Rain drops on roses....

So I was just at my friend Becca's over the weekend. She and her husband had just gotten back from a workshop on making a rainbarrel a lot like the one pictured below. I'm so jealous!

I want one. Then maybe I would actually bother to water the poor tree in my yard.

ready to pay the price

*Sigh*. So it looks like I am going back to grad school again.

Long story (somewhat) short, I graduated from good ole Widener with a Master's of Special Ed, highly qualified to elementary education. As I interviewed for jobs it became very clear that the fact that I didn't hold a certification in elementary education was a huge strike against me, which is kind of infuriating to discover you are barely qualified after you have paid thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to get your degree.

I eventually did get hired in my current district. It has always been in the back of my mind to get to get back to work on my cert (see last year's goal list at the top of this page). This year when I watched some of my peers be laid off or cut to part time as our lovely Governor slashed funding to public education, it hit me that if I were to be laid off it would be impossible to go up against huge pools of applicants who were all more qualified than me. I would end up making hoagies at Wawa or ringing people up at Sears for the rest of my life. So this summer I got serious about getting back to grad school and just in the nick of time, as I found out that all of the certification requirements are changing very soon. I need to take 6 classes in the next year so get my stuff together before all the certification requirements change in the state of PA. Otherwise, I will have to take 11 classes under the new certification qualifications. Which was a little different than what I had pictured in my head (maybe taking one or two online courses and sitting for another PRAXIS exam).

I'm not going to lie, I had a pretty big breakdown about this. In order to qualify for financial aid loans I would need to take at least two classes in the spring semester, three in the summer and one next fall. If you were with me back in the Myspace blog days, you would remember that I am no stranger to working fulltime, doing grad school fulltime and juggling being a mom. It's not impossible. I have done it, but the tradeoff isI pretty much had no money, no life, no friends, my mother was Isaac's primary caretaker instead of me, and I was constantly under a high level of stress. The thought of going back to that lifestyle, without even the support of living with my parents was completely overwhelming. Not to mention the thought of taking out more loans to pay for it all had me panicked, as I already have an overwhelming amount of debt relating to school costs. I just really thought that chapter of my life was closed and the thought of going back to that pretty much caused me to totally fall apart.

Anyways, enough blathering on and on about this. As I do whenever I make a major financial decision, I asked my dad for his take on it and he helped me brainstorm some other solutions. I had forgotten to factor in tuition reimbursement, and when you take that into account my work will pay for a considerable amount of the cost, which means that I can take the first two classes one at a time, instead of doubling up. I will can do the bulk of the work during the summer when I am doing nothing anyways and I will only have to take out loans for three classes instead of six. This makes me feel better about things.

I have a friend whose dad is very into Indian Astrology and a few years ago he did a reading for me based on my birthdate, time and location. He reported that I would eventually find a lot of success in my career, but that I would have to struggle against many obstacles before I found that success. Anyways, I don't know how exactly you define "success" as a public school teacher anyways. I just feel like I have taken the long way around over and over when it comes to being a financially independent real live grown up and it's frustrating. It would just be nice to be be on top of the bills, maybe have something in the savings account, and not have something like having a fuel pump be a total financial crisis.

Anyways, I had all of this kind of stuff floating in my head when I was biking along the River Trail earlier in the week. This plaque was on one of the benches along the way.

And actually, that quote sort of helped me refocus.

livid

So, you may or may not have noticed that every single image from this blog (except the cookie one) is gone. I got an invite to Google+ and decided to check it out. I was very freaked out to see when I logged in that the site had automatically created an album with over 400 images from my blog and set the setting to be shared with whoever from the web feels like looking at them. . Many of them were irrelevant to a social networking site and I was a little freaked out that the site had (I assumed) imported them without my permission. I deleted the album with no hint from the site at all that Google+ and Picasa/blogger manage the same photos. The images were not imported but are the ACTUAL FILES. Now every image from the past three years of this blog is gone. Needless to say, I'm pretty unhappy. What a terrible design oversight.

Hey look!

I baked something and it actually turned out delicious! I've tried a few things from The Better Homes and Garden's Cookbook and been pretty successful. I was supposed to take a dessert along to a little BBQ this past weekend, so I figured I would give this recipe a try.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Rounds

3/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup of peanut butter*

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup chopped cocktail peanuts**

* I used all natural organic peanut butter

** I realized once I started that I didn't have any of these on hand, so I just substituted 1 cup of chocolate chips, because, you can't make anything worse by adding chocolate chips, right?

1. Mix butter and peanut butter with a mixer on high for 30 secs or until combined. Add sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, and baking soda. Beat until combined. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Stir in any remaining flour. Stir in rolled oats and peanuts (or chocolate chips!).

2. Drop rolled dough 2 inches apart on un greased cookie sheets. Bake in 375 degree oven about ten minutes.

They were really yummy. I definitely plan on trying them again with the cocktail peanuts too.

So, going through my phone

I found some pictures Isaac must have taken...

So remember this post? (which incidently anonymous commenter, I DID have gas. When I need gas a little light turns on and then when I really, really need gas the car starts beeping at me.)

Well, today my driver's side window just arbitrarily decided to stop working. It makes the rolling down window sound but window does not move. =( Which pretty much sucks because my AC isn't really blowing out cold air anymore, so it doesn't take long till I feel like I am inside a greenhouse. Which is bad enough on it's own, but just when I thought driving in my car couldn't get anymore unpleasant/embarrassing, my brother warned me that window might arbitrarily just fall down inside the door at any moment and we might have to tape it up in the meantime. Thank goodness school is out, otherwise I would have to park my car a block away and walk to save face. I've never been a really vain person, but it seems like God is really trying to humble me when it comes to my car. Ugh, I can't even talk about it anymore.

Isaac's dad and I managed to have a series of civil enough conversations, including an awkward "Happy birthday!!!!" conversation where he said "It's not my birthday. My birthday is in nine days." Whoops. Anyways, M's father is coming for a few months from Sierra Leone. Isaac has spoken to him on the phone, but never met him, so we are all excited about that. He even asked me my preference about where I would like Isaac to sleep while his father is there, which shocked me. (One of our biggest fights ever was when he had Isaac sleeping in bed with some random girlfriend of his and then instructed Isaac to lie to me about it. AS IF Isaac wouldn't tell me that within 60 seconds after I picked him up.) So it should be a good weekend with his dad.

I've been doing some work as a secret shopper which has been fun. A friend of mine is the regional manager of a clothing store and asked me to secret shop some stores. Since I have nothing but time on my hands currently, it's worked out well. I'm definitely not the target demographic for this store, so it's been interesting to see what kind of service I get.

Other than that, there isn't too much to report on. Isaac has been doing soccer camp this week which has helped fill up our days a bit more. The instructors are all from England, complete with dreamy accents. It's also been good because Isaac is on the younger end and these are more experienced soccer players. In the local league we have been playing in he is sort of a big fish in a little pond, so I think this has been good for him.

Hope things are well with all of you.

On a less awkward note...

Jenny and Drew have a blog now! If you are interested, check it out! (If I did it right, their picture should be a link).