Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I'm a

Self-Knowing Romantic Extrovert

My love of storms led to this photo......and a few more

I've never attempted to take a shot of an electrical storm before because my camera has never had the "photo burst" type of option. No longer! It only took 1148 photo burst pictures to capture my first lightening shots last Friday night as I drove through central Illinois with my friend.

Jail visit & my rantings

Wow! I don't know if I'll ever be quite the same. Saturday morning, I went with my best friend to visit her son in a maximum security jail. I think it was the most frightening day of my life.

We came into a small entryway & had to wait for the guards to buzz us in to the sign-in room. There we each had to provide our full name & address, social security number, drivers license number, relationship to the inmate, & 3 forms of ID. Additionally, my friend had to provide the plate number for her car & a corrections officer searched it. After that was done, we waited to be admitted into the next room.

When we were buzzed in, we were given our ID's back, searched, & sent through the metal detector, then searched again. Apparently, I have metal plates in the arch supports of my shoes & they almost took my shoes away. We couldn't take our ID's in so we had to lock them in up in a little locker along with the car keys. We were not allowed to take anything with us, I even had my chapstick confiscated & locked up until I left the prison. We were buzzed through 3 more doors & passed through an outdoor walkway with 12' cement walls topped with barb & razor wire. Then we sat for 4 hours in a room with 7 guards, 7 other inmates & their visitors. It was horrible.

To top it all off, my friend complains about how her son is treated so poorly for the first hour we're back on the road headed home. News flash here - if he hadn't screwed up in a major way, he wouldn't be there in the first place! Your son gets his laundry done, meals cooked, dishes washed, free cable TV, free room and board, and $10/month for sitting on his butt in jail for breaking the law. And you want me to feel sorry for him???!!!???

I work my butt off at two jobs, raise two special needs kids on my own, attend college full time, do all my own cooking, cleaning, & washing, I can't afford cable TV, I pay my own rent & utilities out of my meager earnings, and no one gives me shit for sitting on my butt all day. To top it all off, I have a crazy ex-husband that stalks me and I don't have an army of fully armed corrections officers protecting my ass 24/7! Do NOT expect me to feel sorry for him because he doesn't like the way he's being treated.

Sorry for the rant, I'm done now.

How much does the human brain weigh?

Well, Alien #2 has been having med trouble for some time now (almost a year). We have switched doctors and our new doc is working to get the right combo of ADHD meds to work for him. The insurance isn't cooperating so much. We finally get a medicine approved and need to increase the dose a little and the insurance throws a fit. This kid has been through 5 med changes in a month. Thanks to the insurance company, we have to keep changing meds because they don't feel the doctor is giving him the correct dose of the medicine. WTF? Who's the doctor here anyway?? I think we finally are getting close to the right dosage. It's about time.

Alien #2 also has ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), it's not pretty. When the ADHD meds aren't working, the child from hell surfaces along with the most obscene vocabulary you've ever heard. I've lost 30 lbs now. Not that I'm complaining, I need to lose the weight anyway.

Stress, however, is never a good way to lose weight. I think part of that is the loss of my mind, how much does the human brain weigh anyway? My sanity doesn't weigh much, but it's gone too. Misplaced with bills I forgot to pay - I'm sure of it.

Alien #1 doesn't help much either. Being the bigger of the two, he feels it is his right and his duty to annoy his brother at every opportunity. This does not make for a good combination. I'd like to kick his a** but at almost 6' tall, I can't reach his butt to kick it anymore! I knew he would be tall, but he's only 14!!

I told my best friend I needed a weekend off. So, she says take off overnight with me & my hubby can watch the aliens while we have a girls night out. COOL!

There's a catch - isn't there always. Now that I've committed myself to going on this overnight, she informs me we're headed 5 hours south of home to visit her son in jail! And this is supposed to de-stress me??? Visiting a convict in a maximum security prison???? Granted, it was minimum security & they upgraded it to max while he was in there. Since he only had a few months left to go, they left him in there rather than transfer him to another jail. Still, I have no desire to go meet her son under these circumstances or any other for that matter. I know what he did and why he's there. If it were one of my aliens, I doubt I'd go visit. The whole situation, it's just too weird.

I must have done something really horrible in a former life. It's the only explanation.

Kitty Litter??

Monday morning the oldest alien (14) comes downstairs to make breakfast the following is the conversation that followed.

Alien #1: Mom, I had the weirdest dream last night!

Me: Really? What about?

Alien #1: We were trick-or-treating.

Me: Well, that's strange for this time of year I guess.

Alien #1: We were trick-or-treating for - get this - kitty litter!

Me: Did you wake up with something dry & crunchy in your mouth??

Rose

My oldest alien showing off the first rosebud of the year last year. That bush got to be almost 6' high!

Raising Cat Food

Spots & Rico will be just that, cat food if the kids leave the cage top off again. Spots has already looked death (aka Sugar) in the mouth (literally) twice and lived to tell about it.

Perfect Landing

This was jump #2799 for my friend. Of course the battery on my camera died for the #2800 jump. Just figures doesn't it?

Sugar baby

This is my baby, Sugar. Isn't that little pink tounge sticking out just toooooo cute????

One final exam left!!! YEA!

I only have one final exam left so I'm taking a little break before I go back to the grind of the study thing.

In my previous post I listed some seemingly unconnected items. However, there is a link. I just finished off my clinical assignment for the semester (student teaching 2 days/week). It's my last clinical semester and I student teach full time in the fall of 2009. I can't wait to graduate. Anywho..... the list of items, all are stories from one of my students in my clinical. JD (not a real name or initials) is in the transition program for the special education students. He will be graduating this year. All these things are stories he has told me. These aren't real things he's done, he just has a great imagination. The "Fish & Slaw House" thing is actually the end of the year picnic the special education program has each year. It has become tradition for one of the higher-ups to bring in all the fish he has caught on vacation & have a huge fish fry for all the kids & staff. And I'm invited!! I love fish - I'm gonna eat my fill this Friday. Come rain or shine, I'm stuffing myself with fried fish. Yummy!!

So much for posting during finals.....

I still have pictures of the mice & cats to post, pics of a friend & skydiving, misc. crap. Had a ton of new templates to work from to update the look of my blog - lost all that crap when I had to delete it to make room for all the final projects & presentations on my 4GB flash drive. Who the heck knew I could fill up a flash drive that size so fast?! I've been so swamped with the end of the semester stuff I feel like I'm chasing myself down to get things done.

It's almost over and then I can put up a real post, but for now I'll leave you with this: What do the following things have in common?

• Riding a giraffe on safari in Africa
• Eating a Chinese fried bug while on the same safari
• Working for 35 years as a security guard at the bank
• Learning to salsa dance in Mexico
• Making Mexican salsa to bring home
• D & P's Fish & Slaw House
• Teaching 5 first graders Sunday School on Friday evenings

Stumped? I would hope so! Ponder the seeming unrelatedness (is that even a word?? it is now!)of these items and I'll update you with the funny story behind them once finals are done for the semester.