Midterm papers and ghosts….

I am a big goof. I haven’t figured out if I should be proud or embarrassed. As you know, I am a people pleaser and I am “one of those students”.

I just cannot help myself. I want to learn, I love to talk and participate and I want everyone to like me! So I may come off as a butt kisser or teachers pet. It takes everything in me to not volunteer to pass assignments back to everyone in my math class, just to help out my teacher.

Anyway, we had a midterm paper in my film class about the “Wizard of Oz”. I stressed over that thing because I wanted an A on that thing, by dangit! So the other night I got an email from my professor which said, “I'm looking through all of my emails and I can't find it. Did you submit it? Get it to me now!” This is weeks after I had turned it in via email. I frantically searched out my original email, re-sent it showing the time it was sent saying this, “Here's the original I sent! As you can see, I sent it in a day or two before the actual due date! I hope this doesn't affect my grade! Thanks!”

Note: I sent it in a day or two BEFORE the due date. Total brown-noser.

So this is the email he sent back: “Thanks so much! Yes, I've got it! Didn't want my star student to not have a midterm!”

“Star Student”! Oh. My. Gosh.

First I swooned…then I blushed…then I wanted to call my mom and tell her the good news…and then I realized…holy dork.

ElRey laughed and laughed and laughed.

He’s just jealous.

I then sent this reply: “Oooohhh "Star Student" eh?! Could you put that on a certificate or make me a big gold star??”

He then cancelled our next class.

I think it’s because he’s working on my hard earned certificate/gold star.

Also, I got an A- on that paper. I still think I was robbed. I deserved an A++. At least.

On a spooky note….I love ghostly stuff. Granted, not in my house, but anyone else’s is cool. I have never really bought into the spirits manifesting on film as an orb, but I gotta tell ya, this spooked me right out! Especially since ElRey took this video the day after I kept having “is someone there?” moments all day long like, my bathroom door opening by itself, hearing someone in the hall, I kept thinking ElRey was home from work but he wasn’t.

Yesterday ElRey was watching Lily playing on the stairs and pulled out his phone and took this video. Tell me what you think…Should I call those Ghost Hunters?? Or do some dusting? Sorry for bad lighting.

What I’ve learned from Spring Break

As you know I just had my Spring Break. I’ve learned a few things during this week long break.

1. The Break is merely a torture device right up there with over priced text books. While it’s great to get a week off, you eventually have to get back to it whether you want to or not. During this time, your brain turns slowly back to mush and right when you completely forget everything you were doing for school, you have to go back.
2. It is actually possible to eat your weight in food.
3. It is also possible to drink double your weight in Diet Coke.
4. A professor who schedules a math test the FIRST DAY BACK FROM SPRING BREAK is an idiot. A professor who schedules a math test the first day back and doesn’t show for the review he usually gives before the test and has some other dude administer the test is a dillhole.
5. Math homework is a total buzzkill.
6. Family Fun Time isn’t always a barrel full of monkeys. Sometimes it’s just a bunch of monkeys flinging poo (a mere metaphor, I swear).
7. Netflix instant view+30 ROCK+Mindi’s constant need for entertainment=major time suck.
8. Just because I have no school work doesn’t mean actual house work will happen (please refer to #’s 2, 3, 6 and 7) unless my mom hears the tremor in my voice when I ‘jokingly’ say, “you wanna come help me clean my house?” and comes to help me clean my house. Thanks, mom-you totally rock!!

One thing is for sure, I am excited to be on the downhill slope of this semester. I was loving it but that week off really derailed me so now I am in survival mode. Like Gloria Gaynor, I, too, will survive!

Friday Confessions

It’s time for a mid-afternoon confessional with:

I confess:

• It’s my Spring Break this week
• I am so tired
• I wish I could say it was because of all the big parties this week
• Nope, I’ve spent a lot of time at the kid’s school
• Taking care of a sick husband
• Making a Leprechaun Trap (Ok, the hubs did it but I worried plenty about it!!)
• And eating enough food to feed a small country
• I had big plans for this week
• I’m talking road trip
• But here I am, sitting at my computer, eating Mini Cadbury Eggs
• I should be on a beach somewhere
• But the closest I will be getting to a road trip is going to Costco
• Oh well
• One year for spring break I went to St. George
• I bought a tank top that said “Just Do Me”
• I am that classy
• If I bought a shirt on a Spring Break trip now, it’d probably say something like, “Watch out, I’m fertile” or “Back off! I’ve had 3 kids-what’s your excuse?!” or “Will Eat For Food”
• Yeah, something classy like that

Confessions-Who am I Edition

Yeah! I can confess with Glamazon! I haven’t in a while so I am happy to be here! click on her button and join in!

I confess:

• I love to read.
• I read between 2-4 books a week, depending on the length.
• I read a book from cover to cover in one day.
• Twice in 2 weeks.
• I know, I need a life, bad!
• I’m very empathetic.
• I have to kinda be careful with the books I read because of it.
• I get so into it that I forget it’s not actually me I’m reading about.
• Here are a few examples:
• I thought I was Rachel from “Friends” for years.
• I was just waiting for my Ross to show up.
• I even got her haircut.
• My brother even told me that the only friends I had were on TV on Thursday nights.
• My response? “Yeah, so?”
• I read these books that take place during the Ice Age and is about cave-people.
• Whenever I read them, I start drinking herbal teas and have an overwhelming craving for mammoth meat.
• I’ve even been known to run around in a loin cloth with a spear.
• The other day I read a book where the main character was about 7 months pregnant at one point. When I went to turn out the light to go to bed, I actually thought I was 7 months pregnant and asked ElRey to help me roll over.
• I once thought I was a vampire and accidently bit ElRey on the neck.
• For a while I thought I was a up and coming Geisha and couldn’t figure out where all my kimonos were.
• I am was madly in love with Mr. Darcy.
• It’s probably a good thing I never got into Harlequin romance novels.
• I’d be wandering around with a semi exposed bosom, calling ElRey ‘Captain Reginald’, saying words like ‘quivering’ and ‘engorged’ in my everyday language.
• Actually, ElRey might like that….but I digress…

Now go visit your local library! Look how happy it makes me:

What I meant to say: Birthday Edition

It’s always fun to play along with Chief so (pinch) click on her awesome butt(on) and come join the fun!

When my newly turned 6 year old said, “I want to have my birthday party at the swimming pool and have all my friends come!” I said, “If we go to the pool you can only invite a few friends. Why don’t we have a party at home and you can invite however many friends you want!”

What I meant to say: Actually, honey, we’ve decided to follow the Jehovah Witness way and we do not celebrate birthdays anymore. We’ll just have a pizza and sit around NOT celebrating your birthday. Won’t that be fun??

When she asked me to make a SpongeBob cake, I said “No problem! I can do that!”

What I meant to say: Listen, we all know how this is gonna go. I’ll lose sleep trying to figure this cake and the party out, I’ll bake a cake, stay up late so I can decorate it while all the kids are out of the way, tip the pan to get the cake out and have the entire middle fall out. At this point, I’ll mostly keep my cool, pull out the rest of the cake and start frosting it to make it look normal. But then the frosting will rip away at the cake, leaving cake crumbs all over in the frosting while I laugh through my tiredly panicked tears. This is where I’ll run out of frosting at 11:30 the night before the party and I know all I need to do is go back to the store and just keep going, but instead I’ll probably collapse on the kitchen floor, sobbing and moaning like an emotionally disturbed child. Your father will then come out in his undies, to witness the glory of the woman he fell in love with, drag that mess into our room and force me to go to bed. He, of course, will then stay home from work the next day (probably knowing all week that his wife got way in over her head with this and he would end up at home saving the day) make another fabulous cake and stay for the party, just to make sure Mommy doesn’t tell scary stories about how when you grow up, your butt gets bigger, life isn’t ever what you expected, by the time you know what you want, you’re usually too old to do it or use it and one day you won’t be able to eat whatever you want and get away with it, then send all the party guest home crying because of what the scary, hormonal, puffy/bloodshot-eyed old lady told them.

It happens every time.

Look what my husband did the next morning (not that any of that really happened, I swear):

He is so amazing, seriously.

Anyway, everyone survived and had a blast! My daughter loved the cake and everything that we did! I hope she felt as special as she really is to us, I mean, look at that face:

How can you NOT try to give her everything she wants?!

Although, I already told her there will be no big friend party next year. I'm not sure I’ll be out of the loony bin by then.

Step 1 Pause. Step 2 Breathe. Step 3 Enjoy.

I found out a few weeks ago that I can graduate from the community college in May so I went and got registered. I was so excited and thought, hey, I’ve gotten this far maybe I can just keep working at it at the university and get my full, grown up degree. You see, while I know what I have accomplished is big, especially while raising three little girls, I still see that it’s ‘just’ an associates degree and what I really want (at least) is my bachelors. Everything else just seems unfinished.

Anyway, in my excitement I called ElRey up asking him which college was easier to get to, thinking that he would be so on board since I’m achieving my goals and moving forward.

Well, he wasn’t so excited, reminding me that I was going to take a break for a while before moving forward and in his reminding, hurt my feel bads. Why wouldn’t he want me to do this? I’m managing okay! What’s the big deal?

I called my mom (let’s face it, a girl still needs her mommy) and as I started venting she stopped me before I could go too far and told me to pull my head out of my proverbial butt. She told me that now is the time to celebrate what I have done and bask in the glory of that accomplishment. What I have done is bigger than I am giving myself credit for and I need to just enjoy it for the moment rather than rushing off to the next part! She also reminded me that was the plan and that while at this moment I may think it’s going fine and what not, I needed to step back and remember what is most important.

I have said numerous times that this doing something for me thing has really thrown me for a loop. Going back to school is all about me. Sure, it could be beneficial to my family in that I could bring in some income with a new shiny job, but it is mostly all about my own personal goals. There is nothing wrong with that, in fact, it’s fantastic! But I have forgotten what my main objective is which is to raise a happy and loving family. Suddenly, the one most important thing in my life has become a burden, something that keeps me from getting my homework done or keeps me from reaching my goals. That is not what I want and I have been trying to balance all of it. Sometimes I do it well but most of the time I fall flat on my face and cry.

I realized after listening to my mom say what I didn’t really give ElRey the chance to say is that they were right. I need to come back and be mom full time. It’s hard to say that but I know the college stuff will happen, it will just be later and that is okay. My husband and my beautiful girls deserve someone who wants to be here! I often listen to friends talk about how much they do as a family and how much they love being together and all I am wanting is to have them go to bed so I can do what I want. Here I am in this fantastic family that ElRey and I have created together and I am not making enough effort to just enjoy them!

So, between me trying to balance my school with my family, keep the house clean and fight off this melancholy that seems to go away for a day or two and then kick me in the gut again, I’ve become a little non existent. Sometimes it’s even hard to go out with friends because I feel guilty for leaving them when I am already gone 3 nights a week just for school.

I don’t know if I’ve gotten any better at home but I’ve played more games with my kids, had a little more patience and my house is sometimes a little cleaner. I’ve never been good at time management so the mere fact that I am even trying to use my time more wisely is a huge step. Even though I haven’t been doing as much in the blogging world lately, I still find a way to idle my time away with a book or TV or a movie but I feel like I am more THERE for my kids.

I know that I haven’t quite gotten there with my husband yet. He is still a bit neglected and I need to work on that. A very classy lady that goes to my church said in our class one day that while our kid’s needs are important, we cannot forget our spouses’. When the kids up and leave later on, all we have is the one we started it all with and I want to be just as in love 20 years from now as I am now. I don’t want our relationship to be forgotten or ignored while raising our kids. I have given ELRey many reasons to be annoyed, angry or even a good excuse to hate me sometimes, but how often am I reminding him who he fell in love with?

I have much to ponder and work on. Keep in mind, I am talking solely of myself and what my family needs right now. I am in no way saying that a mom cannot pursue her dreams. She can and I am, all I am saying is that I have realized there is a need for a break and a chance to love up my family for a while without any distractions.

For now, I will congratulate myself for doing it, getting this far and doing it well. I may even be on the Dean’s List. Yay me! That is something to be proud of!

Oh, and by the way, after May 7th, I would prefer it if you referred to me as “Associate Mindi”. I think I’ve earned it. ;)

Hey, PhD’s get to be called Dr. So why not?!