like I have energy to do anything new. On the other hand, we've just passed the solstice and the days are starting to get a bit longer. Plus we just had Christmas and all its decadence, so perhaps the time is right for change after all. We're two weeks into January and I'm not sure yet if I want to make any resolutions. I'm a bit behind, as evidenced by my recent attempts to catch up on book reviews.  Christmas was quite lovely this year. My parents came to town and we had a nice dinner on Christmas Eve with my brother and his family. I woke up the next morning to fluffy white snow everywhere, and a quiet house filled with sleeping children. Unfortunately I also woke up with a sore throat and headache that only got worse as the day went on. The kids had a great morning and loved their new presents. I was actually grateful that Mr. Fob came to pick them ...

For the record, I'm not a big fan of Adele. Mr. Fob bought her first album back in 2008 and listened to it a lot, and I never really liked it. He bought an album from someone else with a similar voice at the same time, and I think I mixed them up a bit in my head, but either way I hated them both. I just found her voice to be a little too grating for me. But, I've had "Hello" stuck in my head for the past few days (along with most of the English-speaking world I'm sure). Friday would have been our fourteenth anniversary. I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter, but I was still sad. In an even weirder coincidence, that evening I ended up driving past the church where we had our wedding reception and the apartment where I lived while we were engaged (we'd planned to live there, but got into campus housing instead). It's hard to believe that fourteen years have already passed since then--some things have changed a lot and some have not. But, really...

A few weeks ago P. Bibby helped me unload the dishwasher. She arranged the plastic cups on the counter and declared "these are the kings of Enchantia!" in a loud voice. She was wearing a rainbow tutu and her cape that is supposed to be Elsa, but looks more like a Mexican wrestler since it was purchased at some tourist trap in Ensenada. It was one of those small, but memorable moments that I want to remember forever because it was weird and cute and hilarious.  Most days I can't believe that my baby is five-and-a-half, can dress and feed herself, and is going to kindergarten every day. In many ways, the intense baby years are behind us and are not coming back. I'm slowly getting rid of baby toys, board books, wipes, and other paraphernalia stashed in the corners of my house. Longtime readers of my blog will probably know how happy I am to leave those years behind--the stress and angst of the last decade are quite thoroughly chronicled here. At the same time, I feel a...

This past week was not very good. I was tired and didn't sleep well most nights--I should have been writing a draft of my paper that is due next Sunday, but I haven't done it yet. There were several nights where I felt exhausted and decided to try going to bed early instead of writing, and instead I didn't fall asleep right away so I was still tired and I have no draft of my paper. I also spent most of the week stressing about our final exam that took place this morning. Spoiler alert: I took the exam and think I did a pretty reasonable job even though it's hard to write seven decent short essays in 75 minutes. We're all adjusting after the death of our sweet kitty last Saturday. Surprisingly the kids have been mostly fine with the new state of things. My other kitty spent the first few days wandering the house and meowing, which was more heartbreaking than actually saying goodbye to the other cat. She peed on the couch on Monday but has otherwise not changed her ...

I'm not a fan of January--I'm sure you can look back through this blog and find plenty of posts describing all the reasons why this is not one of my favorite months. It's long, cold, and doesn't have any birthdays or anything to make things exciting. The first part of the month is always swallowed by recovery from Christmas break, and I always set too many high expectations for the new year. This January was a mixed bag. The weather was ugly--the entire western part of the country has been stuck under a high pressure ridge that's pushing all the cold and snowy weather to the east. It's been a moderately cold, hazy, polluted month around here. I've barely seen any rain or snow, and it's gotten warm enough for trees to think they need to pop out some buds. I like winter weather and feel sad that we haven't had any this year.  I've settled into work and made plans through the rest of the year. At the end of last November I interviewed for a posi...

Today didn't feel very much like New Year's Eve to me. I had to go to work--this year they changed the paid holidays to the 1st and 2nd to give everyone a four-day weekend. There weren't very many people at work and not a lot to do and I ended up leaving early in order to go to the grocery store and check out some movies at the public library before it closed. We got back from our vacation on Monday night and my brain is still adjusting after being gone for a week, especially since the weather here turned bitterly cold and snowy while we were away.  According to many articles I've seen around the internet, 2014 was kind of a crappy year. Outrage on the internet, Ebola, crazy weather, unrest and protests all over the world, airplane disasters, and so on. I get it--I don't feel like 2014 was my best year either. It feels like the year flew by before I had a chance to even catch my breath and get my feet under me. I spent a lot of time doing homework and not much els...

I took the day off work today--I've had a few sick days saved up for a while and thought it would be good to use one. I had planned on taking the afternoon off, since I had a phone appointment with the counseling center at noon and the kids had their back-to-school thing this afternoon (it used to be back-to-school night, but now for some reason it's in the afternoon). Then when I got up this morning, I just didn't feel like going in to work for only a few hours. So I got dressed and went to the temple instead; it was nice to be there and I felt good afterwards. Then I came home and had my phone appointment with the counseling center on campus--they will call in a few weeks and set up an appointment with me. I get to be some grad student's project for the semester, but at least it is cheap and easy to get to since it is on campus. I think things will be OK--I'm also going to work on getting more sleep and taking better care of myself too. This afternoon I had a fe...

Yes, I'm counting down the days until school is back in session. I think the kids are too, even though it's been a pretty fun summer so far. The other day I was talking to a friend who works full-time and she agreed with me that it feels better to go to work during the school year when we know the kids are happily involved in their routine and busy at school. At the same time, though, it's nice to have seasons in life and I remember just two months ago how ready for change I was. I will say that summer mornings are so much simpler for me since I only have to get myself ready and out the door.  I started the summer with a very quick trip up to Portland for my sister's graduation with a doctorate in nursing practice. I flew up Sunday afternoon and came home on Tuesday afternoon--I think I was only gone for about 48 hours. It was a lot of fun; the agenda was basically eating lots of delicious food, hanging out, and attending the graduation. We accomplished all those thin...

It's been almost a month since I last wrote a post on here. I keep thinking "I should write a post; I have stuff to say." And then I don't end up writing anything after all. Stuff has happened--it's been a mostly good month I guess. I might write a better post about the last month at some point later this week. Here, however, is a quick glance into a typical evening around here.  5:30--Get home from work and talk to the babysitter a bit before she leaves. Put away my things and figure out dinner. I actually made a menu plan and bought supplies for meals this week, but no one is feeling excited about breakfast for dinner (too many pancakes at their dad's house over the weekend).  5:45--Decide to make some veggie soup and biscuits for dinner. It's a bit ambitious, but uses up food I have on hand and sounds tasty. P. Bibby "helps", which mostly means getting in my way while I try to quickly make dinner. At least we get to spend some time togethe...

Two weeks ago on Friday was my birthday and then Mothers' Day was the week after that. Those two events are usually fairly close together, so if there's not a big celebration for one of them I don't really feel left out. This year it ended up that both days were fairly uneventful. On my birthday S-Boogie and Little Dude made me some French toast for breakfast. It was pretty tasty and they didn't make too much of a mess in the kitchen. I spent the whole day at the annual conference for the state library association--there were some interesting sessions and I got a tasty free lunch with an entertaining speaker, so I guess the day wasn't a total wash. There was terrible traffic coming back from the conference so I got into town a little later than I had planned. I had to pick up the kids from Mr. Fob and then we had a ward activity that night; I thought it would be fun to just get Wendy's for dinner, but it really wasn't that great. We had poor customer service...

Only three more days are left in April, which means that it's less than a week until my birthday and only a month until Little Dude's. Even more importantly, the kids only have 5 weeks of school left before summer break. Unfortunately our favorite babysitter from the last two summers won't be available because she has an internship she has to complete, so I've to start looking for someone new. I've only got about 2 weeks of school left and am happily looking forward to a little break. I am taking a class over the summer but it doesn't start until June 1st. April and May always end up being such a busy time; it seems like all the programs and recitals and things end up happening during these months. I'm just looking forward to summer vacation so I don't have to drag everyone out of bed and hustle them all out the door every morning.  Tonight as Little Dude was going to bed, he told me "I'm tired of parties". I don't blame him--he's...

The kids had their Spring Break this past week. One of the hard things about being a working parent is the fact that when the kids have days off from school, you have to figure out what to do with them. One of us, or both of us, usually has to take time off work to take care of them; thankfully Mr. Fob has a flexible job so sometimes he doesn't even take time off and just has them hang out with him. Last year for Spring Break I took off part of the week and the kids and I went to Las Vegas to visit my parents. The year before that Mr. Fob took the older two to Disneyland, but left P. Bibby here because she was barely two years old. This year's Spring Break has been highly anticipated by everyone for several months. Mr. Fob took the week off work and drove all three kids down to California to spend a few days at Legoland.  It was a weird week for me--the first time I've ever had all three kids gone for such a long period of time. Their dad picked them up last Sunday evenin...

Remember how in February I really got into exercise and made some great progress? Well, then in March I totally fell off the wagon. I haven't exercised at all since then. School and work and everything just got overwhelming and I've been kind of down all month. I know that exercise would probably help with that feeling, and probably fix some of the sleep issues that have been creeping back into my life. I should try again to get back in the habit. Obviously I totally fell off the blogging bandwagon as well. Looking back over my calendar I don't see anything too out of the ordinary that would make this month feel so stressful. Well, actually I only really ended up with one kid-free weekend instead of my usual two. Out of the past five weekends, only one has been completely without the kids. This weekend they were mostly with Mr. Fob, but my dad came into town on Friday evening to watch S-Boogie's play, so yesterday I picked them up for lunch with their Grandpa and then...

I just did a search through old blog posts and discovered that my favorite word to use in describing posts that contain a number of unrelated ideas is "random". I have a number of posts titled things like "random brain dump" or "random stuff". I used to blog a lot more about focused, specific things. Apparently I don't have opinions anymore about anything and am now just using the blog as a public journal to keep track of what's been happening in my life. I think part of the problem is the fact that I don't have a lot of time to sit and think about stuff, I don't have a lot of time to write it out, and some of the stuff I have opinions about has to do with sensitive things like my job and my divorce that I don't want to talk about publicly. Well, things change, and I guess after nearly 8 1/2 years of blogging I should be happy that I still have a few friends out there reading what I write.  The last two weeks have been normal--busy, t...

The first week of February went surprisingly well. The weather has been cold and either snowy or rainy, which I actually like since it clears out the air and makes winter a little more normal. Last Saturday night I took S-Boogie to see the ballet Swan Lake on campus; I've never gone to a ballet other than The Nutcracker so it was an interesting, new experience. I really liked enjoyed the performance a lot, though S-Boogie was a bit tired by the end and wasn't sure if she had fun or not. Monday was P. Bibby's birthday--I feel like the last four years have flown by, despite the fact that life is so different from how I imagined it would be back then. We started celebrating on Sunday with a family party that evening. I also invited the kids' summertime nanny since she is one of P. Bibby's favorite people. The party went well and she got a lot of great presents that she's been playing with all week. My attempt at making homemade pizza for dinner was an unfortuna...

My last "real" post was called "Back on the Wagon" and was over six weeks ago. Oops. I was feeling optimistic at the beginning of November, but my feeling didn't last. It turned out to be a crazy month, with a lot of different things going on for me, topped off by a visit from a nasty stomach virus for all three of the kids. I did manage to get my final paper written for my class; it took longer than I expected it to and turned out to be somewhat difficult to write. Part of that is my fault for not choosing a better research question and part of it is the fault of my instructor for giving vague directions for the final paper. Oh well--the semester is over and turned out well. Now I have a nice long break until mid-January and I want to make the most of it. ******* As much as I'd like to relax and enjoy my break, however, nothing is going to be calm until after Christmas. Even when I try to keep things simple, they still are hard. This year I decided to s...

Two weeks ago I mentioned that I had started exercising again and had successfully met my goal of working out three times a week. Unfortunately during the next two weeks I didn't do such a great job. The next week I exercised on Tuesday night; then on Thursday night I had my book club and came home late. I thought I would at least exercise on Saturday morning, but I stayed out too late on Friday and was completely exhausted Saturday. This was past week wasn't much better. I worked out on Tuesday night, but Thursday was Halloween and we were trick-or-treating instead (at least I was walking around quite a bit, so I think that counts). Then yesterday morning I did not get up and exercise; however, we spent two hours outside raking leaves and getting the yard ready for winter. Meeting my new exercise goal and getting into better habits has been a bit uneven but I am still committed to making it happen and having some positive changes in my life.  Those last two weeks have been b...

It's a lot harder to think of creative titles when all my blog entries tend to just be an update about my life and not related to a coherent theme. Expecting myself not to repeat titles after eight years of blogging is probably too much. Oh well. This a post. About stuff.  My last post, and Conference, were both two weeks ago. Things have been going well since then. I will admit that for a few days after Conference I spent a lot of time feeling troubled about a few things that were said and deeply pondering issues that were brought up by some of the speakers. I had quite a few discussions with friends about my feelings, which were decidedly mixed and definitely not peaceful. I didn't feel strongly on one 'side' or another--I just felt agitated and had a lot of big feelings that needed to fit together and make sense. Then, on the Thursday morning after Conference I got up and thought to myself "fear and anxiety don't come from God". I said a prayer, read ...