good times

Well, another Christmas is come and gone. *Sigh* It always goes too fast for me. There's all this build-up and anticipation and then *poof*! It's all over, just like that.

It was great, though. It was so much fun to have my entire family here for Christmas. We haven't all been together for Christmas in such a long time. It would be great if we could do this every other year or so, but I guess that's really dependent on work schedules and such now. Ah well, such is life.

I had an ultrasound on Wednesday to investigate the 'possible cyst' on my left ovary (as explained in this post). I was super nervous and anxiety-ridden because I had no interest in being back in a hospital, never mind having yet another stranger poke and prod me with things in places strangers shouldn't be. My sisters, Brenna and Breanne, tried to reassure me, but I just really didn't want to go.

As it turned out, I had a fantastic ultrasound technician this time around. She couldn't have been older than me, and she just talked me through everything and reassured me that my uterus looked completely normal and that cysts were completely normal and everything was completely normal. It's definitely a relief to know that there's nothing going on that I need to be concerned about.

Anyway, that's an update on that.

So, Vergil received two Dane Cook CD's from Tim this Christmas and then I bought him two Dane Cook videos this week. As a result, I have to confess that I have been swearing like a trucker all week. He uses quite a bit of profanity in his comedy routines, and yeah... not so good for the girl whose routines are all mucked and random and unusual. S'anyway, if you end up having a conversation with me and find that I'm swearing more than usual, that's why. It's Dane Cook's fault. The filthy son of a 'b'. :P

And that's about all that's new in my world. I hope everyone had a decent Christmas. New Year's is coming soon - I hope everyone's got their resolutions ready to break!

blasty blast

There are some people in this world who have a knack for coming up with catchy words and/or phrases that others latch onto and use until you begin to forget who it was that said them in the first place. Some examples are: Homer Simpson ("D'OH!"), Happy Gilmore ("Get in your hooommmeee!"), Russel Peters ("Somebody gonna get a hurt reaaalll bad."), Dane Cook ("Blasty blast. Banana Sangwich. Heeelllooooo...I'm a Caaarrrr...") and Kirk ("You're gonna diiieee!"). There are others, but it's still early and these guys are the only ones I can think of right now. Vergil's good for that too, only sometimes I think he's the guy that helps perpetuate the sayings of others rather than coming up with a lot of his own. I seem to be the one with my own private vocabulary of strange and unusual combinations of words (ask Vergil sometime about 'postage spaceage').

Anyway, that's totally not what I was gonna blog about today. Look at me getting all side-tracky and stuff. What I wanted to blog about was the fact that I get to see my family in a few days! How fun and exciting. My sisters, future brother-in-law and my parents are all flying in from Edmonton and we got to do all the Christmas tradition-y things that we are all so fond of. Christmas with my dad's side. Christmas with my mom's side. Christmas with just the 8 of us. Good, good times.

Even better times are that Michele, Linda and Yvonne are catering our Christmas with my mom's side. So very excited for that bit. If you have never had an opportunity to eat the food these women make, you should book them to cater your next event. Amazing stuff.

I think that's about all I had for today. I have three more projects left to mark and then they're all done. Then I get to edit and critique my professor's dissertation over my Christmas break. It's only 219 pages. It shouldn't take me that long. :P LOL

I don't know if I'll get a chance to blog again before Christmas, so here's my 'Merry Christmas' to all my blogging friends, and to all a 'Good Night!' :)

my life as a retail wife

That wasn't supposed to rhyme, I swear.

I hate Christmas. Well, okay, maybe that's not entirely accurate. I hate the commercial Christmas season. Is it because I hate busy malls? Yes, partly. Is it because I hate that Christmas has been stripped of its true meaning by blatant consumerism? Yes, partly. Is it because I don't get to see my husband for more than one evening a week for a whole month? YES, MOST DEFINITELY!

Sorry, I didn't mean to yell. It just makes me *sigh exasperatedly*. I kid you not, there are few times of the year I look forward to more and less than December. All I would want for Christmas is for Vergil to not have to work Boxing Day. What a hellish invention. What money-grubbing, insensitive-to-families, capatilistic pig invented Boxing Day anyway? Bleh. Did you know that Vergil's store will sell over $30,000.00 of merchandise on that one day alone? Incredible. Granted, more than half of that will come back in returns in January, but still. The sheer number dumbfounds me.

Okay, before I get too carried away in my rant here, let me be clear. I want Vergil to have a job. He does really, really well in retail management and, in general, likes his job. It's just the craziness of the Christmas season and the mass hysteria it causes and the billions of dollars that are spent on total crap and the fact that I never get to see him that makes me want to scream.

But I won't. I don't want to wake the neighbours.

Maybe I shouldn't have picked this precise time to blog. I just finished marking three projects (about 6 hours worth of work) and I'm tired and not thinking really clearly. I had wanted to get four projects marked today, but my brain is getting very mushy and I'm afraid this last project will not get the attention it deserves if I try to mark it at this point.

I should go to bed or something. No, I'm gonna stay up and wait for Vergil to get home. Hopefully he doesn't get back too late... stupid Boxing Day preparation. Yes, that's right, they're getting ready for Boxing Day now already. And he's got to help two stores do it since the St. Vital store is sans manager right now. Bleh, bleh, bleh. I'm looking forward to January.

Man, it's a good thing Vergil's in retail and not me. I'd probably have been arrested for punching someone's lights out by now!

done

So it's official. My last class was last night. It was good. The students showed off the projects they'd been working on all semester and seemed very relieved to be done with them.

I am so proud of them. So, so proud. They poured their lives, sweat, tears and hearts into these projects and it definitely shows. One of my students is so preoccupied with her love of this project and wanting it to really reflect her heart that she asked me for another day to work on it. She was the only one, mind you. All the others met the deadline, even if they lost sleep to do it.

My friend Sheri kept telling me last week that she could tell which students were in my class - they all had this glazed-over, desperate look in their eyes. I felt bad for them, but I did warn them. I told them it would be a struggle. I told them it wouldn't be easy. I told them they'd probably hate me. But I also told them it would be rewarding in more ways than they could imagine. I think they'd all agree with that last point, too.

Although, some of them probably could have used huge, double shot espresso heroin coffee hell drinks to keep them going.

I feel...good about the whole experience. I still wish I could have been in a place to offer more of myself than I did in terms of teaching the class, but my interactions with the students were all quality. I felt we connected really well and I look forward to walking with them the rest of the way to their graduations next semester. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Without question.

My professor, Chris, and I have also been talking about an exciting summer project that we'd like to work on... I'll blog more about that when we get the idea more nailed down, though.

So yeah, overall, a really good experience. I'm looking forward to going over their final projects. I'm confident they all did really, really well. And it has very little to do with me in the end - I just gave them the tools and pointed them in a direction. The rest they did themselves.

Fun. I don't know. I think I could get into this teaching thing...

and then there was one

So I just got a call from my cousin...she's four months pregnant. *sigh* There are four of us cousins who all got married between 2004-2005 - and now three of them have or are having a baby. All but me.

I don't want to be sad about that, but yeah... it does make me feel more than a little sorry for myself.

I'm very much having what I'll call 'empty arm syndrome' today. Even at church, all I could think about was how empty my arms feel. I watch all these parents holding their kids and I can't help but think of how that was going to be me. I almost stole Abby from ccap and ccap's boy, just to stave off the feeling for a few minutes, but on second thought, I decided it would probably only make me feel worse.

Anyway, I'm depressing myself so I'm going to change the subject abruptly.

Vergil and I put up our Christmas tree and decorations today. Well, I did most of the putting up because Vergil was busy playing with and setting up my Christmas present to him - a new palm pilot/cell phone. I love Christmas decorations. There's something so comforting about them. It's like comfort food for my apartment. :)

Another 'bright side' is that I pretty much have all my Christmas shopping done. I wanted to wrap them tonight so I could put them under the tree, but I have to review my students' papers first.

Speaking of which, I really should stop procrastinating and work on those...

i've no fear of drowning

My title's from a Jars of Clay song, Work FYI. Corrie posted one of their songs the other week and, as we both seem to be obsessed (yes, I will use that word) with their current album, Good Monsters, I thought it apropos to use a lyric from it, since it kind of sums up how I feel this morning.

"I've no fear of drowning, it's the breathing that's taking all this work."

I was asked to lead the staff/faculty weekly prayer meeting this morning. I decided it would be a good time to share about my miscarriage. I talked about weakness and how God is present even in the darkness. About how his shoulders are big enough for all the grief in this world and how he is still worth praising.

It was well received and we had a good prayer meeting. It did leave me feeling very tired, however. Everytime I tell the story, it always seems to take so much out of me. All I want to do right now is go to bed and sleep.

One of the things people often say to me after I tell the story is, "How did you manage to keep coming to work and teaching your class?" The 'why' questions I can handle. The 'what' questions are easy. The 'who' and the 'where' are pretty self-explanatory. The 'how' gets me. How did I go on with a 'normal' life? I don't know 'how'. Is there a magic answer for that? What do people want me to say? I just did. I don't know what else I was supposed to do. My options seemed fairly simple to me: keep moving and go on with life or cut myself off from everything. Cutting myself off didn't seem like much of an option since I knew the world wouldn't stop or slow down to let me catch up.

It's not like I didn't give myself space. Vergil and I went off radar for about two weeks. I let go of feeling guilty over not being able to give as completely of myself to my class as I might have liked. I don't know. It's the one question I don't like because there doesn't seem to be a good answer for it.

Anyway. That's my rant or whatever. The breathing does seem to be taking more work today. But have no fear. God seems to have the 'how' well under control, even when I can't explain it.