reality....

I feel like talking and I do not want to express my thoughts to my family since I would probably bore them to near death, so here I am.

As I have stated previously, this is my fourth semester in college. Each day that I attend class I am full-filling a dream I had for many years to further my education. Here's just a bit of history on how I came to be in college in the first place. Years ago in my senior year of high school there were some very personal issues going on in my life that no 17 year old should have to deal with. Between being a mom to my 6 month old baby girl, trying to finish high school, and working full-time I had no spare time to begin with. On top of that I was being prepped to testify in court against not just two, but three people that I had witnessed commit two different crimes. During this time I decided that something had to give and I decided it was going to be school. My parents were not happy but they couldn't stop me because at that time you could quit school at 17. The day I quit school I was 6 weeks into my senior year and even though I was making a stupid decision, I also made a smart one. Before I left school that day I signed up to start classes a week later to earn my GED. I have regretted quitting school many times, but I do not regret earning my GED because I learned more in those few months of class than I had ever learned in my regular schooling. I graduated with honors and brought home many awards for my accomplishments. I earned my GED before my senior class graduated. I did not know at the time, but I could have walked across the stage and graduated with my senior class due to my high GED score.

That is where it all started, my dream of going to college. I am not sure if it was being a mother to my then fourteen month old daughter, Chesney, and/or the fact that Shawn and I had just got married. Either way I was looking the world, my responsibility, in the face the night I walked across the stage and received my diploma and awards. I had never in my life thought of anything other than being a wife and a mother some day, even before I was a wife and mother. Throughout the years, I kept telling myself that college just wasn't in the cards for me because I was doing what I had always wanted to do, caring for my own family. Besides I wasn't smart enough for college. I was working full-time, caring for my three small children, supporting and helping my husband build a hardwood flooring business that would become very successful, and doing everything else mothers do. As the years kept rolling by my desire to go back to school grew and I would talk to Shawn about it when we were alone. He would encourage me to go for it, but I continued to think that I was not smart enough. In the late 1990's, the internet started becoming more popular and I started connecting with new people through chat rooms then blogging and I was addicted to their intelligence.

Then in June of 2010 our world stopped when Shawn's mother told us she had lung cancer. Two weeks later as we were preparing to leave for our summer vacation, she informed us the cancer was not just in her lungs but it was everywhere, especially her brain. Even though we were devastated, she would not allow us to cancel vacation so the next morning we reluctantly left for the beach. We spent one miserable, worrisome week being away from her. Within weeks she began her radiation treatments and it didn't take too long to realize that the radiation was making her worse. She kept telling us what she was going through was normal, but we had our doubts. She wouldn't allow us to talk with her doctor or take her to appointments, only her sister was allowed that chore. Finally the radiation treatments were finished, but she continued to be very sick. So much so that the doctors had to get her better to start chemotherapy treatments. Her doctor was a wonderful man who does not hand out time limits and continues to do what he can throughout the process of cancer no matter what stage it is in when they discover it. In November we found out that she had known from the beginning that her cancer was stage 4. We didn't give up hope nor did we kid ourselves about facing reality. In November I quit my job and we moved her in with us so that I could care for her when Hospice wasn't here. In early January during a small snow and ice storm she passed away. For months after she passed away we were all depressed and in shock. I finally went back to work and we tried to get back into a normal routine of life, but we all came home each day and cried and held each other. For the first time in my life, I could not understand what the point of life was. At that time, to me, the definition of life was a long drawn out miserable time of pain and loss and I was over it. I do not mean that I was suicidal, not at all, but I wanted answers. Then one morning in early December of 2011, I woke up and the only thought that kept running through my head that day was that I did not want to arrive at my death bed and have to look back at my life and wonder why I wasted the time I had been blessed with because of fear. The next day I called my sister to talk to her and I told her that I wanted to go to college for medical administration and unbelievably she told me that she had registered at our local community college and she would be starting in January for the same path I wanted to go. That day I contacted the college and within two days I was registered. I started college on January 12, 2012 and I haven't looked back since. I have loved every minute of the experience, though hard it has been. I have kept really great grades and remain in the top three of most of my classes. The greatest thing, my sister has been right there beside me the entire time. We create our schedules together to have the same classes and that has been awesome because not only are we bettering our futures together, but we are creating a closer relationship between us and that is what matters most.

Today I registered for classes for next semester and it hit me that I am almost finished with college. To be exact, I will graduate in December of 2014. I almost cried when I had it all lying before me in paper because it made that graduation date real. This semester has been very hard and I have worked my booty off to make the high grades. Now that I am closer to full-filling my dream of having a college degree, I am so glad that I woke up that morning almost two years ago in December and realized that I wanted to step out of depression and do something with my life. Without going through the experience of cancer and loosing a loved one, I don't think I would be where I am today. Every day we miss my mother-in-law but we know that she would not want us to mope around, she would want us to get out and get on with life.

Fall already?

I am in absolute amazement at how quickly this year is flying by and as unbelievable as it sounds, Christmas is only 60 days away. I am looking forward to Halloween night because I do not have to attend my social media class due to so many classmates having small children. My kids are too old to trick-or-treat so we will be staying at home and enjoying a nice bonfire. The night after Halloween I am hosting my second annual Fright Night event here at my home. That night is basically an excuse to spend some much needed girl time with my two daughters, my sister, my two best friends, my best friends daughters, and my daughters best friends. We call it a night to watch scary movies without men around, but we mostly talk while the movie is playing. I was not sure I would be able to have the scary movie night this year because of the amount of homework I have, but I somehow managed to get a bit ahead a couple of weeks ago.

Speaking of my social media class....
I really like my professor in this class, but sometimes I feel like the class is a waste of time and money. The class would be great for someone who is not very familiar or comfortable with a computer, but for those of us who are APT and business majors, the class can be a bit of a bore. Due to the class, I now have accounts on more sites than I want to have, most of those being sites that I will never use. There is one social media tool that I learned of a year ago that I use faithfully since I have to carry a portable storage device (flash-drive) every where I go and that is Dropbox. Dropbox is portable storage that is free that you can get on any device (computer, tablet, phone) so that you always have your files, pictures, videos, and presentations. As long as you have an internet connection, you have Dropbox. I am not a forgetful person so I have never had to pull a file I needed for school off of dropbox, but many of my classmates have. Nonetheless, I continue to back all of my files up on dropbox. Evernote is another social media tool that I love. I am bad for writing out a grocery list then forgetting it at home, but as long as I have my phone with me then I have Evernote which contains my grocery list. This will be a very useful tool for my Christmas shopping list this year. Evernote is also free.

Okay, that's enough gabbing for now, I have some medical coding to get back to. See ya next time!

Every time I think I will make more time to come here and disperse my thoughts my life goes crazy and my time is consumed.

Anyway...
Since last I was here...my middle child, Bethany, graduated high school on May 20th. Chesney, my oldest child started classes today at the same school I attend, she is in pre-nursing. Bethany was suppose to start classes today but admissions messed up some forms of hers and she cannot start until next week so she opted to wait until January. Ty, my son, is now a sophomore in high school and surprisingly he is favoring his french class. This is surprising because my son is as country as they come. He comes home from school speaking new words he has learned that day. He will also be going to Italy, Monaco, France, and Spain in May 2014. Both my husband and I want to go with him, but I am not sure that I will be finished with my semester before the departure date.

My classes start tomorrow and this semester is going to be a trying one. Three of the four classes I am taking this semester are basically the core of my career path and I can go no farther on this path until I have taken all three. These three classes are only offered in the fall and they are in high demand, so much so that I went to my adviser early on the first day of registration and still ended up having to take these classes at night. I am just thankful that I am one of the fortunate ones who doesn't have to wait until fall 2014 to take them. I have each class once per week, three hours per class and I have to take them at the main campus which is in Knoxville because they are not offered at the campus closest to me. Driving Pellissippi Parkway during evening rush hour traffic is the only thing I am concerned about so far. Once tomorrow kicks off, my Tuesdays and Thursdays will be full from 6 in the morning until I get home from class around 10pm.

Other than that life is pretty much the same. I hope all of you are doing well.

Chugging right along

It has been over a month since I have been here and I promised myself that I was not going to be absent for long periods of time anymore. Oh well, it couldn't be helped because I've had more pressing matters going on. Anyway...

At this time, I only have 3 weeks left of this semester...yay! That four month break can't come quick enough for me, I am beyond ready for a break. My Bethany will be graduating high school on May 20th and I have known this was coming (obviously), but my goodness it has arrived so quickly. We are currently shopping for prom dresses and that has been fun. Bethany is finally in to pink! Pink is my favorite color and I have told her for years that she looks so pretty in pink and she is just now starting to see it. To be precise, she wants a prom dress in coral which is also beautiful on her.

I am working on my last paper in English. I was given two speeches to choose from. We are writing a rhetorical analysis on the speech we choose. Our two choices are The Inaugural Address of Governor George Wallace of Alabama..."The Segregation Now, Segregation Forever" speech from January 1963 and a speech that was done in 2005 for the Kenyon College graduating class by David Foster Wallace. I have chosen the college commencement speech because it is very different from the normal commencement speech given at college graduations. It is a little depressing and down but Mr. Wallace wraps it up nicely. I don't think I could write a good paper on the Governors speech because during a time of integration his speech was all about segregation and I didn't like his hateful, racial delivery. It is amazing to me how politicians can do speeches about bad topics and make them sound so good because they know how to incorporate ethos, pathos, and logos in just the right way to appeal to the audience. So in order to keep from stressing and getting mad, I have chosen the commencement speech.

Anyway, I hope everyone in blogland is doing well and I will be back as soon as I have time. 

gearing up for Spring break.....

The last few weeks have been very busy for me at school. I am getting ready for break next week and I do not want to be doing school assignments during my break, studying I don't mind. It seems like in each class I am taking the material just vamped up all of a sudden. In Excel we are doing Excel tables, Pivot Tables, Subtotals, and all kinds of interesting/confusing things. In Medical Terminology I just finished the Musculoskeletal System and whew was that hard due to all of the information packed in the chapter (the biggest yet). Now I am studying the Skin and I am doing surprisingly well with this one. In Music Appreciation I just finished the Baroque period and I really enjoyed it even though that to was a huge chapter. The chapter included some Bach, Handel, Purcell, and Vivaldi...some very interesting men to say the least and their music is so very beautiful. I especially enjoyed listening to Vivaldi's La Primavera (Spring), from The Four Seasons because it gives me hope that Spring will soon arrive here. Now I am studying The Classical Period which is also a very nice chapter because it includes Mozart and Beethoven.

As far as life outside of school...
I have wanted to repaint the master bedroom and bathroom for over two years now and finally last weekend we did just that. I love the new colors..for the bedroom I chose a color called Caramelized Onions and in the bathroom Timber Line. Both colors are what I call earth colors and I am loving them. Later that night after we painted, my son woke up horribly sick at 2:30 in the morning and after seeing that he didn't have just some regular stomach flu we called the dr. He had Norovirus and oh my dear was it terrible. He is all better now but at the time he lost 6lbs from Sunday to Tuesday and he is still not eating like he did before the virus plus he has dropped some more pounds. Thankfully my son inherited my love of clean hands and he washes his hands thoroughly after touching anything, therefore, no one else in the house contracted the virus. Other than that everybody else is doing pretty much the same things. Bethany is still touring college campuses and deciding if culinary is what she really wants to do when she grows up. Chesney is working and enjoying a semester off from school, she is however registered and set to go for the Fall semester. Shawn is just working as usual and praying for Spring/ Summer to arrive so that we can get out of the house more. It has been a very rainy year here so we all experienced cabin fever. This coming weekend is supposed to be beautiful with spring-like temps and we plan to enjoy every second that we can get.

Miracles are still happening!

I don't think I have posted this many times in the period of two weeks in the last two or three years. I do believe I will really enjoy getting back into the habit of coming here and typing all my thoughts out. Anyway..on to it...

I seem to be moving right along on my school work and getting into a regular routine that allows me to complete my assignments for each class a few days early. As I have mentioned previously, last semester was the first online class that I have ever had and the instructor didn't communicate with us at all and now this semester I am taking three classes online and all of my instructors are in constant communication. Even though a lot of people assume that online classes are easier and on your own time, I have found that you actually spend more time studying because you are not sitting and hearing lectures so you have to study harder. Either way, I like the routine I have set up for myself because my evenings are pretty much free and if I work harder during the week then my weekends are clear as well.

Before beginning last semester I talked to students who had already taken Medical Terminology I to get an idea of what to expect because I had heard nothing but horror stories over this one class. Once the semester began I found that I not only enjoyed the class but was very good at it. In the class we started out with word roots, prefixes, suffixes, and combining forms and the words are basically sentences. For example....achondroplasia (a form of dwarfism where the arms and legs are short yet the rest of the body is normal).
a- = no, not, without, lack of
chondr/o = cartilage
-plasia = development, growth, formation
so it reads like this....lack of cartilage growth. The definition in my textbook explains it as a defect in cartilage growth.

Anyway...I am  currently studying the blood system and wow, who knew there was so much about the blood to know. For some odd reason, the respiratory system really clicked with me and now the blood system is doing the same and I am thankful for it. So far, the two hardest systems I have studied are the urinary system and cardiovascular system. I found the urinary system to be hard only when it came to the laboratory tests and clinical procedures simply because most of those tests and procedures are recognized by initials instead of full names and with all of the initials, it gets confusing.

I now need to sign off and head out for groceries. You all have a great Monday and be safe out there!

proud moments and a little weeping

I can't remember exactly all I have posted on here in the past couple of years concerning my offspring so I am going to hit the high points.

My oldest child, Chesney, has been working at a local hospital for two years. She is a CNA and has grabbed some other small certificates during her time there. She is phlebotomy certified and in December she finished college and is studying to take her pharmacy technician certification exam very soon. In the Fall she will go back to school to start on her pre-nursing classes and then she will go on into a nursing program.

My middle child, Bethany, is in her senior year of high school and she has decided that she wants a future in culinary but she was having trouble deciding where to go to school. She has been looking hard at The Art Institute of Tennessee-Nashville and The Art Institute of Atlanta because both are about the same distance from our home. Lately Bethany decided that she wanted to start out at a smaller school so she has decided to get her feet wet by applying to Pellissippi State Community College where I attend. They have a culinary department and I think it will be great for her to get her first college experience and decide if culinary is the true path she wants to take. If she makes the decision to go with culinary all of her credits are transferable and they will also prepare her for a four year school. Basically she can get her prerequisites out of the way at PSCC and the best part is there is a campus located less than ten minutes from our home.

Tonight Bethany and I finished up all of her forms and whatnot and tomorrow she will be applying at PSCC. I am so excited and proud but at the same time I am a little teary eyed because I can't believe that it is time for another one of my children to head to college. These days it seems life is literally speeding by me. Ty, my youngest child, has grown so much in the last year and a half. He went from looking like a younger boy to looking like a young man in a matter of months and on top of that he grew about 8 inches taller in the last year and a half. I have to look up at my son now..hahaha.

This post may seem silly but I needed somewhere to unload a little because of the jittery feelings over my kids growing up. I thank God each and every day for allowing me the blessing of being their mother!

checking in

I just started my third semester of college yesterday and since I have my ENG comp class I thought I would start blogging again to help me loosen up a bit for that class. I had ENG comp last semester, but ended up dropping it the first week to complete my prerequisites for my major and because I had way too much on my plate. This semester I have classes that are less stressful than a couple of classes last semester and I feel that I can focus better on writing. Math is probably my biggest enemy and even though I love numbers, I do not like them in an organized math class. I am very proud of myself because I took Probability & Statistics last semester and I not only passed that class with a B+, but I also over came my math anxiety (thanks to a wonderful instructor). Anyway, you all will be seeing me on here more just to get my brain juice flowing and my fingers ready to write.