Miss Me?

It has been over a year since I last posted and you my lovelies will not even begin to guess the changes that have taken place since I last spoke with you.

I will come out with the biggest change of all right away and quench your curiosity.

Your dear blogger has become a mother.

Not a stepmother. Although I am still the most kick ass stepmother that The Kidlet has ever met, but a life form living inside my body using my bladder as a punching bag and causing irreparable damage to the skin on my stomach, kind of mother!

I am also finished with Dental Assisting school, spending my last semester knocked up wasn't probably my brightest idea but I kicked ass none the less and graduated with the award for "Best Clinician".

I am no longer employed at my ladies intimates retail store, in fact I am no longer employed anywhere! I spend my days lazing around, eating chocolate while lying on a Tempurpedic with a 4 inch feather bed topper. I often enjoy long days of reading and sleeping, cuddling with the cat while warm in our safe haven during a rain storm or laughing and rolling around in our gauzy white sheets with the Dear Hubby.

Which is to tell you that shortly after my last post I spent 17 days in ICU with a MRSA infection on the back of my head. No joke, my hair fell out on the back of my neck/head and when it grew back it came back in adorable ringlets which totally make doing my hair a pain because all of the hair on the underside is cute curls while all the hair on the top is almost stick straight. Does anyone know where I could get my hands on some ringworms because I am thinking of infecting the rest of my head because that is how my Dad claims he got his redheadfro.

I started my second to last semester of school late, I quickly caught up but then found myself becoming more and more and more exhausted. I was emotional, ok more emotional than usual, and as I have already shared I was preggo.

I am not going to get into the preggo story tonight, I want to do it justice and I want to have some material to write about for the next week.

So until next time!

Overwhelmed and Underpaid

I recently had a decision to make, one that will change the course of my life and the course of the life that Dear Hubby and I are building together. It will change my time with The Rapscallion, it will take my focus away from hobbies and friends. It means that Dear Hubby and I will continue the balancing act we preform with our finances, it means I will continue with my adventures in retail sales and work most evenings and weekends.

The original plan was for me to be done with my dental assisting certificate this spring, my friend Jules and I would be graduating at the same time and we were planning a girls get-away weekend on a short Mexican cruise to celebrate our accomplishments. Now I may still try to go but it will be to support her and celebrate her accomplishments because when I would return it will be back to another semester.

I have decided to pursue Dental Hygiene as my major. I will still finish my dental assisting certificate and sit for my national boards but while I am doing that I will be completing my pre-requisites to get into the Dental Hygiene program. I am looking at about 3-1/2 more years of school (counting pre-requisites) if all goes as planned I should be done with school before I am 35.

I felt a little backed into a corner in regards to this decision, I was told by the college that I had too many existing credits to continue to receive financial aid for my dental assisting certificate (I had taken about 3 semesters of college before I was 21) I was told that if I wanted to pursue a higher degree program I could continue to receive financial aid as long as I am taking pre-requisites towards my stated major.

So I talked; I talked to my Mom and Dad, who have graciously supported me and Dear Hubby during all of this. I talked to Dear Hubby, who offered his unconditional support and love about whatever decision I made. I talked to friends, I talked to my college counselor, to customers, to my coworkers, I might have even had an in depth conversation with Puppy Butt. I called GiGi, who is Dear Hubby's father's wife (did you follow all that?) she is Dental Hygienist and I had questions that I felt like only she could answer. Everyone said basically the same thing, I had their support.

Then I talked to Bean's boyfriend, I was driving him and Dear Hubby home from a party and he laid everything out in black and white for me. Financially the decision to continue my education will significantly change where Dear Hubby and I will be in the future, for me it has never been just about the money. I love dentistry, I love working with patients, I love everything about this field (ok some maybe not the smell of an infected abscess which had to be drained before the tooth could be pulled, that was pretty rank) it hasn't been about the money but I can't ignore that the salary difference will allow me more freedom later in life.

So there it is, that is where I have been. Overworked, overwhelmed, underpaid and having a slight mental breakdown. I am back, I hope to post more regularly. I missed you.

Report Card Time

and guess what I got?

2 Girls 1 Dental Cup

I can see a scary future for the time being, if you don't want to listen to me prattle on about Dental Vocabulary you may not want to start a conversation with me any time during the next few weeks because right now I have a one track mind and that one track is playing all dental hits, all the time!

Classes for my Dental Assisting program started Tuesday. I was 30 minutes late to class because of the torrential rainfall that Las Vegas has had recently, again another semester with me impressing the Professor right off the bat, at least this time I didn't also point out that she wasn't wearing matching shoes.

Today I heard a story that I am not sure if it grosses me out completely or makes me completely weirded out that I am not scared off by it. One of the students who is ahead of me and already completing her internship at the dental clinic was talking about assisting when a badly infected and abscessed tooth was extracted. She was describing the putrid smell and how it was her job as the assistant to hydrate and suction out the area, she said afterwards she couldn't get the smell off her tools fast enough. When relating this story to my SMIL, I just expressed the hope that if I am ever in that position that I won't vomit into the patients mouth, no thought of changing majors, just the hope that I never puke in someones mouth.

I guess I found my calling.

Sypien

I went to a vocational high school. My class was the first class to come in as Freshman, previous students did not come to the school until they were Sophomore's. My first period class during my freshman year was a computer class taught by a teacher who had taught at the school since it opened in 1965, I didn't know on that day how influential that teacher would become to me.

When we entered our Junior year we began to study our chosen vocations, we spent 3 to 4 hours a day in our vocational classes. For me this meant spending all of my time haunting the computer animation classroom, drawing, learning, playing and laughing. My teacher was Don Sypien, the same teacher I had known since my first day in the school. I had him as a teacher all four years I was at the school. He was a laid back teacher, he spoke to a goofy bunch of teenagers like we were his friends, giving us his opinions on everything from Disney's style of animation to buying stock in Microsoft. Even more than sharing what he thought was the fact that he listened to us, he took interest in who we were as individuals and encouraged us to follow our passions in life.

I wasn't the most talented student in the class, I was creative but not as knowledgeable about the technical side of computer animation. Sypien always pushed me to compete with the boys and paired me with the most technically skilled student to help me learn. After high school, when I knew I wasn't going to pursue computer animation as a career, I remember him encouraging me to go into health care. He knew I was a people person and enjoyed helping people. I laugh that it took me 10 years to see what he saw then and can only imagine he would approve of my choice to become a Dental Assistant.

Last year he became my Facebook friend, it was wonderful to have contact with him again. I loved seeing his opinions on movies, all the old photos he had from his school days and all the pictures of how he was spending his retirement. His wife Joanne, passed away on November 4th. I sent my condolences and my last contact with him was in December. He passed away on January 4th, 2 months after his beloved wife.

It is always sad to lose someone who was such a strong part of your life. My thoughts go out to his family, who I know he adored, he will be missed.

This Really Important Blog about.... Oh Look a Bat!

I went to the doctors a few months ago; he was doing a routine stress test to make sure that everything was pumping in my chest like it should be. He decided to send me to an endocrinologist to have a spot on my thyroid examined closer. For most people this isn’t a big deal but in my family thyroids have been our Achilles heel. I asked the doctor if the spot on my thyroid could be causing any other problems, like attention problems. He didn’t think the two were related and said after I saw the endocrinologist we would talk about them.

I swear my Mother’s family crest has a bottle of vodka and a tumor on it (no one can remember what is on my Dad’s family crest, sorry, bad Alzheimer’s joke) my little sister was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 25 and my Mom had hers removed when an internal goiter became so large that it inhibited her breathing.

I went to the endocrinologist, who also happens to be my little sister’s doctor. He said I look just like her and then ordered a biopsy, not cool. I don’t know the last time you had a needle repeatedly poked into your neck but it isn’t something I do often. No matter how much I tried to relax and think about other things I keep returning to one truth. There was a needle being poked repeatedly into my throat! So the results we negative, I am fine, with my family history they will keep an eye on any changes that occur in the area just to be on the safe side.

So I went back to the doctor’s office to talk about my attention issues. I was a dreamy little kid; I daydreamed and basically lived in my own world until I was in junior high. I was smart but often fell behind in school because the material didn’t hold my attention. Even in high school and my first attempt at college, I would routinely start with the greatest intentions only to be frustrated time and time again when I lost track of things during the semester. I am enrolled in college again and didn’t want to have to go through all of those old feelings again.

I have suspected for a while now that I suffered from Attention Deficient/Hyperactivity Disorder, the doctor spoke with me about my personal history and agreed that I exhibit ADHD-I (I stands for inattentive) symptoms. He gave me a prescription that my insurance doesn’t want to cover. So he started me on a different drug and while it helps I can tell it is not the right drug for me.

Everyone’s body chemistry is different so it is normal to have to try more than one medication before you find one that works well for you. I just don’t know how to call my doctor to tell him that the medication he just gave me a higher dose of is still not helping me focus.

Oh and BATS!!!

Making Friends and Influencing People

Yesterday was my first day back in school, I am taking my English requirement this semester, and it is a 5 credit class which means a lot of work for yours truly. I was nervous going into class; I haven’t been in school in almost 10 years. I was afraid of being one of the oldest and maybe the only one in the class who honestly doesn’t know the correct usage for a semicolon. I can’t remember the parts of speech beyond what I help the Rapscallion with and he is only in second grade. I write like I talk and it is only through the magic of Microsoft Word that my grammar is anything close to being correct.

I arrived at the campus early so I could purchase my textbook and find the classroom, I stopped at the help desk to get a hard copy of my schedule and I found out that the college still has me listed by my last name from when I was married to Whatshisface, so tomorrow I have to bring a copy of my divorce decree from Whatshisface and my marriage license to Dear Hubby (ladies this is why you should NOT change your name when you get married) to have my name corrected in the system. I found my classroom pretty easily; I glanced through the textbook, looks like it is all written in English and finally went into the room about 10 minutes before the class was to start.

The dilemma of where to sit, all the seats in the back were full, plus lets all admit I don’t mind being the center of attention but sitting in the front row would single me out as a nerd. An old, returning to college after 10 years, semiliterate, know-it-all nerd and we all know there is nothing worst than fulfilling your worst ideas about yourself. Luckily I found an open desk near the middle of the room.

The Professor, who has told us we can call him Steve so I will now refer to him as Professor Steve, was running late. When he came into the room I assumed he was another student, he was wearing cargo shorts and a t-shirt with a Spam logo on it. He looked older than me but not by much, now here is where I reveal how shallow I am, I always check out peoples shoes. You can tell so much by them, his shoes were kind of ratty old Vans but the biggest thing I noticed was that he was wearing 2 different shoes. 2 different colored shoes, I should explain; 1 black with a white stripe and a white sole, the other grey with a white stripe and a rubber sole.

He started class telling us a little bit about what we would be studying this semester; he then opened the floor for questions. He said we could ask him any question we wanted, so you know what I asked right.

Turns out he didn’t know he was wearing 2 different shoes, I guess I better proofread every essay I turn in this semester.